Recent reviews by Raspberry

Wargroove came out back when Nintendo hadn't released a new game in its Famicom Wars / Advance Wars series for nearly a decade, and was a fairly interesting new take on those games. The overall gameplay is very similar to its inspiration, with some twists and streamlining made to the Wars series gameplay. For example, the equivalent to Famicom Wars' tanks are now cavalry units, and bombers are now dragons.

Each unit from the first Advance Wars game seems to have a direct counterpart in Wargroove, along with a few twists added (the anti-air equivalent is a mage that can also heal friendly units; the artillery equivalent is an archer that can move and shoot on the same turn, as well as counterattack from close range) and some extras thrown in (amphibious infantry and water properties!). There were also one or two brand new units added as DLC, though these don't seem to have too much impact on gameplay and aren't used in the main story campaign at all.

The biggest new changes Wargroove made from the Famicom Wars' series gameplay are:
- Each unit now has its own way of dealing critical hits in certain cases.
- Properties have HP like units that heals gradually over time, and they can be attacked by any offensive unit, They also counterattack the unit that attacked them if not fully neutralized.
- Healing units at properties must be done manually and siphons HP from the property. If the property has no HP left to give, you can't heal any more units there until it regains HP. (It still also costs money based on the amount of HP you heal.)
- COs are now commander units that are essentially walking medium-ish tanks. They have special "Grooves" (like CO Powers from the Wars games) that have various effects, and defeating a commander unit instantly defeats that army, just like capturing the army's HQ or routing the army would.

However, outside of the fairly solid core gameplay, Wargroove's campaign story seems ... forced, at best, and if you don't already have a basis for how the Famicom Wars series plays, you will likely struggle to get an understanding for how to play. A more detailed tutorial like Advance Wars' "Field Training" mode would have gone a long way towards helping players new to this style of game understand how things work without throwing them in the middle of a campaign and hoping they learn along the way.

Also, the Starbound cameos were cute, at least. Could we maybe get an improved version of that game someday?

Overall, it's worth trying if you have a need to scratch the Famicom Wars itch, but not really deep enough or different enough to surpass its inspiration.