Recent reviews by CGNick

An absolutely splendid little tactical turn based strategy. Any fan on modern XCOM should have an easy time sliding into this game. A simple yet stylized graphical style, with gameplay that starts off fairly simple and quickly begins to open up various strategies that you can mix up with your teammates. It's nice seeing the devs also updating the game with various quality of life changes and additions to improve the overall experience. Not to mention it allows players to create their own levels once you run dry on the campaign and challenge missions.

Story was surprisingly nice, it was fun seeing the stereotypical police raid lingo mixed in with magical terms. Fairly satisfying final boss too - not too challenging but also enough for you to still try and utilize various strategies to win. The game does have cases where you can have certain builds be very overpowered - both from a skill and unit pairing standpoint. While allowing some cases to be easily cheese-able, I think it's fun imagining that this could legitimately play out in the in-game universe as an absurd raid tactic (most notably having your False Prophet die and restore mana while drawing overwatch shots, as they also shoot and do chip damage to enemies around them).

The only times I've been slightly hindered is when the UI is incorrectly calculating damage under certain circumstances, such as when applying Brittle alongside the vine pull maneuver, but that's still a very minor complaint. In any case, I loved the game, and I look forward to whatever next thing the devs release. I hope you all go up from here.

Honestly a great 9/10 game. It's been a while since I've played a shooter like this, it feels like.

Right off the bat, I will say that I'm not really that big on the 2.5D/Voxel styled graphics, it just never really grew on me, hence why I was hesitant on buying the game in the first place. But I can easily say right now that I have 0 regrets on buying it. I missed having shooters like this that remember their origin gimmicks. And I'm not saying gimmicks as a bad thing either - I'm talking about the environment interactivity. It makes the world feel real? Alive? Like, I go into a room and it's dark, I expect there to be a light switch somewhere and there is, and it works. I can throw stuff in the trash can. I can eat some random lying around food and drinks to get some tiny health back. And most of all, the moment bullets starts flying, everything breaks, sparks, goes up in smoke, particles everywhere - felt like I was playing FEAR again for the first time. The developers know what this game is supposed to be, what itch it's supposed to scratch, and they did an absolutely fantastic job.

To add some of my own highlights and feedback, I wanna comment on a few things:
- The AI is smart, just the right amount. The enemies give you visual queues, bark lines and sometimes split off and try to flank. When they realize you are putting them in a choke point or you're waiting, they wait back, forcing you to push. They make it believable enough to feel like they are actually trying coordinate an assault on you, but not enough to make you feel like you're just gonna lose. I did my first run on the second highest difficulty and it felt just right. Enemies aren't spongy and respond well to just getting shot or killed. Preparing to push forward while I hear and see a crawling half-alive enemy whine as it bleeds out due to a shortage of legs and groin is a satisfying ambiance. Again, devs are clearly big fans on FEAR and it shows, cause they're taking the best aspects of it.

- The assault rifle is "The most assault rifle of all time". This thing is probably the most satisfying assault rifle I've had in a shooter. It's not overpowered, it doesn't have anything super flashy on it or anything like that. It's just super reliable. Honestly a greatly executed gun, ironically enough probably my favourite of them all, just on the principle of how satisfying it feels to shoot it, combined with the feedback of me hitting/killing.

- Game felt satisfying to 100% complete. I'm rusty on finding secrets so usually I find about 50-75% of em, but even then the game has its tools for helping you find the remained. Always gotta appreciate secrets that give you long term benefits as well. Finding weapons attachments or upgrades, permanent health increases, etc.

Now, to offer some minor feedback as well on the game, and again this is just my personal view on things so hey, maybe you will disagree:

- The grenade launcher just didn't vibe with me at all in the beginning. I'm fine with it having a mode where you can shoot out the grenades and they have to tick (or make direct impact with an enemy) before it explodes, but there's something off about the arc with it. I just couldn't adjust to it, felt like I was always missing my shots or they were short of where I wanted them to land. The GL became a lot more agreeable with me the moment i got the Rocket Launcher behavior upgrade though, so it repents. I will also say that the Acid grenades, they're strong and I know that's the intent, but maybe they shouldn't be as strong? You can apparently just melt Juggernauts with a single shots. Ammo is rare but, feels like it just invalidates the fight. Especially since you can get a nice Quake-like railgun near the end and it takes about 3-4 shots to kill one of em, and that's probably the highest single shot hitscan weapon.

- Sentries are just a little too quiet. They always seem to catch me off-guard. I can hear footsteps, mines and just about everything I need to hear just fine, but the sentry is always a little too silent so it always catches me with my pants down more or less, especially when you quickly turn corners and such. Granted they aren't super tanky so it's not a big problem, but it is slightly annoying when it does happen.

- I really like the gimmick of the enemy mines to make it a bit more involved in "defusing" them, but its tricky it feels like when it comes to figuring out which items in the environment are heavy enough to trip them. I've had cases where something like an office chair won't trip it, but a travel case would, which feels odd in my head because I wouldn't place the weight in that order. Still like the fact that I on a complete accident defused the first mine I ever encountered with a cup of water. Good level design there.

In any case, these quibbles are small in the grand scheme and again, the devs did a fantastic job with this game. From one dev to another, I hope you folks are proud of the game you've done. I look forward to Chapter 2!