Developed and published by Foolish Mortals Games, Kaiju Wars is a new turn-based strategy game where you must defend your cities from invasions of giant monsters aka Kaiju. You must command your armies and defend military installations along with scientific labs and also try to save your citizens as giant Kaiju ravage and tear through towns. Being a turn-based title, this is certainly a unique take on the genre and after playing the title, I can easily say that it is one that has done justice to this game. This is our review of Kaiju Wars in which we repel some Kaiju and fail to defend our cities from their attacks.
Right after you jump into the game, you will notice that the game’s menu is quite a lively place and looks like a perfect control room to monitor all Kaiju activity. There are many icons here and there in the form of various objects that you can interact with for different functions such as starting your campaign, going into the map editor and options, etc. You can explore the menu by turning around left and right and this takes a little bit of time to get used to as well. There are many screens right in front of you where you can see clips from various original Kaiju films of the past playing and clicking them opens up a browser for you to view those films. Choosing any other option displays your selection on this screen as well.
The story of Kaiju Wars is pretty extensive with over 50 missions for you to play and this takes quite a lot of time to finish since each of the missions takes its sweet time to complete. Apart from the main missions that you have to complete in a mission, you also have secondary missions which are optional but aiming for them grants you an additional medal to add to your collection. Medals are used to unlock different bonus features in the game such as the bonus gallery level of the Godzilla 2 game featured in the main menu of Kaiju Wars. The story is presented in the form of a comic book where each picture is either a cutscene, a news broadcast, the main story mission, or an optional mission that you can complete in the game for bonus medals.
The overall presentation of Kaiju Wars is seriously impressive, and I love the visuals and retro presentation of the title. The screen is tiled and folded from the corners to give a VCR look to the game with added lines to further blur the image. The visuals are just too good, and they instantly strike out from the rest of the game. Before starting a mission, you can choose Normal or Hard difficulty along with checking how players from all over the world completed the mission. You can aim for a target turn and how many buildings you manage to save at the end of your defense from a Kaiju attack. While these are not really required, if you want to see your name at the top of these ranking boards, then you will need to work towards these.
Lucky for you, you can play each mission as many times as you want, and they will not affect your story progression thanks to an open story progression system. Your story only progresses if you want it to, otherwise, you can continue to play all of the unlocked missions as much as you like. After completing the initial tutorial missions, you are introduced to the labs where you must prepare the kaiju-repellant serums before the Kaiju can destroy all of the available labs on the map. Each map is unique and features a city. Kaiju are stupid and slow, and they move really slow but they can hit hard and one hit is enough to level a building in your city since your goal is to defend the city, you cannot allow this to happen.
However, destruction is natural in Kaiju Wars and you will witness tons of your buildings going down in rubble. Your defense comes in the form of your armed forces and using its units including ground units and air units and later in the story special mechs and bigger, upgraded combat units as well. Since this is a turn-based strategy game, you only get a small number of moves during each turn. For example, you can only build one unit or repair one unit at an installation. Built units cannot move in the same turn in which they are procured and each unit in the game has its own limited movement path during each turn. Once you have exhausted all of these turns, you must end your turn and watch the Kaiju make its turn during which the Kaiju will advance and destroy whatever comes within its reach. Certain units in the game like tanks can limit the Kaiju’s movements by slowing it down but you have to figure it out.
Apart from the raging Kaiju leveling your city, you also have a sinister organization helping out the Kaiju using their own ways which comes in the form of Operation. These Operations are used after the Kaiju’s attack, and they range from stealing your information to revealing your laboratory’s location to giving the Kaiju back its massive health. Technically, you cannot kill the Kaiju in the game so you just have to keep it busy until your doctor can whip up the repellant serum, upon which the Kaiju retreats instantly. This makes your laboratories very important and a prime target for the Kaiju. These Operations try to reveal your labs and once they are found, the Kaiju aims straight for it to destroy it and will continue doing so until the lab is finally destroyed.
When this happens, you can extract your doctor and lead them to a new lab in order to continue the process of Breakthrough. During a cycle of turns, the Economy turn is where you earn science points from your labs and tax from surviving buildings. You use this tax money to create new installations, new army units, and new fighters. This is your primary income in the game so the more structures the Kaiju destroy in the game, the less you earn during every turn. This makes it vital for you to keep the Kaiju busy and away from your local buildings. The Kaiju always attack what is nearest to them so you can use this trick to your benefit but in each scenario, you have to plan this out yourself.
As your team gains more information about the Kaiju, you can name them yourself as well to at least make sound less terrifying, but it does not change anything in their actual Behaviour. The gameplay is pretty intense and in some scenarios, the game really punishes you if you make a mistake, especially on the hard difficulty. One of my favorite aspects about Kaiju Wars is that the game while delivering solid turn-based gameplay, it also does not take itself seriously. The humor can be easily found all over the game with neighboring cities passing funny comments when a city is smashed to bits by a Kaiju and when you finally defend them from a Kaiju attack. It is just really good how this game combines humor and seriousness at the same time.
As you progress in the game, you will get the opportunity of creating your own deck of Operations or use pre-made decks during battles as well. These Operations are cards that you can use in each move to gain various benefits that can equal the odds against the secret organization using them to aid the Kaiju in the game. These cards range from allowing you to build free installations, building labs at discounted prices, getting free concept war machines, and even getting some urgent cash for your building needs. This works for Kaiju as well and the secret organization helping out the Kaiju play their annoying Doomsday Clock card at the end of their deck which restores a massive chunk of the Kaiju’s health. Imagine this when you are about to defeat the Kaiju.
Then comes the amazing art style and brilliant cutscenes that the game has. The presentation of Kaiju Wars is extremely stylish, and I am seriously in love with how the developers have presented the game in such a cool fashion. The visuals are retro with a focus on single colors in most areas and the special effects are just brilliant. Attack animations and how the Kaiju react and respond to the world around them looks too good as well. This is made even better with the brilliant sound design and the retro soundtrack with the bumps in the background. The whole theme of the game is just one great marvel to look at. Everything from the main menu, to cutscenes showing Kaiju emerging out of their burrows and more, everything feels completely in sync, and I love that even the smaller things in the game have great detail and thought put into them.
Kaiju Wars is perfect for people who want to invest a lot of hours into a game. It might look like the game might become repetitive after some time but actually, the rules change at every level, and sometimes you are stuck with some really tight rules, so it keeps you on your toes. If you need a breather, create your own battles or try one of the weekly challenges. Most of the time I felt like it was a losing battle, but a last-minute decision caused me to win the battle and sometimes I lost a winning battle. Battles are unpredictable in the game and one last-minute move can completely shift its dynamics. You just have to push yourself through the initial stages and then you get sucked into the world of Kaiju Wars automatically. For me, this is so far the best turn-based strategy game that I have played in 2022.
Final Verdict:
Being a huge Kaiju fan, I was looking forward to Kaiju Wars ever since it was announced and when I finally received the game, I was seriously happy to see that the game was exactly what I had hoped for. While it may look funky and retro, at its core Kaiju Wars is a solid and tense strategy game that will keep you on your toes throughout its pace. It offers tons of content right in the base game and with the custom map editor, this game basically has an endless life. The kaiju designs are brilliant, the fights are full of action and the music is just perfect for the theme of the game. You can certainly feel that the developers of this game were true Kaiju fans, and they poured their heart and soul into the game. With over 20 hours poured into the title, I am enjoying my time with the game, and I will recommend it to anyone who was looking forward to a great-looking turn-based strategy title. A must-play if you love Kaiju and huge monsters battling it out with mechs and tanks.
Final Score: 9.0/10
