1 person found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 49.0 hrs on record (12.4 hrs at review time)
Posted: 26 Feb @ 10:57am

Good tactical game with almost-RPG-like campaign. Not without it quirks but a pleasant addition for a strategy fan.

First tutorial missions are a bit slow and mostly about defense. Controls are fine and pretty responsive. If you played RTSs before you'll feel at home.
Units have different sets of weapons and ammo types, that they competently enough use against correct targets asking little micro from the player. Your job mostly in positioning analyzing covers and assessing lines of sights (that should've come with some kind of visibility tool, but I had no issues).
Fights are pretty and intense with that bit of modern combat realism to ground SciFi a bit.

After big base defense you'll start the actual campaign. Big overworld map is in fact a resource management game with mission selector. You need supplies to travel between locations and you need to get to locations to play a mission and get more supplies. You should (and game gives you time to do it) to scavenge as much vehicles (mostly) and stuff to sell it in the overworld to rearm and upgrade your units of choice with new weapons, skills and modifications like additional armor and HMG-nests.
Surprisingly there is some factions between humans and from the start you will mix your sci-fi-army with post-apoc survivors units. It's an interesting worldbuilding but wrapping your head around different MadMax-cars and a lot of similar infantry squads is a bit confusing at start.

The whole scavenging aspect is fun enough but time consuming and can feel like a chore. At first I spend almost an hour trying to figure what I want to sell and what I want to keep ans supply just to understand that I screwed up a little and it will be wiser to reload a save and do it again,

That's actually what you should do a lot. Savescumming is your friend, especially if you are new to this. Setting aside confusing you math in supply screen or losing bunch of your vehicles due poor decisions in combat, you should save a lot just to be ready for some story twists mid missions.
First "real" mission asks you to visit a bunch of NPCs on a big map to make some moral choices before big robot attack. And it's not entirely clear what means what until you see it. So its smart to save a lot, see what game has for you (and where you should place your units beforehand).
And yeah, losing units suck, so F5 is your friend in any case. Don't overdo it, though, you can afford some losses. Maybe even more than you and I think.

I do have some reservations about complexity of the mission structures. I'm two "real" missions in and it feels like they both were "end-game" level of complexity. Multiple primary and secondary objectives, time pressure, hidden events, attacks from multiple directions and "gifting" me new units mid-combat that I don't know what to do in the heat of the fight. And non-stop radio-chatter with new mission info.
I do despise tactical pauses in RTS-games but here I can't play without it - assessing map, commanding new units, checking on old units, checking side objectives, reading new dialogues etc.

It is a lot. So take it easy and save a lot, play a bit more careful. It will click.
I've finished second "real" mission with only one restart after my units mistakenly drove into territory on a neutral faction and failed to leave in time, provoking them.
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