Brave Order Review: Auto Chess Meets the Gacha RPG

Brave Order is a brand new gacha RPG that absorbs elements of strategy games and the hit Dota 2 mod Auto Chess to create something, well, not all that different to what we’ve seen before really. You’ll create your own …

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Brave Order is a brand new gacha RPG that absorbs elements of strategy games and the hit Dota 2 mod Auto Chess to create something, well, not all that different to what we’ve seen before really.

You’ll create your own army, made out of heroes and standard fantasy units. You’ll then head out on a wide variety of battles that play out pretty much the same every time.

Before the battle begins, you can place your various soldiers in strategic formations on a grid. Generally, this involves placing your warriors in front of your archers and mages – basically creating a frontline to protect your backline.

Then, you’ll initiate the battle and watch it play out. Both armies will charge at each other simultaneously, with each unit attacking the first one it comes into contact with. That’s pretty much the height of the strategy here.

There Really Isn’t Much Strategy to Brave Order’s Auto Chess Inspired Combat System

Hero units can use special skills, which recharge periodically throughout the battle. Depending on the type of hero, the skill will be different. Warriors might create a temporary shield, mages heal, and rangers unleash a powerful AoE attack.

There is some light strategy in deciding which skill to use and when to use it. Appropriate skill usage can turn the tide of the battles.

However, this is a free to play pay to win RPG, so the difficulty is all artificial. Initially, you’ll breeze through each battle with your overpowered army but pretty soon you’ll hit that paywall and will reach out for the credit card to give your army the edge.

Because it’s all a numbers game: the army with the heroes and units that have the bigger numbers in terms of statistics will absolutely demolish the opponent. How do you get your numbers up? Well, there are two primary methods.

Ultimately, This is Just a Numbers Game

You can grind it out for absolutely ages, replaying battles, sucking up the daily rewards, and obsessively checking your phone to see if your heroes have returned from a mission yet. This will trickle in resources necessary to collect new heroes, upgrade older ones, and improve statistics in a number of different ways.

Alternatively though, you could just whip out your card and give the game a little cash injection. That will allow you to just increase your power in a heartbeat, making the game a breeze again until you hit another paywall and the process resets.

If you’re the sort of person that is immune to pay to win and free to play nasties, then you might appreciate that Brave Order at least attempts to do something different – even if it is just by combining two popular genres to create something somewhat fresh.

The rest of us can easily write this one off though. It’s not really a game, but an exercise in spending ridiculous sums of money.

The good

  • Visuals are nice
  • Combination of gacha RPG and Auto Chess feels somewhat fresh

The bad

  • There's no real strategy besides spending (a lot of!) money or time
  • Nothing we haven't seen before
40 out of 100

Head of Editorial
Glen has over a decade's worth of experience in gaming journalism, writing for Pocket Gamer, Pocket Tactics, Nintendo Life, and Gfinity. When he's not badgering everyone about the dangers of passive text, you can probably find him playing Wild Rift.