A series of Viking boats travels across a sea. Farm animals ruminate about their impending doom with pained wails and sounds. This is the opening to Battle Ranch, which struggles to run in anything but a window. The menu has an enormous amount of options, but they're mostly disabled to begin with.
I click Battle, with no idea of what to expect. My ranch, I quickly learn, is under attack, and I'm met with a tutorial. I plant some seeds, water them, wait a little, and they grow. This looks like plants vs zombies, but different. You plant seeds, you water them, they turn in murderous creatures that attack the invading hordes of ... viking boars?
That opening cinematic doesn't make any more sense now than what it did before. But at least, there's a gameplay loop established. This looks to be a pretty simple tower defence game, where you are playing the flora, and it is finally time to exact vengeance on those frolicking and entitled bits of fauna that see you as nothing but a tasty treat.
The only problem: it isn't as intuitive as one might hope - some farming implements are automatically selected, while others you have to click, then drag. This two speed sense of gameplay doesn't add anything and becomes frustrating only three missions in.
More than enough time, I'd think; that a play tester would have complained about this to the developers. It leads me to only one conclusion - perhaps I am the play tester for this title, and this review is beginning to become unfavourable for these plants indeed.
It feels like a mobile game. What is it doing in my Steam library? That, I do not have an answer too.
A cinematic advises me that the fight is about to become more ferocious. Perhaps it may; but it'll be a fight the plants have to make without me, as I won't be continuing to invest my time in their plight.
This game only gets a single number. That's two. Two out of ten. Thoroughly awful.