Before the confusion begins: Warhounds is a turn-based tactics game based on building your own PMC from a battleship. Wardogs is the first-person shooter multiplayer game based on being a member of a PMC on a battlefield. Right, with that cleared up, I’m offending far less people when I call Warhounds mid. It’s a shame that the gritty mood, boots-on-the-ground theming and real-world ballistics vibe didn’t translate into the gameplay, leaving Warhounds just another tactics game in XCOM’s long shadow.
I’ve gone on record on many occasions saying that “Originality isn’t everything” and I stand by that, originality is just one part of a wider whole. DOOM Eternal isn’t particularly original, but it’s a near-perfect example of a movement shooter and so is well worth a play. Meanwhile Effulgence_RPG is the most original game I’ve played this year and despite its gameplay quirks, I recommend it for that originality alone.
Looking at Warhounds, then, it unfortunately doesn’t grasp either straw. The abilities, weapons and level designs are the same you’ve seen in a dozen other tactical shooters, and none of it is executed in a particularly exciting way. It’s not just uninspired, it’s the bare-minimum needed to make the game playable. It is at least that: playable. I suppose in 2026 that is in itself a cause of celebration. But for this old gamer, that might not be enough anymore.
Warhounds gameplay is a rich tea with nothing to dunk
As you might expect from the genre, you’ll be juggling cover heights and lines of sight, managing consumables like grenades and equipping armour vests while investing in new upgrades on your mobile base. It’s all there, it all works, but that’s about all it does. Within the first few missions the settings are about all that stands out, with unique buildings and even a container ship at sea making up the tutorial levels. Once those are done, though, the pacing grinds to a halt and the settings devolve into cold, calculated combat boxes.
Combat encounters weren’t gripping or tense, levels weren’t interesting or varied (beyond the opening) and moving between groups of enemies is a lesson in tedium. The upgrades for the battleship expand your crew quarters, medical capabilities, armoury, and you can install a drone facility for Lily Shen to…wait, that’s XCOM 2, my mistake.
Even when I was playing the game I couldn’t help but use the XCOM terms for things. The sniper being able to target enemies his team can see? Oh, Squadsight from XCOM. The class that can carry an extra grenade? Oh, the Grenadier from XCOM. I wanted to give Warhounds the benefit of the doubt but time and again it refused to let me, and the only tangible difference I could find, the setting and lack of sci-fi, didn’t even get translated into the gameplay.
Core mechanics like cover height and the like I can overlook, but class abilities and archetypes being identical to the “inspiration” is just a little too on-the-nose for me.
A solid foundation with nothing built on it
A little flash in the pan is all Warhounds would need to start giving the game some traction. Personally I expected much more lethality, for one. This is very much a more “grounded” setting than something like XCOM, more akin to how I expect the upcoming Rainbow Six Tactics game to be, but weapon lethality is all over the place. Popping an enemy in one shot with a silenced rifle feels great, but having to use two bursts of assault rifle to get through their HP doesn’t lend itself to the “gritty” theming.
This is where some originality would have been nice, a system where bullets are truly lethal and it’s the hit chances you’re really playing with, or all soldiers having 1HP but then armour protecting a single shot (and various “injured” states that happen after the HP is lost). Now I’m no game designer, but having played tactics games going all the way back to Incubation (1997) I think that Warhounds needs something else going for it, even if my profession isn’t to design what that something is.
The turn-based tactics scene has plenty to offer before Warhounds is worth it
Warhounds is a perfectly serviceable and functional game in a genre that has showcased so much more than that. If you don’t mind a little generic theming and are a fan of the genre you’ll definitely feel at home here, but I can’t promise you’ll not just be left wanting to start another XCOM playthrough. Hell, even a Menace playthrough. As a less sci-fi tactics game all Warhounds really needs to do is tide you over until Rainbow Six Tactics, where we’ll hopefully see the potential of a truly lethal tactics game realised a little more fully.
Warhounds is available on PC via Steam
