The Battle for Wesnoth is an open-source turn-based fantasy game that is open-source. It’s open-source.

Wesnoth is pointed at as the ultimate proof that open-source video games can be a thing. Except that, of the open-source video games, Wesnoth is just about the only good one and even then…good it is, but it’s not excellent. Rather, Wesnoth is proof that open-source can work but is dreadfully inefficient for a game.

That said…I like Wesnoth and I play it semi-frequently.

Wesnoth’s gameplay is actually pretty sweat. You can tell because in the years that it has existed, the gameplay has barely changed at all. The game is well-balanced until a single player picks Drakes at which point balance is thrown out the window.

The actual fun-factor of Wesnoth is questionable. This is because it can suffer from the Civ problem where a single tile can only hold one unit. So…at some point you just have too many units, or the enemy has too many units.

Though, outside of that, I don’t have much issue with the gameplay, it’s the story and lore that I take an issue with…and this only shows that collaborative writing projects à la Wesnoth just…no.

To put it bluntly: the lore is generic, shallow and disconnected. I know this because I read the in-game lore.
To elaborate for those who don’t know: Wesnoth has an in-game encyclopedia that explains gameplay mechanics and lore. If you right click on a unit, it can take you to its page, which includes a bit of lore.
It’s here that the issues with the lore become obvious, because the way that lore is written can vary wildly. Some have more, others have less. The actual writing style varies as well. The entries for the Woses are exemplary here. Most of the entries are pretty standard descriptions of their lore…the last one is just a story of a farmer and how, when he was an old man, he found an old tree that was in his backyard his whole life just disappeared.

To be clear, that’s a cool story…but it clashes with the way the rest of the lore is written.

Some lore entries are also exclusive to individual campaigns…though, if we got into the weird stuff that you get in campaigns…yeah.

I’m adding on as well that the art in the game is inconsistent. The sprites are clearly going for a JRPG look…which was reflected in the original artwork, which leaned on an anime look. But then they started transitioning over to a more realistic style…until we hit what I’d call ‘boring realism’, where the art just looks like generic ‘gritty’ medieval fantasy.
That said, the original artwork wasn’t that unique either, though they’re really proving that open-source can only produce uninteresting visuals.

• Official Website
• I did realize something I didn’t at first: the lore here actually probably could be described as Tolkienien. I usually prefer to avoid that term because I think it’s inaccurate (with Fantasy mostly taking cues from D&D/Warhammer), but here it might actually be applicable.