Can I tell you a secret? I'm terrible at Battle Brothers. I'm still terrible at Battle Brothers, even after playing it on and off for a few years. It's a bit like Blood Bowl, oddly, in that it's all about mitigating risks. And like Blood Bowl, despite having a decent head for tactics and planning on the fly, I am hopeless at sticking to them when I see a new idea, thus: terrible. At it.
But since an update last March looks likely to be its last big one, it's about time to get over myself and gave it a proper look as a complete package. It's long overdue, in fact. Although I still struggle to fully enjoy it, Battle Brothers is an unusually good tactical game, and the one to beat for the burgeoning subgenre of mercenary management sims. That's partly because it sticks so resolutely to its guns. Where Bannerlord faltered by throwing extraneous stuff unrelated to the core combat that should have defined it, and other open world games typically take a varied but shallow "do and be everything" approach, Battle Brothers resists dilution of that core concept.