3.6 hours played
Written 1 year and 6 months ago
6/10 RPG/TBS that mixes Into the Breach, XCom, and Darkest Dungeon.
TLDR: An interesting TBS game which reminds Into the Breach with its battles, XCom with its world map and missions, and Darkest Dungeon with the level maps and base screen. Yet the UI and the controls are clunky, the first hour with the game is like stumbling in the darkness, and there are many bugs. The "permadeath/high difficulty" and "buggy/unclear" is a bad combo because you can't even re-load after you repeatedly make mistakes which aren't your fault or simply run into bugs which make you fail or waste resources. Check it out only if you're very patient.
Good:
- an interesting combat system. It has a geometry component to it. E.g. some enemies and some of your abilities attack only diagonally
- there are multiple effects that inter-play with each other. E.g. your or enemy attacks can set stuff on fire. But if you are on an ice tile, the fire is put out. You can push enemies, and they can bump into rocks or each other and take additional damage. You can push enemies into water to make them drown. The "physics" system is quite complex and open-ended here (with the unfortunate flip side that there are subtle bugs and inconsistencies once in a while)
- there are 48 abilities in total, of which you can only equip 4. Abilities are varied and interesting to try out
- music is pleasant, XCom-like
- the pixelated graphics are nice
So-so:
- fonts don't fit the pixelated graphics thematically. I guess instead of Arial the game should have used some pixelated font
- ability buttons need tooltips. Currently the game only shows info about the ability once you select it
- shaky English, needs proofreading by a native speaker
- all pistols seems to have the same attack range of 1, just like melee attacks
Bad:
- difficulty of levels increases gradually even if you just keep running the same 1st location. So at some point you just start failing every mission and there is no way forward anymore. You have to restart the whole game. Mobs start having crazily high HPs which none of your abilities can handle
- abbreviated stats in character sheet... DOD, ARM, ACC? <- took me a while to guess it's "dodge chance", "incoming damage reduction" and "base attack accuracy". Instead of abbreviations there could be just icons and a tooltip with a full name and maybe even a description of the stat when you mouse over it
- the game wasn't playtested. A lot of stuff is unclear. Just as an example: the "drone" item that costs $26: I was sure it would just show contents of neighbor rooms all the time. Yet it's a consumable! The description should mention it. My first 2 hours with the game were constant surprises, as many things don't work as I naturally expected
- UI looks unpleasant and is the weakest aspect of the game. 1) When you start a mission, you press Start and see a screen where you can purchase items for the mission. After you purchase, it's unclear where to to click. Apparently, you need to click "Start" again. There was some bug or whatever, and my first mission started without any purchased items! Money was just lost. I had to quit and start the mission again, and purchase new items, and I had less money now. 2) On the base screen, I walked to one of the characters and it opened a list of abilities. I clicked on those with "new". I was sure the character would just get more abilities in the panel, but apparently it's only 4 that can be used, and you have to pick them before a mission. So I was surprised to see the new abilities "equipped" for the next mission. There was no way to reload or restart the mission without losing the money.
- controls are wonky. You have to select "move" ability to move. Instead, move should have been the default action when you left click on a tile. Apparently the game was designed for controllers(?) since it's WASD-centered. Instead, mouse must be the primary control mode. When you mouse over an enemy, maybe the default attack ability (the one in the second slot) should be used. But if you first select another ability, the it should change the cursor and the action applied to the enemy. After that the selected ability should revert to "melee attack" when mouse over enemy or "move" when mouse over an empty tile. Healing and self-boosts shouldn't require targeting at all (currently you have to target yourself, and it's just a useless click). I've lost count of cases when I accidentally used an ability when I simply wanted to move
- the mission map is cryptic. It took me over 2 hours of playing to finally notice that you can click on the icons under region names, and this shows a different mission! So, I was just playing Europe exploration for 4-5 times thinking it's different missions. Weirdly enough, the names of regions get highlighted when you mouse over them but this has no meaning or effect
All of this game's flaws could easily be fixed if the dev would run playtests before release. Also the tutorial should have covered the controls on the base screen and the world map screen, walk you through starting a mission. My guess is that the dev was crushed by the complexity of his own game and at some point just released the game in hope that players will tell what's wrong with the game. Instead he should have got testers for his game. I dunno, get a friend play the game and sit next him. In 5 minutes he would see the obvious errors in the UI and the onboarding. Still, from the low number of reviews (just 6 in 2 years, and all positive) I see that the game failed not even because of the bugs, clunky controls or lackluster onboarding. It could simply be just the amateurish banner image. I doubt that the developer will ever fix this game. But I'll be happy to update the review if he does. For now, I'm just giving up on it. Too much pain dealing with bugs and the clunky controls.
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