I held off on this game for a long time, mostly because of it's mediocre reviews and my weak hardware. Now that it's on sale I finally gave it a chance and quite honestly, I think it's great. I love all the little details, for example agent backgrounds (KGB,CIA,Mossad, SB and so on), or the different passports seen when you change your agent's identity. Sure, it's nothing special, but in this game it just clicks and contributes to atmosphere. I like the combat system, it's definitely different than most of it's peers, though I do find it annoying when you have a low health agent, behind cover, no enemy in sight and suddenly, an enemy pops up right at the edge of your LOS. Then you know your agent is pretty much dead. Overall presentation is also very solid, music is very fitting, graphics are fine (I'm playing on medium though). Objectively, it does get a little boring (not for me though, this is one of my favorite genre), but that's the story with pretty much every other turn based tactics game. I'd say this one has more going for it than for example X-COM. The arsenal available is passable, it's not gun porn like Jagged Alliance 1.13 or Silent Storm games, which I would very much like it to be, lacks some variety, overall, could've been better, but definitely not bad. Models are quite nice, have way more details than X-Com 2 guns. I didn't like two things really ( didn't finish the game yet though), the animations and lack of destructible enviroment. Animations are pretty stiff and not very plentiful. And on a final note, a word on optimization, it runs considerably better than X-Com 2, even though it's min requirements are higher. Personally, I have very high hopes for the sequel.
To start off, I feel like it's missing tons of content right now, f.e. a whole map populated by only two people (Police Station), not counting not interactable passersby and many other things which betray it's early access status. That's not the reason why I rated it at 2 stars though. I'm judging only what's in the game right now, without criticising it's length as well as technical problems and optimization (which right now is terrible honestly when compared to the original Atom RPG). I will also update this review accordingly after the full release. I usually wouldn't bother with reviewing an in-dev game, however, it is EXTREMLY tedious, I honestly haven't played a game that would be piss me off so much in a long time. For example, a couple of hours in I had two quests that were very similar and involved lots of running around between different neighbourhoods. Which is sufficiently annoying by itself, especially if you weren't doing them simultaneously. And the interesting ones were over in a heartbeat. However, finding the people you need to talk to in the cramped maps often required to search every nook and cranny and having LOTS of pointless dialogues, especially if you missed that one guy you were looking for. I was so annoyed by these errands that I was skipping most of the dialogue, which was plentiful, just to get them finished. I even stopped accepting side quests alltogether from the people I found while looking for that one bloke that I had to find. The fact that, from what I've seen thus far, the game is contained exclusively in the city doesn't help in alleviating boredom, it does quite the opposite actually. I hope that in the finished game devs will include some locations outside the city limits. To sum it all up, don't get it now if you want to play.
I probably won't buy it here though, as I already own it on xbox and Steam, however there's one glaring fault with this release: as GOG lacks a mod repository, your only option will be Nexus, which is severly limited in comparison to Steam Workshop. That said, XCOM 2 with WOTC is easily one of my top games ever, might even be contending for the first spot. The gameplay is great, the graphics are great, even the story is rather interesting in WOTC, with the chosen having vastly different personalities.
Seeing as most review I've read focus on praising this title, I'll bring up some of it's flaws. Though don't get me wrong, it's one of my favorite games and fully deserves 5 stars. On to the flaws: *The astonishing bullet sponges and worthless weapons, especially in the beggining. Seeing as this game has some quite intricate difficulty settings, I don't see why they've decided to balance weapons like this, ending with some weapons becoming worthless damage wise, even when they're using the same bullet. Though this can be remedied with mods, the only ones I've been able to find are a littly dodgy and for example do away with hollow point ammo and AP rockets. Never went into the Russian territory to search for mods though, there might be better alternatives. *The incredible quicksave/quickload fest. If you've got an iron will and ballz of steel, you can play iron man mode. But let me tell you, this is not iron man as it is in JA2. That's because accuracy mechanics in this game are suspicious to say the least. For example, even with a pretty high level soldier you can completely miss a target 10 feet away when using full auto fire or score one hit out of 15 shots. But it gets better, you can stand right behind an enemy, stick the barrel of your gun into his ayuss and still miss when going full auto. AT weapons like bazookas are even worse, though IMO more reliable then full auto fire. That said, it can happen in JA2 as well, and often does, but it's far easier to recover, in SS you can recover, but it often means tedious random encounter hunting. *AI. While overall it's quite good, they often get locked, for example, you're standing hidden behing an enemy, end your turn, he starts turning around, notices you and instead of filling you with holes, he starts dancing, changing stances and so on. This always makes me laugh. IMO panzerkleins are fine, they make good enemies and if you don't like them you can mod them out. Besides, you too can use them.
This pharagraph was supposed to be at the end, but I changed the order to get the most important thing out of the way: most probably there'll be no more updates, seems like the team has dissolved or is doing something else, so all the crashes and ui problems are here to stay. I love heist games, it's my favorite theme, and since there's not too many of them, I usually love anything in this theme so keep that in mind if you're reading my review. With that said, this is really a great game, despite it's numerous flaws. There's many ways to go about robbing all the classic hits, like jewellry store, bank, art gallery and so on, it looks and plays a little like Door Kickers. Graphically it's ok, it does it's job (apart from the ui getting in the way all the time, like character inventory covering items you want to pick up) and it looks rather pleasing. Sounds are IMO significantly better, with crisp gunshots and pretty great music, though character voices sound dull (very minor complaint, there's barely any talk in the game, though I still don't like them). Crashing, while quite frequent, wasn't too painful for me, usually around every 1,5 hours. It's very short, I'd say the first playthrough should take you about 10-12 hours, but regardless, I'd say it's worth it.
If you like puzzle and strategy games, it's kind of a mix of both. The standout game is obviously C2, which is considered to be the best game of this franchise, but I preffered C3 because it's based solely in europe (C2 takes place all around the globe). I've beaten the whole series multiple times and keep coming back to it every couple of years. If you played the first game and it's addon and made through those, these are a lot simpler (mainly due to having a lot more options). However, if you're up for some ballbreaking difficulty, check out Destination Paris Mod for C2. It supposedly offers all of the missions from BEL,BCOD,C3 and lots of fan-made missions (Supposedly,because I haven't beaten it yet, I'm actually stuck on mission 3 :( ) Be warned though, it's not for the faint of heart. While the abilities of your commandos are slightly extended when compared to the base game, the enemies are much more numerous and all visited the ophthalmologist.
Buy the game full price if you want to support the devs, which they definitely deserve. BUT saying that it's a hidden gem and such is unjust, because of the cookie cutter story, length and difficulty (or rather complete lack thereof). It simply poses no challenge and generally feels like a proof of concept for something that could evolve into a full fledged genre. Nevertheless, it has a lot of bright sides to it. The setting is AMAZING, reminds me of Colorado Kid, one of Stephen King's novels, far from the best of his work, but with an interesting setting. It's also pretty tense. I really like the gameplay, but, as I said before, I wish it was a little harder and a lot deeper, especially in the puzzle department. I'm hoping that the next game keeps the detective theme, expands on the puzzles and combat to make them more demanding and keeps things realistic, while I didn't mind the fantasy story, I can't help but think that this sort of game would work a lot better if it dropped fantasy elements altogether. Even though I've said a lot of bad things about it, it doesn't change the fact that the game is really gripping and I don't regret buying, it's a really refreshing concept, at least in my opinion.
