Into the Breach

Into The Breach is a good rogue game. Short missions that get progressively harder with a load of unit teams to unlock. It's great honestly and if I were playing it on switch or mobile it would have gotten a higher score. After completing a few runs, I realize it's just not for me. The strategy feels just as well done as the art and the music easily blends into the background to keep from distracting. Great game to play when you're looking to kill time but not one I want to lose myself in.

There is much to praise about this little tactics title. The premise and gameplay is simple and intuitive, but the potential challenge and depth is immense. The amount of playable units, weapon and enemy options, difficulty settings, and environmental features provide much variety, allowing players of any skill level to find enjoyment. Rather than all gameplay being a version of 'kill the foes', the overall victory condition is to win the map; to prevent destruction; to secure objectives. This allows for increased strategic depth in the gameplay and unit composition. For example, one squadron may win by being uniquely immune to fire, and immolating the environment to burn foes, or another manipulating enemy position to prevent damage to the objective structures, or have foes damage one another. In other words, the player is presented challenges to overcome: is increasingly rewarded for strategic novelty and precision, and understanding unit strengths: each turn is like a little puzzle, and each map or run expects the player to plan ahead - consider which maps are best completed immediately, later, or not at all! A topic little discussed is the performance of games. It is not uncommon for users on lower end machines to notice the increased memory consumed by modern browsers or certain modern games which one would assume to be simple is higher than anticipated. Into the Breach runs buttery smooth. For comparison, watching a stream on a standard browser consumes more resources than this game. It also plays great with controller or mouse and keyboard, and has in-game achievements. My only real complaint, that holds no water, is in the music and writing. Not that anything is poor about it, conversely, it is very good. Only that this game can be a little addictive - so long or repeated play sessions can result in it becoming a little stale. But the game is not designed to be played this way, so I don't consider it valid. Overall, a great game recommended to all.

I'm normally a big fan of strategy and tactics games, and I know ITB is a critical darling, but this game just left me lukewarm. I can appreciate that the devs were aiming for simplistic yet addicting gameplay, but it ended up being a bit *too* simplistic for my tastes. The gameplay loop consists of playing through essentially the same maps over and over again; although the maps are procedurally generated, there just isn't enough variety in them to make up for the tedious feeling that you're going through the same motions on repeat. If you compare this to other tactics games like X-Com or Heroes of Might & Magic, there's enough variety in their maps that playing through them is always exciting and novel. But because Into the Breach is so short, you'll have figured the game out ~2 hours into it, and from then on, it's just a matter of executing the same basic strategy with only slight variations. Even though you gradually unlock new characters and mechs to play with, they never feel like they change up the gameplay all that much - you'll still be performing more or less the same actions. This is also exacerbated by the fact that much of the game's replayabilty relies on achievement-hunting, which is not something I am personally motivated by. At the same time that the gameplay is monotonous, the maps & enemies are also heavily reliant on RNG, which makes the game quite "swingy" in terms of its difficulty. Depending on what map configuration and enemy placements the RNG spits out, you can quickly find yourself swarmed, with your units out of position and having to skip their actions. That never feels good. All this being said, I could see ITB maybe being fun, if you played intermittently in small doses. But sadly, it's not the type of game I care to spend any meaningful amount of time on.

I thought it had more of a turn based dynamic vibe like xcom and the likes but only with pixel art and maybe smaller, but it's kind of a simple puzzle game where you have to calculate several moves and chain them, assuming with multiple repeats of the level to really achieve great results. not for me but i can see the appeal.

The star ratings for this game are irrelevant. Into the Breach is such a weird animal, that you can barely rate it as a video game. It is more akin to a solo board game. I call it that because you can easily finish it in one sitting (1-2 hours), depending on the difficulty level, as well as on how many islands you decide to liberate before launching your final assault upon the enemy. If you're looking for a story, or a long winded-campaign, then try somewhere else. Into the Breach will only appeal to you if you enjoy pure experimentation, or if you are a sucker for high scores and rare challenges. You could also easily play it to pass the time. In fact the puzzly goodness of every combat scenario surpasses any Sokoban, 2048, or Sudoku experience. Another reason to avoid it is if you want to experience fierce mech-vs-kaiju combat. The game is actually packed with that, but only if you imagine it. The graphics feel nice and warm, and the Vek monsters as well as our mechs look like cute plush models, However, units move like pieces on a board and animations are limited to idle wiggling and impacts of various kinds (also very cute). My personal appreciation for this game comes from the immense variability that comes with unlocking mechs and pilots. It allows me create custom challenges, or just enjoy a random selection of metal warriors. It's not addictive, but it can become a favourite past time if you have ever enjoyed physical games like Vlaada Chvátil's Mage Knight, or any cooperative tabletop title that you can play solo. It's REALLY GOOD!