Grit and Valor – 1949

Genre: Real-Time Strategy / Roguelike

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!)

Grit and Valor, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch, is a Real-Time Strategy and Roguelike set in an alternate-universe version of World War II where both sides command mechs, and where the German-led Axis forces have the Allies on the back foot in Europe, leading to a desperate attempt to take out the Axis manufacturing facility and command center.

The presentation here is fairly good, with decent 3D vehicles and environments, voiced comm chatter, and a cinematic soundtrack. I don’t think anything here is truly standout, but I think it all looks and sounds pretty good.

When it comes to the gameplay, players progress from location to location in a standard Roguelike-style map tree, with each encounter presenting as a relatively small enclosed arena of sorts, where players must take out enemies air-dropped in multiple waves, possibly while also accomplishing objectives in that map such as staying in place at a command tower to capture it, or shooting down enemy missile silos in the area. Upon completion of an encounter, or pickup of supplies air-dropped in, players can expand the capabilities of their units to grow stronger as they progress and encounter more difficult opposition.

The actual moment-to-moment gameplay is roughly in line with a typical Real-Time Strategy game, albeit one in which you only command four units (three mechs plus a command vehicle that needs to be protected). You select your unit and tell it where to go, and it will automatically fire at targets when they come into range of its position. Firing from high ground or from behind cover confer advantages, every unit has a specific range, and everyone of the three attack types has a paper-rock-scissors-style strength and weakness to the other types.

This depth gives a lot of potential to the strategy that this game presents players with, but unfortunately all of that high-minded strategic depth falls by the wayside in the chaos of the actual gameplay, which often ends up being just pure chaos.

There are multiple culprits for this. Firstly, the gamepad controls are terrible, forcing you to shuffle through your units each time you want to make a command, and often not making it clear which unit you have highlighted. Multiple times, I ended up commanding the wrong unit to move because I tried to issue two successive commands and the game had changed the highlighted unit between the two and I didn’t notice that the projected pathing was through the unit I was trying to move, not from it.

The Nintendo Switch version of the game does theoretically have an advantage here in that you can use the touchscreen to select units and issue commands, but unfortunately the touchscreen controls seem to be very finicky here, and it was difficult for me to easily select the units I wanted, again resulting in numerous unintended commands.

Even if the controls weren’t so frustrating and poor, there are design choices here that will also mess you up. The game signals the general direction enemies will come from, but not exactly where they’ll land, meaning that if you have units in the area, they may well land on your units and force them out of the position you have them in. You could try to move them out before they arrive, but there’s too little time to do so after the game indicates the direction enemies will come from. In both situations, this can lead to your units being caught out of cover when you were trying your best to ensure they were in the most tactical position.

In the end, the control and design issues in Grit and Valor outweigh the creative concept and fun mix of game genres. I just can’t enjoy any sort of Strategy game where I feel like I don’t have good control over my units, even if said game has a cool alt-history plot with mechs and the Roguelike elements promise some potentially good variety. I give this game credit for doing something original, but unfortunately it doesn’t do that well.

tl;dr – Grit and Valor is a blend of Real-Time Strategy and Roguelike set in an alternate-history version of World War II with mechs. There are some creative ideas here, but faulty controls and at-times poor game design cause far too many problems for this to be enjoyable.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}