[This review is based on a single playthrough of the game on an Asus Zen Book.]
As you might expect, Ironclad Tactics is a tactics game with ironclads in it. Now, what are ironclads? Well, technically they're ships but in this scenario they're heavily-armoured, bipedal war machines; you could say they're solid, metal and full of gears, even.
It's a tactical card game with deck building and growingly complex mechanics that call for adjustments and studied preparation. The deck size sits at a low twenty with no more than four of the same card but you draw from the deck infinitely and the number of cards you put in your deck simply serves as the likelihood of the card being drawn - I've had instances where I had six of the same unit on the field and another two in-hand. You start off with a hand of three and can hold up to five cards; you don't have a choice in what card is discarded should you be drawing a sixth, it will always be the leftmost card. Each card has an AP (Action Points) cost, a resource that accumulates with each passing turn: one AP per turn as standard with some modifiers in later scenarios bringing it up as high as 4AP/turn.
This is where the game shines its brightest - the turns themselves. Each turn is timed and you have to make your decisions in real time, the game simply will not wait for you to make your mind up. Thanks to this high pace, every match is tense and exciting, often having you right on the edge of your General's seat. The complexity of the game is tailored to pair well with this pace and it is hard for me to say whether the complexity was toned down to accommodate the pace or whether the pace was racked up to make up for the lack of complexity. Do not get the wrong idea though, the game is far from simple or mindless; it's just not as insanely complex and difficult as, say, the older XCOM games or even Myth.
The game is very well balanced and every card has its uses, letting you adopt a playstyle. Some scenarios are more rigid in ways they allow you to win but for the most part any of three or four different approaches can gain you victory. Variety is the spice of play and you can build four decks for quick access and later adjust them at will. Each deck gets given a random name which you can change but the developers' names are quite appropriate and aid immersion.
The art direction cannot be overlooked. The animations may be simple but the art is great, best represented in the comic strip cut scenes between levels. The disproportionate features and bright colour scheme capture that middle-point between serious realism and stark caricature perfectly, adding light-heartedness and beauty but not taking away from the seriousness of the story.
The story itself is adequate, it doesn't do anything amazing but it manages to not get in the way with plotholes and annoying characters. It's set in an alternate American Civil War setting, to which time period it owes much of its aesthetic and maybe even some tropes. Female characters (a grand total of two) get the usual treatment of sassy older lady and flustered younger lady, the males are about just as varied. It is entirely inoffensive, which I suppose is all it needs to be.
The game has buckets of content, not particularly large buckets but buckets nonetheless. Each stage has extra conditions that unlock new cards, some have entire alternate scenarios. Once you beat the final stage there is also New Game+ which ramps up the difficulty and adds yet new cards and nuances to the established mechanics. I found NG+ a little too tough and not engaging enough to keep me going but I can't say I was starved for interesting content.
The final stage of the first play through was perhaps the one that I found the most lacklustre. It does a fine job of presenting the player with a difficult challenge and subtly pointing out a way to overcome it but the random element of drawing cards screwed me over more than once. But ultimately, that random element is what truly made me feel like an army commander, adapting to a changing battlefield and using the recources I have at hand to the best of my ability.
Ironclad Tactics is definitely a game worth playing and I'd say it's also a game worth spectating. With its variety of approaches and random elements coupled with extensive amounts of content and challenges it's a game of skill and luck, a game of wits and determination and a game of love and war. Okay, maybe there's no love.
Ironclad Tactics is: having a fight by throwing dice at each other/10
