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Starting with the single-player campaigns there’s no doubt a ton to play through. Much of the campaign ends up serving as a very slow-paced and layered tutorial, introducing new buildings and gameplay concepts every few levels and then having you follow up to try to meld all of this information together to defeat individual challenge stages. For the most part this is all about conquest, wiping your enemy off the map by taking over all of the buildings on the screen. Starting conditions and details may change over time but for the most part this is the bread and butter of the game. Start out with only a building or two, decide whether to branch out or expand, work to convert specialty buildings like the forge or tower in order to shore things up, and then grind it out against your opponent until only one of you is left standing. Multiplayer works in much the same way but introduces a number of races to the mix, each with its own flavors of specialization and provisions for alternative tactics. Typically the matches don’t take too long, which is a plus, but there’s also not usually much room for a back and forth, people will either try to shore up some numbers and defenses or just get right into throwing down. You may see the tide turn once, but the nature of the overall setup means that once someone gets some momentum it’s pretty well a done deal. If you find that you enjoy the challenge you’ll be happy to see support for leaderboards and ranked matches. The ability to team up, match up against more than one opponent, or get into a boss battle all help to keep things from getting too bland too quickly but at a core level the basic strategies generally remain the same and it all comes down to having a plan, executing it well, and being ready for surprises from your enemies. While the controls work sensibly and generally in an efficient manner it is a bit of a surprise that the game doesn’t support touchscreen controls since that style would have made perfect sense. There’s no doubt that strategy plays into things, and is a key to success, but to a degree it can all feel a bit spammy at times as well, with you frantically trying to move resources around to keep up with an ever-changing battlefront. This does afford you opportunities to exploit your enemy not minding buildings that aren’t well-fortified, but at a general level it’s all about using overwhelming force to overcome defenses. For its novelty alone on the RTS-starved Switch Mushroom Wars 2 has some merit to it, and will no doubt make strategy fans who’ve felt poorly represented a bit happier. That said, this feels more like a stripped-down strategy experience overall, making the origins of the series coming from the mobile space not a great surprise. As long as the online community gets rolling it should be a worthwhile investment, but the more you’re likely to find yourself playing it in single-player mode the more likely you are to get a bit bored with the repetition.
Justin Nation, Score:Good [7.0]