Wish I could give the game a better score but despite finishing it, I never really found the gameplay that engaging. The deck-building restrictions I find are too limiting, with the player doled out only a few cards per mission and strict limits on how much variety you can field. There is an effort to vary up the missions and opponents, but ultimately most of them boil down to the same conclusion. I also couldn't find the story interesting. The comics look nice, but none of the characters grabbed me and I feel some of them, particularly the post office woman, have the same sort of expression almost throughout. I think the game could benefit much from more rewards and deck building options. But as it stands, the game expects you to replay mission to unlock additional cards in specific circumstances. Not something I'm interested in doing.
While the combat still isn't 100% satisfying, its a big improvement over the original and with a very memorable story to boot. Definitely recommended
Great metroidvania with a nerdy and humorous aesthetic. Has some clever twists, decent artwork and audio and a satisfying conclusion. That one boss is a real bugger though, you know the one.
As someone who wants to experience a game, finish it, and move on I really enjoyed Halfway. There are some design issues with the game, the weapons are at times poorly balanced with some guns like sniper rifles being the best in all situations (even at close quarters). Aside from a few quibbles, the atmosphere is great, the story is familiar but pretty good and most importantly in an era where indie games are all procedurally generated grinds, this game has hand-crafted levels, a beginning and an end and I can't commend that enough.
As someone who's used to Elder Scrolls and third person action games, the combat in this game is a bit difficult to get used to. People expecting one to one execution wont get it, it's not a turn-based game, nor is it a 3rd person action game, rather the combat is a matter of picking the appropriate fighting style and clicking at the appropriate moment to continue a combo. First time players like myself may find themselves clicking a lot and as a result not doing anything at all. Once you get past the combat, the game is very enjoyable. Alchemy has always appealed to me and while there is some magic involved in the game, the making and drinking of potions and poisons is very important. The graphics are a bit dated by this point, but overall for the story and the dialogue it's definitely worth playing.
Great artwork and animation, and a cool story but some of the gameplay elements and ways they represented certain actions didn't quite do it for me. The combat system (initiative) is a bit unintuitive but workable once you understand it, what is odd however is that- a hero can fall in battle and be okay, but outside of battle you can sometimes lose a hero in just a dialogue system. This is fine but in one campaign branch, the first few missions I repeatedly got my butt handed to me and was surprised my men had not perished. Most of the problems though are in the story-branch of the game. The problem is that sometimes the consequence of your choices are not obvious. Now if it's an unforseen consequence, no problem, but in one example I wanted to re-capture a town and at one point, I thought I was making a tactical choice that would draw the enemy out into the open where I could fight them more easily but in actuality that choice of mine had my army circumvent the town entirely- which is really frustrating when I've spent the last while trying to get to it. Then reloading, I had to re-do a fair portion of the game due to the way saving works. One over-arching story element too is the safeguarding of your refugee convoy, but by games end, some unfortunate decisions on my part meant that my convoy was basically all dead. And the game didn't seem to care. Didn't make much sense. The final battle also has some scripted elements which don't always make sense depending on tactical positioning. Overall though I would still recommend the game, just know that it has a few failings.
This is a first impressions not a proper review as I feel I haven't played enough of the game. Overall I'm not really enjoying this experience. The game controls are at times annoying and some of the changes made over the original Xcom are not particularly welcome. UI/Controls: One of the biggest problems I have with the game is the screen scrolling. This game is widescreen. If you play 4:3 resolution the game will give you black bars top and bottom. This as it happens is a HUGE problem because as far as battlefield scrolling is concerned, these black areas are deadzones. So if you want the screen to go north for example, if you move the mouse too far up it wont move. This is very cumbersome and pulls me out of the game constantly. Gameplay: The second biggest problem is gameplay. Some of the core mechanics of the game do not seem to be applied equally. For example in my last mission, I had a soldier "suppressed" and on my turn he was unable to do anything with 0 Time Units. Prior to that, I suppressed not one but two aliens, both of whom then in turn shot and killed one of my soldiers. Very unintuitive as to what the effects of "suppressed" actually are. When I first started the game I had almost no alien contact. In a month and a half I saw and engaged a total of one UFO. By the time I engaged a second UFO, their craft were more powerful than my interceptors could handle. On the second ground mission my soldiers were already getting psi-attacked. Research is also dumbed down with weapons being grouped together (like all laser weapons). The infopedia entries are sometimes written in an unprofessional manner with personal notes for the commander and sometimes reference other technology suggesting there's an intended path of researching them. Some animations take too long to play. Such as crouching/standing. Delays the game. Overall I can't see myself playing it for very long.
Pros: Cool art aesthetic Customizable aircraft and music which seems to change depending on your choices Tight game-play, cool physics and effects Good game for small doses Cons: Most items can be unlocked after a few hours of play Gameplay becomes formulaic & repetitive with same scenario repeated over and over Restrictive camera view Conclusion: Overall it's decent for what it is. The music and graphics in particular are good and it's a good game for quick distraction and some experimentation. However, in the long run I can't see it holding my interest because each game plays out and escalates in much the same way. Also I'm not a huge fan of the camera and the ability of enemies to fire at me when I cannot see them. A radar would be a benefit. It's not clear either how far player shots go either and how effectively you can hit things off screen. So, I would recommend getting it but would wait for a sale which at this point is fairly common.
