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I've been looking for a game like this for a long time! A persistent grid-based turn based RPG even in a novel cyberpunk setting. I'm the kind of person who enjoys micromanaging and brooding over attack efficiency without wanting to worry so much about RNG, and this is great fun as far as I've played it. Feels a bit like an RPG version of Syndicate which is ingenious. You command a squad of clones which can be upgraded, tweaked, die in battle and be replaced or improve and develop with new abilities and mutations and plug-ins. The dark dystopian atmosphere is sumptuously realized with very pretty graphics, but the writing is firmly tongue-in-cheek which I also enjoyed. No stick up the rear here: you're having fun, exploring, fighting, and getting influence and money to do it again in another location with better equipment, powers, and strategies. ONLY hiccup I found was the hacking mini-games. They're reflex based which was a little irritating but thankfully they aren't required, they just give you goodies if you search for them. It's like Darkest Dungeon without the random insanity and dying torches. It's like Bard's Tale with better progression and a more interesting setting. Very nice game and surprised I never heard about it before this!
I used to play this game forever on a my old PC. The dark tone, the solid strategy and tons of options, great sense of progression, the highs of breaking shields and strike weak points and the lows of an errant rocket destroying an expensive mech! I didn't dare to suppose a Gog adaptation would be anything but a fond but flawed visit to the past. But this game was and still is amazing. You feel in complete command of your team and if you fail 9 times out of 10 you made a strategic mistake. You'll be outnumbered but for someone willing to make sacrifices and daring maneuvers you can often make it through. Want more cash? Mine for it pleb! You can fix, adapt, modify practically every piece of a variety of mechs (called Hercs) and the enemy has just as much variety. The only reason you might not get a kick out of this unique and fun game I think is if the nihilistic tone of human clones being recycled and soulless corporations fighting killer robots is not for you or you just don't like mech games with a slower pace. Otherwise, and if you don't mind dated graphics, dive in and enjoy a deep and entertaining hex game from the past!
The writing in this game is excellent: like one of those sophisticated but also goofy cartoons from an earlier time. This is the kind of comedy where a character will one moment get clonked on the head for a pratfall...and later have an involved discussion with a voodoo priestess about an affordable mortgage. Kids and adults I can see loving this game, although kids will find some of these puzzles very obscure and difficult. But there's no hardcore violence, sensuality, swearing...just good clean high brow/low brow fun. FAIR WARNING: this is a sequel! There's quite a few references to previous Monkey Island games here, although nothing you outright HAVE to know to play thankfully. The first character you meet your character will recognize even if you, as a first time player, do not. Two levels of difficulty are presented at the start and the second level puts extra layers on already fairly involved puzzles. In the lower difficulty some objects are just lying around to be picked up and used, but on the higher difficulty there are other puzzles you have to do to get those items in the first place. Graphics are very pretty: done in a painterly animated movie style. The cutscenes are smooth and energetic and both they and the in game graphics also involve some CGI elements woven seamlessly into the aesthetic. Exploring is half the game so it's a good thing it's half the fun. Memorable music, memorable characters. It was a blast to play in the past and just as good to come back to.
The story and character designs are fascinating, but this is a VERY classic RTS game which requires memorizing a manual to fully understand. No tutorial level I could find and it drops you in the middle of a world you can't easily understand with a ton of units with weird names you can't easily tell their function. I was hoping for an alien version of Warcraft but at least there I could tell workers from soldiers. I can't tell which aliens I own are soldiers, which are workers, what I'm supposed to be doing! I love the music and the atmosphere anyway, and the graphics are colorful and unique, but the animation is limited so it feels like you're moving at a jerky FPS. Between the inability to tell what my units were doing very easily, the ability to tell what my units could do, and after reading tons of hints my inability to even tell what the first mission's end goal was I was defeated. I didn't have much luck with the sequel either.
You are not going to be scoring headshots and brute forcing your way through this game. Your enemy is going to hide a LOT, always outnumber you and usually have superior firepower. Luckily you have a squad! The squad mechanics are great fun and although they don't always function quite right (a few A.I hiccups and pathfinding issues) there is very little as satisfying as outmaneuvering an enemy placement with two squads, one to pin the enemy and the other to flank and destroy them. The graphics are still charming. Somewhat low resolution but it runs great on practically any computer and there's plenty of character in the movement of characters and the landscapes. Story is familiar but entertaining and feels authentic. No sugar coating war here. Diverse scenarios, the game save at generous checkpoints, music is soaring and somber. If you've ever wanted to play a war movie this is the experience, huddling against cover, shouting commands, and fighting along side your team...just to get to that next checkpoint.
This game feels like playing a pulp sci-fi serial! The dialogue, as oddly translated as it can be, is recited with incredible gusto and verve by every actor. The graphics are crisp and clean and pretty for an older game. You can't zoom in but you can always tell where everything is. This is a game you cannot select a bunch of soldiers and just send them in to overwhelm the foe because every soldier counts! You want to select individual units, make them crouch, set their land speed, hide in the brush, outmaneuver superior forces, track and extinguish stragglers before they can raise the alarm. This is the kind of game that people on the radio can LIE to you. You need to use your own judgement a lot of the time to survive stacked odds. It can be a bit finicky. Characters don't always pathfind well, there's a LOT of micromanagement, but the story is consistently surprising and entertaining, you get two full length campaigns, and if you keep your wits about you even superior enemy numbers can be outwitted and outfought and it feels firm but fair throughout.
Is it difficult? Yes, but it all feels fair. You have so many options as outlined by the in-depth tutorial, and so many of them are easy to access quickly (most of the squad commands come from literally holding down the right mouse button and scrolling down a list) your only excuse for a mission gone bad is usually impatience. You've got the tools, a great team A.I, and plenty of choices to accomplish your goals. It seldom feel like you got shortchanged by RNG or bad A.I or technical issues but more like you made the wrong call, and that's the way a SWAT game should feel. It is incredibly satisfying to shout down a perp, zip tie them, and collect their weapons for evidence as much as it is suspenseful to open each new door or have a running suspect open fire from the shadows. A large variety of missions, tons of dialogue both humorous and dramatic, effective music that changes according to scenarios and level of danger, and tight gun controls that makes it one of the best fire-from-the-hip FPS games I've ever played. If you like cops, action, squad mechanics, gadgets, a variety of load outs and situations, you can't go wrong.
It's an homage to the classics without the jank! The tutorial is clear, challenging and fun and that's just the tip of the iceberg. What's in development from what I've seen is more content because the product as stands is solid as a rock. Runs beautifully, full adjustable, looks fantastic, sounds amazing. It is NOT an easy game. Randomization does lead to grim demise and you always seem a thread away from death but it fits with the theme. This is not an RPG where you become godlike, it's a horror game with RPG elements in which you are most often just trying to survive. As stands there's some full satisfying mysteries with more added constantly. I don't know how finished it will become eventually but I still have a great time with what's here. If you like Junji Ito, 80s/Dos game aesthetic, roleplaying games with choices and consequences, haunting slow burn and grisly body horror and spine-tingling chip tunes this is an excellent investment.