Into the Breach

Into the Breach was so fun to play. Really cute visuals, solid mechanics, and just about perfect board size for the missions. It plays like small puzzles you need to solve for each mission to get a perfect score and it can be played as a leisure game with the morning coffee or the evening wine. Great soundtrack, loved the art, good design for the achievements and an addictive "unlock" system to keep you hooked for a while. The game is perfect for me but, if pressed, I'd say that I would like to see some additional material about the characters stories, in-game or in a pdf companion booklet. And I hope it gets an additional content patch too in the future, like FTL did with the "FTL Advanced" update.

It's a really fun game with lots of unlockable variability you may miss in the beginning when you're still bad at it. Be patient, learn the ropes, and it's basically an endless puzzle game of good quality. When things go well, you feel competent and like you've earned the right to feel that. When things go badly, it's the most infuriating thing you can imagine, because it's largely your own fault for positioning yourself without thinking about the next round. I really don't like the fact that you use achievements for unlocking new mech squads, and if you don't want to unlock them blind (you do get to know their name which clues in on their speciality but that doesn't explain much) and potentially lock yourself out of a mech squad you would've enjoyed a whole lot more until you manage to get new achievements, you have to look at the squads online. A weird design choice in an otherwise excellent game.

This game is different from the previous theme of elimination, but focuses on the protection of facilities and people. This has also made subtle changes in strategy, and the excellent game UI at a glance makes the game experience a higher level. The achievement points obtained can also be used to unlock new armor Each time you restart the map, it will be slightly different and add a bit of replay and randomness, but I'm not a big fan of it myself (although it's fun). If the game was a "linear flow" and every map was a "good puzzle", then I would be cheering.

Very solid strategy game. Despite being the same devs, this feels nothing like FTL, but not at all in a bad way. Where FTL had crazy RNG that left you sometimes shit up a creek with no hope because a bad roll of the dice, Into the Breach feels very carefully crafted and designed so that when you lose, you know it's your fault. Every time I lost or died, I felt like I could see the moves I should have made and that my loss was because I had approached the level wrong, not because the game screwed me over. This has the effect of making it feel a little more puzzle and less straight up strategy, because RNG doesn't really fuck you over, but also doesn't help you either. No random Mantis joining your crew, no unexpected event that gives you a big pay-off. Just your wits and brains vs. the carefully crafted challenging levels and AI. If you like hard strategy/puzzle games, highly recommend. Honestly, these guys made FTL--one of the best indi-titles ever--give it a go even if you aren't sure, you probably won't be disappointed. They are damn good developers.

This game is a puzzle, one solved with big mechs punching kaijus a la Pacific Rim. I've bought the game less than a week and have poured 30 hours into it. Let me tell you why this is so. 1. The atmosphere. What an intro. In a few pixellated, hand crafted seconds, I have come to realize that the Earth is wrecked, and we are time travelers forsaking everything, for a second chance. We are in a time loop, given chances to try over and over again, like the Edge of Tomorrow. The background music is also fantastic, drawing me further into the game. 2. The gameplay. The design here is just genius. Every encounter is a puzzle waiting to be solved. There's RNG, yes, but after scrutiny, many games, and other people's playthroughs, I've come to realize that the game deliberately limits scenarios to what can (mostly) be solved with your mechs. But you can't have it all. Sometimes, you must sacrifice one thing for another, and that's what makes it fun -- making hard decisions, never knowing for certain what will come next. 3. The progression. As you do awesome things in the game and unlock achievements, you earn coins spendable for more mech types. It's a great pacing system -- the more / better you play, the more options you have. Plus, you can always choose one surviving pilot to go back in time, keeping their experiences (provided you have someone who has survived). Honestly, I can go on and on, but there is so much meat and fun from this mastercrafted game. You really need to experience it for yourself. Way more fun than AAA shooters.