Battle Blues (3DO)

 There's a lot of disappointment for me regarding this game, unfortunately. A few years ago, when I first started looking into the 3DO library, Battle Blues really stood out with its gritty cyberpunk isometric pixel art stylings. I wanted to play it, but the prospect of trying to play a turn-based strategy game in Korean was a bit daunting, and being a 3DO game and being in Korean were both factors that made a fan translation ever coming out seem unlikely.

 

But in 2021, a fan translation did actually get released! Then, later, in 2022, I noticed this had happened and finally got to play the cool-looking cyberpunk strategy game. And for the first mission, I was having a great time! If anything, certain elements in the first mission actually made me think the game might turn out to be a little too easy. For example, the missions are split into a few smaller stages, in which you have to kill every enemy before moving onto the next. Some of the characters aren't enemies, but characters who join your team under certain conditions. The thing that really surprised me was that not only are deaths not permanent, they don't even carry over from map to map within the same mission! 

 

But it turns out I was an over confident fool. Because since getting through that misleadingly easy first mission, I've spent a few hours and many unsuccessful attempts trying to get through the first map of the second mission. The problem is that in this map, there's one particular enemy that spends loitering at the back, letting you bash your guys against his cronies. When he does come into the fray, you'll learn that he takes very little damage from your attacks, while his attacks take off at least seventy percent off of the health bars of any of your guys. I did manage to kill him one time, but unfortunately, he still had some henchmen on the map, and they gladly took advantage of the rule that says that your leader getting killed results in an instant game over.

 

So I'll apologise for the lack of variety in the screenshots, but I was only able to see one-and-a-bit missions. I think this is a pretty common problem among people who've tried to play the game, as the only longplay video on Youtube is from someone who hacked the game to make all their characters invincible. And other than that, and various posts announcing/celebrating the release of the translation patch, there's not much anyone online has had to say about the game.

 

That's Battle Blues, then. It looks pretty cool, and it wouldd be a good game. If only it didn't have that massive and sudden difficulty spike! I think if I keep plugging at it, I must be able to eke out a victory against the accursed Fm Com (the name of the particular enemy that's the sticking point), but to be honest, my frustration has really started to outweigh my curiosity.