Battle Bay Guide
In Battle Bay, players sail one of five ships into a series of multiplayer combat missions (each ship has a different specialty and four must be unlocked first). Players fight for up to five minutes, attempting to destroy the enemy to earn parts and pearls, which are used to upgrade ships by adding health, defensive abilities, speed, and firepower. Teams can also play a defensive strategy to capture the battle area. Upgrading your ship and your gadgets is needlessly complicated, most likely to encourage microtransactions. There are lots of items to buy to improve your chances in battle, and lots of currencies to buy the upgrades with. Sugar cubes are plentiful, but that's the least valuable resource. It's used to train your crew and upgrade cannons, among other things. In order to upgrade cannons you also need scrap that's divided into varies subgroups depending on rarity. You buy this with gold and you can also buy crates with random rewards by spending stars earned by completing challenges. Finally there are pearls, and these are used to speed up your progress.Plus, players can choose to either launch a guild with friends or the game will automatically match them with other players for drop-in play. The game does multiplayer right and keeps the focus on action rather than micromanaging your boats (though there's plenty of that for people who like it). The bite-sized combat also lets you get in and out without tiring of the game's concept quickly. And the impact of the ocean on battle, with waves rocking your ship and affecting your aim, is done very well.
Best of all, the rewards after a battle are substantial enough that in-app purchases don't feel like a requirement. The game, though, isn't as fast-paced as you would expect. Ships move slow and turn slower. While you can upgrade the speed of boats, most people will focus on weapons. It's not enough to spoil your enjoyment of the game, but it will dampen things a bit. While the game is set atop some pretty complex systems, Battle Bay lets new players in with a carefully paced tutorial. Rather than holding your hand too tightly, the tutorial guides you through your first batch of multiplayer matches, sucking you into the action straight away. Battle rewards are doled out in the form of sugar, pearls, and gold, which you can then use to train your ship captains and improve your weapons. Rather than earning experience from combat, you level up by training each of your captains. Each has a skill tree that improves different stats. With ten different captains at launch, this leaves a lot of room to build up the skills that suit your play style best. Weapons, too, can be upgraded, improving their stats. But the real joy is discovering new guns to add to your arsenal from Battle Bay's impressive collection.
Battle Bay is as fun as it is colourful. You team up with a crew of four other ships to take out your enemies in short multiplayer combat set amongst rolling waves and tropical locales. Sure, it's not exactly the next big idea in gaming, but it pretty much perfects the strategic multiplayer experience on mobile gadgets. You'll have a hard time putting this one down, folks. The core concept is pretty simple. You take your little battle boat, equipped with a gun or two, and set out to beat the other team before the five-minute timer is up. You can do this by destroying all of your opponents or capturing a base. More often than not, battles end when a team is eliminated - combat is so much fun you don't really want to do anything else. You steer by holding your thumb on the left side of the screen, and shoot with your right. Controls are pretty fluid for the most part, but independently moving the camera while your boat drifts through the water can be disorienting at times.
Each map is filled with floating obstacles that you can use strategically, but the gently rolling waves may just be game's coolest strategic element. Waves rock your boat with surprising realism. The ocean swells cause your boat to rise in fall, forcing you to time your shots carefully. The waves provide excellent cover, too, when you're stuck in open waters. It's a surprisingly important part of battle. You'll find new equipment in crates which you can either buy or win by completing quests. While Battle Bay employs a standard IAP system, I never felt that I was at a disadvantage if I chose not to spend money. Battle rewards are relatively generous, and the waiting time for hiring new captains will not set you back for impossible stretches of time.
Two teams of five players each are tasked with either taking out all of the enemy ships, or one team must assume control of a neutral area on the map. That's it. The controls are easy enough. You steer your boat with the virtual control stick, turn the camera by sliding your finger across the screen, and use your weaponry by pressing their respective icons.Most of the depth found here is tied to the type of boat and equipment you choose to take with you into battle. It's a slow process and has more to do with what you're comfortable playing and not strategic considerations. You don't know what crafts your enemies will take into battle, and you can't switch out your boat in the midst of battle as you're limited to one life per round. You're stuck with your choice.
The ships themselves are pretty difficult to control, and we found it hard to perform the clever manoeuvres needed to fool our enemies. Once we found ourselves winning a game simply by taking over the specified area when everyone else was busy blasting each other. It really feels like most battles play out similarily. After a dozen or so matches we started to wonder if there were some additional game modes we'd managed to miss in the main menu. We're still unsure how many maps the game features as they're very similar to one another. If you're unlucky and there aren't enough players, the rest of the spots are filled by bots, something that makes it all feel kind of meaningless. The visuals are also fairly anonymous, but we do like how water is portrayed in the game. It reminds us of what Nintendo did in The Wind Waker, but other than that it's difficult to pinpoint any sort of visual identity other than the fact that it's technically well crafted given the platform. Upgrading your ship and your gadgets is needlessly complicated, most likely to encourage microtransactions. There are lots of items to buy to improve your chances in battle, and lots of currencies to buy the upgrades with. Sugar cubes are plentiful, but that's the least valuable resource. It's used to train your crew and upgrade cannons, among other things. In order to upgrade cannons you also need scrap that's divided into varies subgroups depending on rarity. You buy this with gold and you can also buy crates with random rewards by spending stars earned by completing challenges. Finally there are pearls, and these are used to speed up your progress. Pearls can be bought with real money. We quickly grew tired of upgrading our ships and gear as there's so much of everything. Particularly given how mediocre the actual battles are. The whole point of spending time and resources on upgrading and maintaining your ships is pretty much lost as you feel that you've experienced everything the game has to offer after a dozen or so battles. There's simply not enough here to pull you in for a long-term addiction.
