Forged Battalion is a new and upcoming real-time strategy game about making a custom army and waging war. It’s still in early access, but it’s already a fully functional experience, with a couple of tracked-on campaign missions and an excuse plot. Anyone familiar with the Petroglyph game’s previous works should know that the project is well in hand and uses the true and tested Command and Conquer setup. 
Instead of clicking on a building, then queueing up units, I simply set a rallying point and interact with the menu at the bottom of the screen. This also holds true for buildings. Unfortunately Forged Battalion still relies on retarded workers that will gleefully drive through enemy camps and nimble around a single resource rock, despite more being free. This is the weakest part of the experience, money-making is just a lesson in futility and eventually, any map will run out. The AI is also very bad I dare say, it’s strategy includes sending a swarm of enemies in my face until empty, then it will keep sending smaller groups.
Once I have whittled the enemy down to the size I have to eliminate every building, while the AI gleefully builds new buildings in my face. Basically, I have to swarm their base until all structures are gone. At least destroying the power-plant shifts shuts down turrets and unit production by half. 
Only when I win or lose do I get research points to unlock new weapons and abilities. I started with machine guns and built myself toward lasers and anti-material rifles. Which Forged Battalion fails to mention has a very long range. Regardless the tech tree allows me to build a cloaked army, a beefy army, and a couple more variations. Basically, all the buildings can have four different unit configurations, which I have to design myself from the tech tree. Such as wheels, belts, and mecha legs. That being said, the nuclear setup is the most power efficient, which means fewer buildings and more units. A thing that makes it very hard to lose in skirmish is the AI’s inability to end it when my army is no more.
The art direction is crisp and vibrant, with a simplistic shape language. With a ramshackle story of hammy characters tracked on and a set of almost impossible missions to complete. music is energetic and filled with energy. Nevertheless, it’s a fairly polished package for a low price, that runs like a charm despite being early access.
Njål Sand is a Norwegian Cosplayer with opinions on video games, and a passionate for creating content on YouTube about living in Norway, and gaming!