Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Being a huge fan od tactical RPGs, I am pretty disappointed with this one. First, this game is like two game sessions long if you push it. Event then, its artificially prolonged with sneak system and furiously slow movement speed of your characters. Second, you have no choices in this game whatsoever. You're gonna visit all locations, get all upgrades, buy all the stuff you want, get all the skills and hear all the dialogues. Character build and progression is very shallow and almost all the (scarce) skills are not unique to one character. Story is linear and not very captivating. And enemies are recycled almost all the time. On the other hand, the world is built very well and is an eye candy. Voiceacting is very good. Animations are good. Theme is well done. Story elements are well presented from the technical standpoint. Combat system is alright: good and functional, though really nothing to write home about. Overall, it's definitely not worth the full price, so buy it only when highly discounted. I am rating it 7/10, and it's like on the cusp of being good. Just not quite there.

*Heavy on tactics, light on role-play. *Fans of X-Com and Fallout Tactics might enjoy this. +Very Tactical +Stealth, Scouting, and Planning. +Neat setting +Nice music that adapts seamlessly to the action - Linear, short, with low replay value. - Clearly a game made for console first, and PC second. - Occasional crashes and a few other bugs - Thin story and only minimal RPG-elements The setting is post-apocalyptic 80's retro-futurism. It might remind you of Fallout, but the original source material actually predates the first Fallout game by 13 years or so. Tactics is where the game shines. Stealth and planning is mandatory. Very low RNG-factor means you can predict the outcome of you moves. You have the ability to scout each area to spot the enemies, kill off stragglers, analyze your chance of success, and pick the best way to approach the larger groups. This scouting and planning element is excellent, and is better than most other tactical games. The areas and enemy levels are static, there are no random encounters or re-spawning. This enhances the tactical elements, but it also pretty much kills the replay value. Technically free explore any area, and you can sometimes even sneak off with some nice loot behind the back of an overpowered enemy. But in practice, you have little real choice to follow the linear path set by the game. The characters are fairly balanced, and have some overlap. All characters level up together, so all remain viable until the end. You can choose based on personality, or abilities, as you prefer. The voice acting is mostly good, especially from the main characters. But a few combat taunts get repeated way to often. The story and writing is decent, but shallow. The game crashes occasionally. There are other more minor bugs, mostly involving ladders and exploding terrain. Frequent manual saving is advised. Those who know Swedish will get a few chuckles from the signs and other background details, but nothing important is hidden.

After reading the reviews I feel like I'm playing a different game. This game even on normal is massively unbalanced against you. The enemy get stronger while you stay the pretty much the same whatever your level. Most of the perks are useless with the exception of hog rush. Mind control perk never works and the head shots maybe do one more point damage. Your weapons never really improve from the originals with the upgrades giving you a couple of more points of damage at most. Final straw was fighting the robots at the end. They one shot kill you while you take about 10 turns to take out one of them. Further is the weakness and lack of any real story...

Mutant Year Zero is a game done well, with few flaws and many postive aspects. Having purchased it on sale two years after release, many of its major bugs no longer plague me, even if some annoying ones remain. This game is challenging, requiring thinking and taking your time over brute force. I have had to save and reload often, which I find enjoyable. Particularly enjoyable for me is the focus on tactical combat without the need for constant attention to base-building, as in the X-COM series to which this is frequently compared. There is hardly a strategic layer besides basic squad management. This is mostly related to managing perks (mutations) and gear (which, sadly, is fairly limited) using two types of currency. This aspect of the game could certainly use improvement, as could the interface and and the treatment of a few remaining bugs. Hardly improvable, because simply excellent, is the general atmosphere - very well done! As if Tarkovsky's art-noire film "Stalker", to which the game sometimes seems to reference, were made into a dark hack-n-slash (Andrei Tarskovsky would probably be rolling in his grave, but who cares). Love the Swedish post-apocalypse setting! Despite its flaws certainly worth playing on sale. Terribly puzzling is the fact that its publisher, Funcom, does not seem to give feces towards its product. Its forums are ghostlands, abandoned soon after release. What's worse, the developers, a small Swedish team, have shown absolutely no interest in fostering a community, and nothing seems to be done with the game since 2019. Why?

When I first started playing this game, it was so frustrating I was going to get rid of it as it seemed impossible to progress far and was only a 2 star game. Then, I turned the game down to its lowest difficulty ("Normal") and discovered a game with great story, good turn-based tactics and RPG elements. Highly recommended.