There is a demo available so go and check it out to see if the gameplay is to your liking. I usually wait till the full release but there are very few reviews so I’ve decided to play a bit and share my experience. At the time of the review I’ve played 1h18min and have beaten the first boss. The languages you can choose from are English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Chinese(I think) and Portugese Brazilian. There wasn't any text missing in English but the game is still in development so that might not be the case for the other languages. I’ve encountered two bugs so far. Half of the time when I tried to exit the game, it just freezes and I cannot even get the task manager so I had to restart my PC. The other one was when I was on a trader’s flying ship and I was browsing the shop menu I found that I can move and I fell off the ship and died while in the shop menu. The story begins like a child’s cartoon but soon turns into Starship Troopers. The characters remind me of anime personages with exaggerated traits and everyone is taking stuff way too seriously. As a whole it is OK. To get a feel of the gameplay you really need to play the demo. The short version is - you have a base that you can build structures that provide some benefits, you fly between the different sky islands fighting enemies and collecting resources and liberating them. With the resources and items you find you build the base structures and upgrade your ship and weapons. I haven’t played that much so there might be some other mechanics I haven’t encountered. I like what I’ve seen so far. For me the game is more than the sum of its parts. It is easy to see that it is not a finished and polished product. The base building, the bullet hell combat, the upgrade system and world exploration are nothing special on their own but all of that combined with good pixel art and good atmosphere makes for a pretty interesting game. In my experience the bugs were not game breaking but your mileage may vary.
I quite like the game. It is a wargame but with simple and very comprehensive rules. The player is not required to put a dozen hours just to learn the rules and basic mechanics and that is a big plus for me. I know the quote about war in my review title is from Fallout, but after playing through 8 missions I was surprised how the tutorial level of Fallout Tactics helped me with Mobius Front. In that tutorial the player was told how to set up an ambush. You place two of soldiers in a covered position and then the third one acts like a bait and agros the enemy who then gives chase and walks into the firing range of the others. This is the tactic that I found to be the most useful in Mobius Front. The mission objectives I've seen so far are - capture a few specific tiles on the map and destroy enemy SAM sites. There is no time limit(turn limit) so the best way to complete the objective is dispatching the enemy forces by strategically positioning your units and ambushing them. Advancing your forces is quite risky due to two reasons. First: in some missions you start with a smaller force than the enemy and rushing forward is not a good idea. Second: units deal less damage when move and attack and some cannot move and attack at all. That is why positioning the units at the start of the game is important. If you need to advance you need to do so only to take a better position. After the enemy forces have been taken care of (or at least the ones that can damage your tanks) you can complete the objective. For some units damage is RNG based which provides some thrilling moments but also can cause a lot of frustration(as RNG usually does). Once again ambushes can mitigate that to some extent. There are also 2 minigames - a solitaire and a puzzle game called TIS 330 which are cool additional content. A lot of people will not like it because of the RNG or that it is favouring camping. These are valid points but I take the game for what it is and so far I am enjoying it.
