Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution tosses mechs into the French Revolution, but doesn't toss out the history

GamesStrategyBonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution tosses mechs into the French Revolution, but doesn’t toss out the historyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Studio Imugi)

Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution screenshot

‘History but with mechs’ is hardly a new premise (seeIron Harvest, for example), and for upcoming tactics gameBonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution, it’s a pretty functional conceit: It lets the developers use big historical personalities as frontline warriors on a tactical grid without as much concern for their historical job, which was to stay a comfortable distance from flying bullets. The mechs are stand-ins for your hero characters, done and dusted.

Getting that out of the way is great for the overall gameplay because it lets Bonaparte focus on the big interesting personalities at work in the (alternate, yet very familiar) history here—and have their principled high-melodrama conversations about The Nature and Rights of Man or The Future of the French State on the battlefield from giant robots, rather than in dimly-lit conference rooms like in real life. (Presumably this is why Ridley Scott’s Napoleon movie didn’t do so well.) It also helps that your Bonaparte—Céline or César—is a blank slate you can characterize that only shares the loosest association with their historical counterpart.

(Image credit: Studio Imugi)

Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution screenshot

After trying out a demo of the game (which isavailable on Steam), I can say that Bonaparte’s tactics are pretty straightforward stuff for fans of the genre: Simpler than something like XCOM or Fire Emblem, for example. Your units can move and attack each turn, or forgo that attack for a second move or use some special ability—like a cavalry charge or rallying when at low morale. The only real complication is that each unit has facing based on its last move or attack, either toward the left or right of the screen, and can’t automatically fight back if attacked from the other direction (“flanked”).

To win battles, then, you want to attack from their flanks as much as possible while preserving your own. So you’ll sometimes get neat Napoleonic-looking battle lines of troops, but eventually battles will collapse into chaotic positioning-based melees as you outfox the enemy. The complication there is your individual units' morale, which can make them take more or less damage depending on how high or low it is.

From there you have Skirmishers, whose rifles give them a 2-3 space range to harass Line Infantry without being fired back on. There are also Hussars, cavalry whose long movement and straight-line charge range let them get behind the enemy and deal devastating flanking attacks. And finally cannons, fragile, long ranged and very effective at devastating enemy morale—or taking down their mechs.

(Image credit: Studio Imugi)

Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution screenshot

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Battles show up because you’ve sent armies around France to capture territory, fight enemy factions, or undertake missions. I got a glimpse of this strategic layer and what I found was pretty interesting. Your Bonaparte can side with the radical Jacobin, moderate, and royalist factions of the revolution—promising three very different campaign stories of the proper revolution, a constitutional monarchy compromise, or a full-on siding with Louis XVI’s “L’État, c’est moi” attitude.

(Image credit: Studio Imugi)

Bonaparte: A Mechanized Revolution screenshot

The Leaders themselves are recruited from your territories using an Influence resource, and include historical characters like Napoleon’s best bro Joachim Murat. Having those characters, each with their own statistics and loyalties to your cause or its allied philosophies, makes Bonaparte very interesting indeed. I think a lot of people would be really interested in the politics of playing factions against each other—Girondins, Montagnards, Bonapartists, and the like—in order to build their very own revolution-winning coalition. We’ll see if that promise delivers in 2025.

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