Battle Worlds: Kronos

The tagline for this sci-fi-themed turn-based strategy game could be "a minute to learn … a lifetime to master," but unfortunately, you're left with a disjointed, flawed story and play experience. Right from the start, Battle Worlds: Kronos warns players that its difficultly will take a measured amount of both patience and practice. It's not a matter of learning what to do but rather learning how to do it effectively. Moving and engaging throughout the battlefield is a simple process of using units' action points to either move or attack. But arranging your units to take advantage of things such as cover, flanking, and range is where the bulk of the strategy comes into play. The AI is no slouch either. The computer-controlled opponents are extremely good at staying just out of reach, charging weaker units and otherwise stopping your progress through the game's multiple campaign settings. It's hard work, but that hard work translates into a real sense of accomplishment when you finally start to understand the game's tactics and pull of a big win.

Although the gameplay in Battle Worlds: Kronos is intense and challenging, there's too much of a disconnect to keep the player's interest. The game's focus on moving its plot forward is a jarring experience. For starters, cut scenes are extremely polished and detailed, yet the actual game looks somewhat bland, basic, and almost cartoonish by comparison. There are also numerous times when a mission will get interrupted by a sudden on-screen text conversation meant to progress the story and possibly give some hints for how to handle the fight. Instead of being helpful, though, it's more of a distraction, akin to interrupting a chess game and forcing the players to read a comic book before diving back into the match. That's not to say the story doesn't have potential, but shoving it down the players' throats at the expense of staying focused on the mission objective is a quick way to yank a player out of the experience altogether. It ends up feeling like the developers really wanted to tell an epic story but had to shoehorn the game into it.