YMMV / Wargroove

• Awesome Music: It's too easy to just say "everyone's themes", but all of the Commanders have quite epic themes that are fun to listen to.
  • Mercia's has a very "hopeful" and "victorious" vibe to it, which helps by one of her Groove lines, "None shall fall while I still stand!"
  • Emeric's is what you'd expect for a wise mentor. It's also quite badass as well.
  • Sigrid's theme is quite mysterious sounding. It also happens to be the very first playable Commander theme you listen to. People have even compared it to Castlevania's music as well.
  • Elodie's theme is quite foreboding, considering that in the campaign, it's one of the very few songs that overrides the other commander themes.
  • Dark Mercia's theme is a Dark Reprise of Mercia's theme, and it sounds quite epic for True Final Boss.
  • "Cheeky Ruckus", which plays for Commander-less armies (such as the Outlaws in Ceasar's side-missions), is a surprisingly great track in its own right.
• Breather Level:
  • Act 4 Mission 3, Prince of the Empire, comes after three particularly difficult missions (the first an Escort Mission against endlessly spawning foes, the others grueling attrition battles based around managing chokepoints) and finally allows the player to utilize Giants in a fairly straightforward battle, even handing the player two Giants for free.
  • Act 6 Mission 1, We Must Stop Meeting Like This, comes after a difficult siege with a considerable lack of resources. This mission, on the other hand, is an introduction to naval warfare, and is reasonably balanced, albeit a bit unpredictable. There's also a neutral Tower just waiting to be captured, allowing for an even faster victory.
  • Act 7 Mission 1, The Reckoning, can come off as an Anti-Climax Boss depending on how the map is handled. If you exploit Artificial Stupidity and make Sigrid and her forces focus on the middle front, you can sneak a couple of Dragons and whatnot on the lower end and lay waste to her stronghold before she can even do anything to counter back.
  • The second Cherrystone mission in the expansion campaign (especially if you've played the other ones beforehand) can qualify as this, especially compared to the first one. Your only initial worry on the first part of the map is defending yourself from air forces because computer-controlled players have absolutely no idea how to use a balloon to bring in ground forces to your base, meaning your main focus is just building in effective anti-air units (and you can easily save money by just spamming Pikemen). Emeric's base is full of Alchemists and they hold forth to the defense crystals, but they'll sneak out from them once you start bringing in some air units of your own. After pressing a lever to lower a bridge down to Emeric's base, you can just use a lot of cheaper units you spammed plus occasional cavalry (you should already have enough money by then) to quickly raze the base, with your only worry being the Golems. Mercia and Ceasar bring in reinforcements at the end, but even they aren't a serious obstacle, as they come too close to when you're close to the gold to be that big of a concern.
  • The second Heavensong mission in the same campaign. The mission involves Wulfar distracting Tenri's forces while the twins make their way to the treasure. The only obstacles in the twins' path are puzzles, while Wulfar has plenty of nearby properties to build up his income. The map can be completed easily by using a first attempt to solve the puzzles, memorising their solutions (they're the same every time), then restarting with that knowledge.
  • The second Felheim mission from Double Trouble is a navel and air-based "escape" map where you need to escort Wulfar and the Twins to the bottom island. You start with a very strong force, already own a Tower and have a Port in easy capture distance, but what makes this map especially easy is how expendable all your units are. As long as a couple of Barges or Balloons with the Commanders get to the lower island, you can feel free to sacrifice all your other units, and the AI won't do much to stop your transports. As you reach the lower island reinforcements appear at the start of the map... who will focus on destroying your now-useless properties instead of trying to chase your forces.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • As mentioned in the Breather Level entry above, Act 6 Mission 1 has a tower where you can capture. This is the only tower in the mission and it allows you to deploy air units to make victory even faster. This is after dealing with the enemies in earlier campaign missions having access to more powerful units before you did - while in this case, you can basically pound Ragna with the flying units she seemingly had exclusive access to far before you did.
  • Playing Easy Mode in the Arcade counts as this, as you can build far more powerful units faster than the enemy due to how their resources are limited.
• Character Tiers: The game's meta is still developing, but general consensus seems to be that Nuru and Tenri are the most powerful characters (see Game-Breaker for Nuru), followed by Caesar. Mercia, Emeric, Zawan, Valder, Ragna, Sigrid and Elodie and Dark Mercia fight on roughly equal footing (though Valder's utility drops rapidly in big maps), while Sedge, Ryota and Koji are underpowered (Sedge's Groove is the definition of Difficult, but Awesome if you can spread damage just right but worthless if you can't, Ryota's depends too much on positioning and leaves him exposed, and Koji's Groove does too little damage in too limited an area). Mercival is a Joke Character as his Groove does nothing, but can still fight as a Commander.
  • However, as of the Double Trouble update, Ryota (while difficult to use, one can pull an awesome combo such as this, and the opponent has to constantly pay attention to unit positioning so as not to make such an opening), Koji (his Sparrow Bombs are a bit more resistant to anti-air attacks), Ceasar (never underestimate an Extra Turn power), and Ragna (her Groove can zone out enemies) are usually in competitive ban lists, with the first on perma-ban.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Unless the map has been intentionally designed with lots of rough terrain, expect multiplayer matches to devolve into nothing but Spearmen and Trebuchets (with the occasional Witch or Ballista). Both units work very well together in concert and have practically no cost-effective counters. Similarly, outside of competitive multiplayer it's rare to see players not using Nuru, Tenri or Caesar, who are considered the best Commanders for this kind of strategy (all three are banned in competitive mode for this reason). It's not surprising that Spearmen and Trebuchets went up in price after the "Double Trouble" update.
• Demonic Spiders: Turtles and Amphibians can become this very easily if they are not dealt with quickly enough. Turtles might only be able to attack sea units and that's it, but they have an advantage on every unit except for Harpoon ships - which have rather poor movement range and usually can't instantly kill turtles with retaliation. They can't counter right away and enough turtles can lay waste to one or at least cripple it from attacking back effectively. They also have an extremely high movement range - they could potentially reach your Warship and sink it very quickly. As for Amphibians, as long as they're in the sea, they can cause some serious damage to structures, capture them, and cripple units rather easily too. Both are very inexpensive to make, making them highly spammable. One of their few weaknesses is that they're susceptible to Turtles themselves, as they can dent even each other, and as long as Harpoon Ships or Sky Riders aren't around, they have no protection from air units.
• Difficulty Spike: Act 3 Side 1 is perhaps one of the first few levels (thankfully optional) that stops holding your hand and expects you to beat a potentially overwhelming Hold the Line mission.
• Friendly Fandoms: The Advance Wars fandom, considering that this is the game that inspired Wargroove. There have also been a YouTube series that compares the two game mechanics and even a recreated campaign of the second game.
• Game-Breaker: Nuru's Groove, Teleport Beam, was this at launch. It allows her to instantly purchase and place any type of unit adjacent to herself, which can then immediately act (unlike regular recruitment, which forces the unit to remain idle until your next turn). This means Nuru is able to run to just the right spot, spawn a Trebuchet, and have it easily snipe a vital target, as seen here. She can also summon flying units to block herself off from ground units, or if there's as much as a single ocean tile nearby she can put a battleship there. It was quickly fixed in the game's first patch by making any units summoned cost twice as much as regular units, and even then Nuru is considered above-average thanks to incredible flexibility.
  • To put it in perspective, Valder's Groove is identical to Nuru's except it can only summon soldiers, the weakest and cheapest land unit in the game. While Valder’s Groove is the fastest-charging one in the game, and Nuru can only summon advanced units that she has a recruitment building for (she can always summon soldiers, spearmen and war dogs), the vast majority of the time her Groove is just an objectively better version of Valder's.
• Ho Yay:
  • Sedge identifying Ryota as the "pretty soldier boy" might elicit this reaction.
    • Even more in Wargroove 2, where Sedge's Conquest Mode run portrays him and Ryota as friends (at least in the context of a Lotus-Eater Machine where everyone is happy together) — Sedge drops the "pretty soldier boy" line in the ending, and Ryota exhibits the Crush Blush normally reserved for Mercia, complementing the floran for his "way with words".
  • Some see Mercia and Nuru as having chemistry, leading to Ship-to-Ship Combat with supporters of Mercia-x-Ryota.
  • Interactions between Emeric and Mercival are somewhat heavy with this, with Emeric clearly stricken as badly as Mercia with the late king's assassination. It's perhaps telling that Mercival gives his Dead Person Conversation to Emeric, rather than his own daughter. Meanwhile in Arcade Mode, Emeric's ending sees him perform a Heroic Sacrifice and end up Together in Death with Mercival.
    • The Lore Codex of the second game states that a young Mercival actually insisted that Emeric move into the palace so they wouldn't be separated. An exchange between them in a wartime flashback, were Emeric is gearing up for what they both fear will be a sacrificial last stand, almost sounds like Mercival is stumbling over an Aborted Declaration of Love.
  • Lytra's loyalty to Madam Pistil, for being one of the few people to treat her nicely, has shades of a Subordinate Excuse with how she gushes about the scientist — at least, until Pistil's self-absorbed narcissism causes Lytra to finally snap out of it and ditch her.
• Low-Tier Letdown: With the exception of Mercival who is a Joke Character, there's a few commanders who qualify on the low-tier end.
  • Dark Mercia has a slow-charging groove that doesn't really do a lot of damage to foes. It heals herself, but compared to Mercia, who also heals all units around her in a 3-3 radius, it's not really saying anything.
  • Sigrid due to being really risky to use with no real benefit. Her Groove allows her to kill any enemy unit, but that can possibly leave her open to enemy fire. The same applies to Elodie, who mind controls instead of kills. And the latter was for some reason further nerfed in the second game, where she needs to reach Level 2 to pull off what she could back then since her Level 1 now only asserts temporary control.
• That One Level:
  • 3-Side 1, "Puppy in the Middle", is thankfully optional, but is at a point where the game stops holding your hand. You're playing as Caesar, and you have to defend your post against a bunch of Outlaws. But these Outlaws have forces coming at you from all directions, and they have access to Harpies and Giants while you don't even have access to those two at that point in the campaign. Want to defend your post from Harpies with some Ballistae and Alchemists? They'll try to counter them with Archers and Cavalry. Want to position some Trebuchets to lay waste on the assaulting forces? The Harpies mentioned are immune to them, and unless if you're with some well-needed anti-air support, they'll be demolished very quickly. Also in the recent patch, they (and Pikemen) now cost more, meaning if you're a latecomer to the game or if you're redoing this mission for more stars, you're gonna have more of a problem building them. Also, unlike most Hold the Line missions, this one doesn't end after a set number of turns: you have to wipe out the enemy to win. So you'll need to conserve enough troops to go on the offensive after you ride out the initial waves.
  • 3-3, "High Vampire of the West", is the first mission that is likely to give players significant trouble. You're in control of both Mercia and Nuru, and the objective is to escort Mercia across the map to a spot on the east side. The problem is, Sigrid has endlessly spawning waves of enemies coming after you. It doesn't start off so bad, but she starts spawning in trebuchets, endless amounts of vampires to harass Mercia with, and even Fellbats (the equivalent of Bombers) once you've let the battle go on long enough. All this is topped off by a bunch of units attacking Nuru's forces - and if Mercia or Nuru go down, you lose. Thankfully, you get Sky Riders for the mission, which can make quick work of Sigrid's swarms of air units, but she spawns in her own Sky Riders every now and then, which can be significantly difficult to take down if you don't have a ballista at the ready - and she has her own ballistae to shoot them down with. The enemies also love to surround Mercia or block her progress, making you waste time on them and potentially making it easier for Sigrid herself to catch up to you when she joins the fray.
  • 5-1, "Here Be Monsters" can be difficult, despite being the introduction of Dragons. Your goal is to get Emeric to the dragons and recruit them, then send them to help Koji defeat Sedge. The problem is Sedge spawns a HUGE army and you have a very small income to hold them off with, so by the time the Dragons arrive Sedge can easily wall himself off with bodies, and he spawns a Sky Rider to counter them. This is another mission that was made slightly harder by the price increase to Pikemen and Trebuchets in the update, as both units are excellent for this kind of map.
  • 7-2, “An Ancient Adversary”, is quite the roadblock. Unlike the rest of the game, you don’t have any other units besides the Commanders, who are up against a massive army complete with Trebuchets and Giants. If any one of the Commanders go down, you fail the level, and the AI loves to focus on the Commander with the lowest health. Not only that, once every few turns, one of your own Commanders gets controlled by the enemy and can instantly use their Groove, forcing you to either box them in (and getting one of your Commanders smacked in the process), or send them away and risk having them use their new Groove for the enemy. And just as the cherry on top, once you approach the enemy Commander, the mind control gimmick ends. Sounds great, but you don’t get any warning until you step into their range (thankfully any unit can trigger this, including Valder's skeletons, Nuru's units or Koji's Sparrow Bombs). Hope you didn’t just dive one of your own Commanders into the enemy’s midst banking on the mind control to keep them safe...To make matters worse, when Elodie mind controls a Commander, that Commander is given their groove. Whether or not they use their groove by the end of the turn they're controlled, they return to normal when you are given control of them back. Except for one little wrinkle; the game counts Commanders under control using or even not using their groove as you using up a groove when control returns to you. This means that if Koji was nearing the point where he could use his sparrow bombs and then gets controlled, the counter is reset back to zero. This also means you have to play aggressively, because if you try to take your time to build up groove and regain health, you'll be smacked by your allies and your groove won't get anywhere. Thankfully, two small mercies are that Mercia herself will never be controlled, so you can always rely on Healing Aura, and the order your allies are controlled in is static- it will always start with Koji and end with Emeric.
  • Though to be expected from a final level, 7-3 is no walk in the park either. It's essentially a Genre Shift from Advance Wars to Fire Emblem, requiring you to invade a castle and kill the boss with a limited number of troops against several waves of foes that hold defensive ground and significantly outnumber you (and unlike in Fire Emblem you're not given Hero Units to do so, just regular mooks). Given the level is designed to last well over 30 turns, that is a lot of turns for something to go wrong or a minor slip-up to cost you one of your irreplaceable units, making the level a prime example of Unstable Equilibrium. Like with the last one, you are also going to need to fight aggressively here, as well, because while you gain 50 gold a kill (and you have alchemists to heal you), the enemy AI here is much smarter than in any previous map; they will form defensive walls, and Dark Mercia's forces have 10,000 gold to spend on heals and alchemists that are more than happy to use them. Most of the early half of the map will just be you using Mercia and the one golem you get to hopefully clean house fast enough to where your other units can pitch in a few finishing blows, and if the enemy takes out your golem early, you may as well reset.
  • It's rather easy to screw up in the first Cherrystone mission in the expansion campaign. Wulfar's forces manage a pretty small base, while the twins Errol and Olra focus on sneaking in a compound freeing outlaws that were previously imprisoned. Firstly, Wulfar and the twins can easily be killed at any point in the game, because the opponents prioritize with Cavalry rushes against Wulfar and there's a lot of micro-managing needed for the twins for their forces to survive (one small screw-up could easily cost the entire mission). Secondly, they have access to air units where your only reliable (and possibly affordable) counter is the Alchemist, who can easily take out Harpies, but can't instantly take out Dragons unless if they're at a defense tile. And your opponent? Ceasar, who can and will use his groove to make adjacent units attack again. Good luck if one of those adjacent units was a Dragon. There's also Trebuchets guarding specific chokepoints, with one of the Trebuchets being paired with a Pikeman, meaning rushing in with a Cavalry won't be the smartest idea.
  • The Sunder Sea in Hard Arcade. This map has both sides begin with a large income, start far apart, and with two Ports with two more in easy capture distance. It's balanced on Normal, but with the AI's doubled income on Hard they will very quickly flood the ocean with Turtles and Harpoon Ships before you've built up enough of a force to fight back, forcing you to whittle them down slowly with Merfolk spam and Turtles of your own, and even then it only takes a small mistake for the AI's sheer numbers to become too much to stop. Oh, and maps are random in Arcade, so you never know when this will show up. General consensus is that while this map is beatable on Hard, it takes so long that you'd save more time by giving up and starting a new Arcade run, hoping you don't have it show up next time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Of all of the characters, Valder is the only one who doesn't have any playable appearance^Spoilers with the exception of 7-2 against Elodie in the campaign - and unlike Sigrid, Ragna and Sedge, he doesn't have a playable Villain Episode mission like them. Additionally, he's not really explored throughout the story whatsoever, with only lore really explaining his true detail. Greenfinger Zawan and Tenri are similar that they aren't really explored after their arcs are finished - while only making minimal appearances afterwards (the latter is the only commander besides Mercia who isn't fought at all in the campaign). They do make more appearances in the expansion campaign, where everyone that isn't the Outlaws have slightly more-or-less similar screen time, with all of the alive ones participating in the final battle against Vesper. At least in the sequel, Valder's backstory is explored some more.