Currently my favorite game to be playing when I went to brainrot. Mecha Bellum takes many cues from traditional RTS and evolves the auto-battler genre. It does remove some aspects of the RTS genre but in it's place is a solid army battler that allows unit composition and placement to be at the forefront of the gameplay loop.

TLDR: Starcraft 2 played at 0 APM.

As the match starts, 2-4 players are given their deployment zone and a choice among 4 commanders with specialties to choose from. In order to win a match your army must survive and it's cost to recruit will be used to inflict damage on the enemy commander. Matches typically last anywhere from 6 rounds up to 11 rounds on a standard amount of HP which should last between 10 - 25 minutes.

A commander can have passives such as "Fortified: Units have +17% HP", "Start with 100 extra supply, able to recruit rank 2 units", "Start with a Rank 3 Marksman" and so forth along with a set of free units for you to place. Place your units, make your purchases, upgrades, click go and the battle begins until the enemy army is wiped out or the round time ends. Between rounds there are free reinforcements that you can pick up and more passives to unlock. You also can purchase battlefield powers between rounds such as shield bubbles, missle defences, nukes or unit summons.

The amount of RNG built into its mechanics is miniscule, since you and your opponent have the same between round upgrades to choose from.

In place of a large map to navigate, you and your opponent are each given a grid of space to work with where units are placed before they start their march of death towards the enemy army and their two structures. There's also a bit of space set on the sides of the enemy deployment zone reserved for units that you wish to see make flanking maneuvers. I found this setup to be quite innovative since the deployment zone is still large enough to fit huge armies that can form battle lines or pockets of special role units. This map layout surprisingly offers a lot of different strategies that can take place despite it's simplicity. In one match, I wanted to have 2 lines of units with a third acting as reserves. In another match, I put my long range artillery at the front in order to snipe their backline units and structures. This kind of map layout separates itself from Lane-Auto battlers and Teamfight Tactics style auto battlers which both do not offer the kind of freedom that Mecha Bellum offers.

Mecha Bellum is quite simple in its mechanics (High APM is not needed here!) yet offers a wide variety of strategies and tactics that can be used. Every unit is viable depending on the kind of strategy that you want to pull off.

The presentation is also swell with its varying sizes of mechs and it's japanese anime inspired designs. Only 3 map backdrops so far but each one is done pretty well to convey the lore of the Mecha Bellum universe.

This early access game has a solid foundation in being able to focus on unit composition and formations but gives you a good meaty bite of exciting RTS style battles and big brain plays. For an auto battler, it also takes from the best but adds in its own design choices which forms to make a pretty solid experience.

So far the only con I can find with the game in its current form is that I wish there were more units to have or more customization of abilities for the mechs but in its current form, there is plenty to work with and I'm just wishing for even more units to play with. More maps too. Maybe even more choices to work with. I just want more, more and more with this game.

This is the RTS game for players who don't really care for massive base building or resource collection or having your units locked behind time and just want to get right to the battles itself.

5/5 ★★★★★ and looking forward to the full release of this title.