Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 Review – Bigger is not always better

Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 tries to be incredibly straightforward with its marketing, being a game that features nothing more than simulated battles on an epic scale. Throwing armies of monumental sizes at each other is the name of the game, with your average battle easily featuring thousands of on-screen warriors at once and with some players reporting simulations in the millions. While impressive, the game is not without its flaws, which in my opinion unfortunately keeps the Ultimate out of this Epic Battle Simulator.

UEBS2 is a sequel to the original Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator, which functionally was the same game and concept as the sequel. In both titles, you create battles with thousands of individual warriors who fight as a singular unit. The game makes use of statistics such as health, attack speed, attack damage, and block chance to then simulate these large-scale battles before your very eyes.

The biggest standout of UEBS2 is the inclusion of campaigns, of which at the moment there are about two. New units have also been added to UEBS2, expanding your simulated roster. However, besides these two big updates, UEBS2 doesn’t really add anything new and is even missing a few features from the first title – such as the ability to speed up time, which was present in the first. Hopefully, future updates expand the scope of new content in UEBS2, making it stand out a bit more from the first game.

One thing that is very different, and is definitely the most impressive change from UEBS to UEBS2 is the simulation power. UEBS2 can simulate one hundred times more units on screen at once than its predecessor, which may even be a conservative estimate. This new technology also keeps the game running far smoother, drastically reducing hardware load and loading times for players who want to see what happens when 500 normal-sized ducks fight one t-rex-sized duck.

The impressiveness of the scale of UEBS2’s battles cannot be understated. In fact, it is what the game wants you to focus on the most. Gigantic battles are absolutely the selling point of the title, but in the strive for bigger, the developers have not necessarily achieved better.

The biggest drawbacks to the simulated battles of UEBS2 are the lack of strategic depth and player engagement. While the scale and sometimes silliness of UEBS2 will excite you, there is only so much the promise of thousands of gun-toting muppets can do to keep you engaged and wanting to boot the game back up again.

The first point, the lack of strategic depth, is perhaps the biggest drawback to UEBS2 and may also be the hardest to fix. In the preparations for a given simulation, you can order groups of units to either charge the enemy, hold their ground, or guard. In my experience with the game, the last two orders are fundamentally the same. When the simulation begins, the soldiers will do these things, and not really anything else.

The so-called “RTS Mode” allows you to issue specific orders to selected units during a battle, allowing you to change up their attack plan and add a small bit of depth to the combat. These orders are basically hold your ground, attack, move to an area and attack, and retreat. These are small complexities in simulated combat that otherwise amounts to figurines running up and hitting each other to death.

Despite what the terrain on some of the maps may lead you to think, there is no taking cover or using choke points or buildings in UEBS2 beyond how you positioned the units at the start of a battle. There are no squad formations, archers will not attempt to stay away from approaching melee units to any significant degree, and simulated units will not wait for backup to arrive before funneling into a crowd of enemies.

The lack of strategic depth makes these battles feel really samey and predictable, and there’s only so many times you can watch the same thing happen before you get bored. It may be hard to program strategic thinking into simulated soldiers in the hundreds of thousands, but doing so is what would make these battles feel like actual battles and add some replayability to the game.

Player engagement is an area that the game does better but still needs some work. Players can customize their own units, changing stats and effects like melee or ranged attacks to create unique armies of their own. A handful of god-powers, the ability to take over a unit and the RTS mode give you a little bit to do during a simulation, though your involvement will inevitably tip the balance of power to one side.

At the end of the day, you’re still just watching a simulated battle, which would be more fun if the simulation was more complex. Giving players the ability to interact with the terrain and troop placement, say by letting them add in obstacles or resources to a map would greatly enhance player interaction and would make each simulated battle feel more unique. Allowing players to go deeper into troop placement, like positioning them in walls or towers, would also add to the strategic depth that the game is sorely lacking.

The coolest feature of UEBS2 is the easy inclusion of mods, which adds a lot of variety to the game. Many of these mods add in units from franchises like Star Wars or Warhammer, allowing you to create epic battles you might never see on the movie screen. While this helps inflate the game’s replayability a bit, these modded units will inevitably fall into the same problems the base game has and leave you wanting for more.

Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator 2 is available on Steam.