Into the Breach

The premise is interesting, but the potential is completely wasted. You lose all the progress you make after each 'timeline', including the pilot XP or the gear/upgrades you purchase, so you gain nothing, you always start from scratch. And with extremely repeatable battles, there's really no point in playing it more than 2-3 hours. Buy it only if you find it in the up to 5$ bargain bin.

Completely incomparable with FTL... maybe except for the graphics which I actually like, but if you are not investing the time to make high end graphics, then at least game play should be well designed... I love FTL, it is about making best of a bad situation, but Into the breach is different. It is clear that you can actually max it out on every map and I love maxing out the results, planning 2 turns ahead and completing all the side objectives. When I started playing I fell in love with the game. The thing is, if you allow player to max it out, then why do you allow RNG to deny it? I came across multiple situation, when right after appearing, monster got into position where I was unable to do anything against him. Covered by building and hills or blocked by the map design. Your run is screwed and you just wasted an hour... Example: Objective is to save the train. In the last turn, the train is supposed to go between two hills. Then the monster appears and jumps in front of the train, to the location that he cannot be moved from, and cannot be killed. I was thinking about any possible solution, but there is none. This is destroying the whole pleasure of building your crew as your whole rune is screwed. Annoying as hell, and this is just one of multiple examples I could describe after playing for only 10 hours.

I personally was hoping for more of a rogue-like, especially with the high difficulty of the game. I don't find it fun to play for an hour only to be fully reset with no progress towards upgrades or anything. Especially when everything is fairly easy until you get to the last level then die.

"Unto the breach" from Henry the V is a rallying cry for his troops to attack a weak point in the line or wall. "Into the Breach" from Subset has next to nothing in common with that famous line. In tabletop gaming, there is a concept called "initiative". A tactical edge where your opponent moves or declares actions before you do so you can better position or respond to those actions. Many reviewers have interpreted ItB as a game which gives players the foresight to the enemy actions, or allows the players to be a turn ahead, these notions are wrong. Into the breach is a turn based game, except instead of structured to be one team moves and fires, and then the other (x-com), or one team moves, then the other, then the first team/unit shoots, then the other, it is instead styled in the fashion that the Enemy Team Moves & Declares Attacks, then the Player Moves & Attacks, and then Enemy Declare Attacks execute. The game happens in one turn, it is just broken up in a way that people do not seem to understand. So the player obviously has the advantage right? Because they can do both move & attack at the same time, whereas the enemy has to wait for their attacks to execute. No. Because the player team is not three mechs, the player team is three mechs plus six or more buildings and all of those buildings lose initiative every turn. So in reality, ItB is not a game where your team has the advantage of foresight all the time, it is instead a game where 2/3rds of your team always loses initiative to the enemy team and the other 1/3rd of your team (the mechs) try to keep the rest of the team alive. It is a game not about attacking a weak point like the name implies, but about being on the defensive 100% of the time. Even in the final mission, the big attack, they deploy buildings to defend! A turn-based strategy game where you only ever defend is very one dimensional and ultimately that one-dimension gets quickly tiresome.

I suggest reading more on the game before it's purchased. At a glance, it appears to be a tactics styled game. Something along the lines of a simpler XCOM or Final Fantasy Tactics. This very much isn't that. This is much closer to a puzzle game. One in which the primary path to progression is player death. I've never understood the appeal of this sort of gameplay mechanic. It just feels tedious to me and a cheap and easy way to extend the length of a game. It's simple pixel art style is pleasant to look at and well done, but gets old very quickly given the frequency in which the player will see the same thing over and over again. The music is nice as well, but suffers from the same issue.