BattleCON review (review copy provided)

Hey everybody, this is Mike and today I'm reviewing one of my favorite fighting games, Battle Con from Level 999. The disclaimer that I got a review copy of this one and to be specific, I'm mainly focusing on Devastation of Indians, which is the biggest box and includes a solo co-op mode to justify it being on the channel.

I bought two of the other sets, Trials of Indians and Wanderers of Indians separately with my own money, but those don't have the solo co-op play in them. The basic idea of BattleCon is that it's a 1v one fighting game, although other modes change that. And on each player's turn, they combine a base card, a basic attack with a style card unique to their character to determine their range, how quickly they're attacking, how much damage they're doing, and how much they move around the battlefield to jockey for position.

And whichever fighter can bring the other fighter's life total down to zero first wins. So, let's discuss five key things to know about BattleCon. So, first number five point, the least important to know, but still important enough that I included on the list, are the different modes in Devastation of Endings.

And it is a mix for my taste. So, Devastation throws so many things at you. They've got these competitive bosses that one player controls and a team of other players go up against. They've got these special arenas to change up the core rules. You can also do regular fights where one fighter is super boosted up and two or three other fighters go against them.

And then the biggest one that again kind of justifies this video is the solo and cooperative battle quest mode where one to four players, depending on the dungeon, goes through a series of levels trying to complete challenges, fighting a variety of different enemies, and eventually having a big boss fight.

And these are cool and exciting. It's great to have so many options. and Devastation of Indians gives you so much value and so many things to play with, but at the same time, it does feel like they just threw a lot of stuff at the game without fully developing it. As an example of that, the play in the solo co-op mode is great, but they only gave you standies for four zombies, so you got to use proxies to represent the other enemies you might encounter.

And you can also buy these items and things to boost your characters, but you have to keep track of it by writing on paper or using proxies. So, it's obvious that these modes are not the main event, the main focus of the game, but it's still pretty nice to have them. My number four point is the anti- system, and this is a full pro for me.

How this works is at the end of every round, players will get at least one force from this pool. And before the core combat of each round, they get to take turns going back and forth anting by spending this force to give themselves bonuses to speed or power or defense or even using other tokens that are unique to their character.

And you make all these decisions after you've picked your attacks and put them face down, but before you flip them over and see what the opponent is doing. So, there's a lot of tension and bluffing and tit fortat strategy here. Like, if my opponent speeds up, maybe I should pay to speed up, too. if they raise their power, maybe I should raise my defense.

So, it's a cool resource management system that gives the players a lot of tactics and choices in the game. Next, my number three point is the perfect info in the game. And for my taste, this is a mix. So, unlike Exceed, which came after BattleCon and partially uses the same systems in BattleCon, you know exactly what bases are available to each player.

You know exactly what styles they can use. There is no luck or randomness of card draw here. So, you can theoretically crunch the numbers and figure out, ooh, what are they going to do? What combo is going to be best for them? but then they're doing the same thing and they're like, "Ooh, maybe if they know I'm going to do this, they're going to do that and then I can do this in response." So, on the positive side, it leads to more controllable, more clever strategy for players who want to invest the time thinking about it.

But on the negative side, it can feel really intimidating, especially as a beginner player, just to kind of figure out what even you should do with your combos, let alone what the other player might be doing. Though, to be fair, you can ignore all of that and just play the game fast and loose. That's what I usually do with my son, and just pick something that seems like a cool attack at the time, and not worry about whether it's a perfect counter to whatever your opponent's about to do.

Now, related to all that is my number two, another full-on pro, and those are the card combos. Because as complex as these combos can be, it is so much fun to just put together your own attacks because you have a ton of these styles, which are unique to each character. And you have these base strikes that are the same for pretty much everybody.

But figuring out which one to use when, which style best combines with which base to achieve what you want, and all the cool abilities and movement and bonuses makes this very exciting as a combat system, especially when you factor in movement and range, and when you're trying to get to the ideal position to hit them with your stuff, and then be out of range of their attack, close when they want to be far, be far when they want to be close.

It's an intense, visceral, yet cerebral combat system, and I just love it. But my number one point, easily, my favorite thing about the game is the huge fighter variety. And I've kind of already mentioned it, but every fighter has their own unique ability, their own unique mechanics, unique tokens they use, their own super attack, tons of different styles with different abilities and different stats that even when they're using the regular basis still make them feel very unique and different.

And if you buy the Devastation of Indian set, yeah, you get a few characters. You get a few. But even if you want a cheaper buyin and you go for the wanderers or trials set, which have only 10 characters and not all those extra modes I talked about, those 10 characters are going to be drastically different in their powers, in their complexity levels, in the strategies you use with them.

So I think even one of those small sets will give you tons of competitive play for years if you want to dig in. So overall, if you like 1v one fighting games, I think BattleCon is one of the best out there. Again, I slightly prefer Exceed, but it's kind of doing a different thing, so I'm happy to own both.

If you want awesome fighter variety and tons of modes to play out, Devastation is probably the way to go. But if you want a cheaper buy and you can find uh Trials or Wanderers are the two other sets that have 10 fighters each. But on the other hand, if you want a really quick, simple fighting game, I'm not sure this is the one to dive into.

And also, if you're buying this game primarily for solo co-op play, I think that's a bit of a questionable decision. I have an unofficial solo bot that works pretty well, but I don't think it's as good as my Xed bot. And like I said, the dungeon mode is cool, but feels a bit underdeveloped. And if you want to see the game in action, I did a playthrough with the dungeon mode recently.

And then I have an older play with my solo mode you can see. Thanks for watching everybody.