BattleGroupVR2 Impressions: An Expansive Engrossing RTS Sequel

BattleGroupVR2 in Early Access is already an enticing tactical simulation in space that improves on its predecessor on nearly every level.

Strategy games are almost perfect for VR – positioning a player like a gamemaster above the board, from which you can make your moves and witness the action all around you in the most immersive way possible. In the case of BattleGroupVR2, a space-faring strategy game sequel now available in Early Access, this takes the form of assuming your role as the captain on the bridge of a spaceship, controlling both your own ship and a fleet of allies in dogfights and traversal through deep space.

With the vastness of space at your fingertips and deep tactical gameplay, it’s a tantalizing proposition, one which propelled the original title into becoming a VR success story. There’s nothing quite like dictating the action of intergalactic warfare like pieces on a chessboard, only to see the action take place on a grand scale around you in real time. Even in the first game, the execution on this idea was already great. The promise of this sequel is to build upon the foundations of that game, not to necessarily transform them. Which feels accurate based on first impressions of my first few hours with the game in Early Access, though there are a few notable changes alongside a host of familiar ideas given a dose of polish between the first and second games.

For one, BattleGroupVR2 has received a rather spiffing visual overhaul. Jumping into the game’s tutorial, the vastness of the adventure ahead of you feels immediately apparent. A hologram of your ship sits in front of you as you look on at both the crew of your space vessel and the deep space beyond. Using a mix of the grips on the controller as well as the analog sticks to rotate and zoom both your ship and the miniaturized representation of the solar system you exist within, this serves as a virtual approximation of your surroundings from which you can point to a location in 3D space to command your ship in that direction.

A lot of time will be spent merely traversing through this vast expanse, which makes it helpful that the game can be sped up 5x or even 10x during long downtimes of moving through asteroid fields. Things get more interesting when you enter combat. Not only do you have full control over your own ship and the others in your fleet, you can influence battles by tactically moving ships behind debris for cover, choosing where to aim your assault, or strategically shifting power between a ship’s weapons, shields and engines in order to prioritize their offensive or defensive capabilities. All to most effectively counter and defend against enemy assault.

There’s a granular control to each area of your ship and skirmish that provides the depth of gameplay hardcore fans of the genre will desire, all while introducing these ideas in a way that won’t overwhelm newcomers. It helps that more attuned players can simply increase map size or difficulty to cater to their abilities and playstyle. It avoids situations where the difficulty curve can feel too steep for a game to reach mainstream appeal, with my only issues being that I occasionally found the controls in more congested moments featuring more enemies and allies clunky to navigate as pointers would snag against incorrect allies or enemies.

It’s effective overall, feeling dynamic yet also catered to your approach to each scenario, making any narrative journey through space or idle battle thrilling as you become attuned to implementing complex strategies and ideas on the fly amidst the game’s real-time combat.

BattleGroupVR2 is also a visual upgrade over the first game, yet there’s certainly an overwhelming sense of familiarity with the package being offered here. The narrative Open World mode is very similar in concept to the first game’s campaign, though this game at least does a strong job of attuning an educational journey through the game’s mechanics to an ever-growing sci-fi story.

You start off your adventure looking for allies in the galaxy, a quest that sends you warping between familiar and unfamiliar areas collecting supplies and defeating scavengers to eventually build a fleet that can assert themselves in a fight for dominance. While the separate tutorial is a necessary on-ramp even for veterans, this is a great way to fully come to terms with everything this game has to offer, wrapped in something more purposeful from a story perspective as it wraps lessons on supply management within the context of a universe.

For those who prefer to focus on the dogfight action, skirmish mode focused solely on these conflict moments is an option, though also feels remarkably similar to the original game’s skirmish mode in its current form. Gauntlet mode is new, but feels more like a variation on this tried-and-tested skirmish as opposed to something unique. Multiplayer is available for those who wish to duke it out with friends or opponents, and an endless mode is neat in the sense it allows for competitive leadership building and encourages a focus on ship parts and builds to survive the longest.

Yet it’s Conquest mode that will likely be the most tantalizing feature the more that the community builds around BattleGroupVR2, and already shows early signs of exciting emergent gameplay in this current form. This is a shared online galaxy where players can find allies and factions while contesting for control in a shared universe where everyone competes for dominance. It’s the sort of end goal of tactics gaming where everyone intimately familiar with these ideas is forced to face each other, and is already intriguing even in this early state. As with any long-running persistent strategy match, the true test of the game will take months to reveal itself as rivalries and alliances entrenched over months begin to assert themselves.

It’s the closest to truly being a commander of a space army when you can build long-term plans, including betraying your friends, for the goal of ultimate control, if it all plays out long-term, but it’s interesting even in this current state.

Letting the game down is the voice acting. At this stage, all voices for all characters were created using AI speech synthesis with a grating-sounding output. It should be noted the team plans to replace these with human actors by the time the game is ready to leave Early Access, but their inclusion here is a major detriment to the audio experience of the game. Everything important appears in textboxes that can also be read by the player, meaning it would have been just as effective if not more so to simply leave out voices altogether rather than having grating-sounding AI.

It’s a downer on what is otherwise an engrossing sequel and a great example of why these sorts of games feel so at home on the platform. Being able to pick a ship in 3D space and command it like a commander at the battlefield, watching it fly by or witnessing the results of my attacks, or making a decision to go to warp speed and physically taking that journey, is wonderful to experience and truly unique in a way no other platform can replicate even if it feels like a polished version of the familiar.