Earlier on this year I was privileged to take part in a preview of Rogue Conflict with the developer Frans Wikman. Now as we approach release date, I’ve spent more time with the game and here’s the full Gamer Social Club review of this new tactical turn-based strategy game with a rogue-like twist.
Kick off every campaign with a transmission from high command that lays out your mission goals. First up, it’s the deployment phase, so you’ll want to place your troops just right to cover the battlefield effectively. Come up with an attack plan to sneak into enemy territory. Use recon units to peek at enemy positions and see where they’re hiding out.
Battles need some serious coordination since morale and experience levels really affect how things play out. As units level up, they’ll get new traits and become even stronger. With your 35 turns, you’ve got to make smart moves to capture objectives and keep morale up to avoid losing units.
Strategic Thinking
The game’s core revolves around tactical combat on procedurally generated maps. These dynamic terrains require players to stay on their toes as each battle scenario is different from the last. You can choose from 15 diverse factions, each boasting unique units like infantry, artillery, and air support. The strategic depth is enriched with a comprehensive upgrade system where you can enhance your units or gain vital intel using Requisition Points (RP) accumulated during your missions.
At the beginning of the game you start with three factions unlocked. There’s the “Pride of the Kingdom” which is a balanced team with recon vehicles, infantry, tanks, anti-air, artillery, and even a fighter jet. Then there’s the “First Tank Armada” with infantry, tanks, self-propelled anti-air and artillery. If you’re into a bit of shock and awe, the “Royal Artillery Army” is faction is probably for you with a lot of infantry and heavy artillery. Obviously you’ll need to play around a bit to see what playstyle suits you best – for me, I stuck to the “Pride of the Kingdom” for most of my playtime but YMMV. Experiment and learn is a good mantra here.
Each unit type also has different attack values. Your regular infantry unit is considered ‘soft’ which means it’s better at taking on other soft units than armoured ones. Light tanks are great because they do well against both soft and armoured enemies. Main battle tanks? They’re armoured beasts that hit hard against everything. Aircraft can only be hit by units with the air capability – makes sense – so you are going to want to have a few anti-air guns as you go through the campaign.
All normal stats and skills for a war themed tactics game so far, but where Rogue Conflict changes things up (and makes itself far more difficult and strategic in my mind) is the Morale mechanic. I mentioned this in the preview, but the short run through I had for that did not fully prepare me for how key Morale was to missions.
Keep Your Chin Up
Every unit has a purple morale bar – think of them like a kind of emotional health, separate from their physical health. When things get intense, like being under heavy fire and out in the open, their morale can take a hit. If their morale drops too low, your soldiers might just freeze in place – they can’t move or fight. It’s like when you’re too stressed to deal with anything, and that’s what happens here, only with more explosions. The could also completely flee the battle so you really need to keep an eye on it.
To restore morale you need to let your units rest, importantly away from danger. When attacked units lose morale; which means lower damage, lower defences and as above the chance of not attacking at all. But it’s not just when attacked, units lose morale in the thick of battle too – so don’t expect your Aircraft to be able to attack every single turn. Keep an eye on that purple bar and deploy attacks when you need to keep the pressure on.
Artillery units do a special type of damage called Shock damage, which specifically targets enemy morale. We’re keeping our morale up and crushing the enemy morale to ensure victory here – so try and keep artillery within range of your front line attackers so they can soften up enemies for a quick take down. The system, in theory, is incredibly simple but it’s easy to overlook – especially if you’re used to other war games when you are just guaranteed an attack every turn. It make for a very high difficultly curve, but it very rewarding when you get the hang of it.
Reinforcements!
As you advance through the missions, and also during missions when you capture enemy villages etc you’ll game RP or Requisition Points. These are used for upgrading your units at the end of battle, buying new units to customise your team or you can also use them during combat to heal up your troops. Again it’s a fine balance, do you risk going for a village to get more RP that you then might need to spend to heal up? You don’t want to use all your RP during the mission and have less to upgrade your units afterwards.
Speaking of upgrades, each unit also gains exp during the mission, and when they level up you can give them a choice of three perks. Some may not seem useful in the mission you’re on but will come in handy later – like being able to swim across rivers – and others are universally helpful like increased damage against tanks or increased movement. It’s a lot to consider, but if you’re a tactics fan you’ll find a lot of familiarity here in looking after your troops and honing their skills.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes I think I may be a little to dumb for some games, and Rogue Conflict definitely had me thinking that during the first couple of hours. I’ve played games for nearly 30 years now and even though one of my first titles was Command & Conquer strategic thinking and more importantly – patience has never really been my forte. But after my first few hours of bad decision making and rushing in, I started to slow down and really pay attention to all of the moving pieces on the board.
That’s when Rogue Conflict clicked for me, and when it clicks it really clicks. I won’t say it’s not still incredibly difficult – it is – and it certainly won’t click for everyone. But when you take the time to examine all of the interplay of the systems and make them work for you rather than against you, you’ll be in for a great time.
Rogue Conflict releases on Steam on the 6th of March 2025. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the developer for the code.
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