Bionic Dues Reviews

A turn-based strategy game that goes straight to the point, but probably too much: you choose a mission, you fight, you loot, rince & repeat. There is no plot, no story, no character, nothing. And games end with some kind of "you win" message. Bionic Dues is a game mechanic, properly executed, but not much more. Despite these flaws, many players might still find this game attractive, except than: - loots are boring: they seem to follow the same rarity system than in well-known hack&slashes, except that there is little difference between a rare or an unique item. Uniques aren't uniques, and there is little to no variety in items - stats customization is dull - enemy bots are uninteresting - there is no variety in missions: same tilesets, same bots, only the goal slightly differ from mission to mission My note: boring/10

At first this seemed like the perfect game for me: A roguelike with a tactics and strategic aspect on top of it. Unfortunately all the missions play very much alike and the game gets repetitive fast. Also, the loot is quite boring, since it's just an unending stream of similiar equipment with slightly different numbers. This also means that way too much time is spent between the missions comparing all these slight differences. Maybe some people like this aspect, but i don't. The loot should have been less frequent but more significant. I also question the aesthetic consistency of the game. It's very very ugly and the music is incredibly cheesy. The menu music seem straight out of some cheap anime movie.

Bionic Dues appears like a simple TBS on the surface, but bubbling underneath is a very strategic and tactical game. The first few missions I died horribly, until I begun to understand the enemy and my own abilities. Enemy bots have strange "features" and its imperative to exploit their weaknesses. Meanwhile, its fun to specialise your own "exos" to be able to perform heroic feats of their own! I now have a huge blast radius grenade launcher, can lay mines that do 1500 damage, and can use viruses to turn any enemy into a friend. It took me about an hour to begin learning the subtleties and not get smashed. But now I'm having a blast. Great little Indie Tactical game.

Hi! You're probably here because you got this game super cheap, or free, or in a bundle, and are wondering if it's actually worth playing. Good news: yes, it is! It's a flavor of tactical puzzle you'll not encounter anywhere else. A few tips for having a good experience with Bionic Dues: [list] [*] Play on Ironman. The game vehemently tells you not to, but in fact it's designed quite well to play through accepting your setbacks. Savescumming sucks all the life out of it. [*] Use the "Shorter Campaign" option. At default, the game is way too long, with the final outcome decided by halfway through and the rest of it a mere button-pressing exercise. Cutting it in half, though, is just right. [*] Don't use the pilot who gives you all the Epic Exos, at least for your first game. Finding and unlocking those is a huge treat you don't want to deny yourself. [/list]

Bionic dues is a roguelike, and plays pretty similar to standard rogue games. You take an action, then everything else does, repeat untill enemies are dead or an objective is complete. You get four party members that you can switch between at any point (costs an action) but only one of them can be on the field at a time, so you're really always controlling a single hero, not a squad. First it should be said that, like most arcen games, Bionic Dues has amazingly good music. Although they are merely adequate as a game developer, they have the amazing Pablo Vega on staff doing all their music. This is especially noticeable in the hauntingly beautiful title track, The Home That We Once Knew. A song so brilliant i'd recommend buying this game JUST to hear it, despite its other flaws. It really sets the scene and is a truly amazing first impression, sadly it's mostly downhill from there. This game has an unfortunate problem shared by other Arcen titles, in that the game bombards you with information right from the beginning, telling you in pointlessly explicit detail about the final battle you'll eventually have and how to win it. Aside from being overwhelming and working very poorly as a tutorial, this also instantly takes away any sense of novelty or mystery from the game, and you're never really in doubt about what will eventually happen. The final battle is hyped and foreshadowed repeatedly, and warnings about it are shoved in your face constantly. At the beginning you choose four of the six classes, and one of the six available leaders. this is probably intended to encourage replayability, but i didn't really feel any desire to play it again. After every mission your'e rewarded with a tide of loot with witty descriptions that modify lots of stats, and you can equip your party between missions using these parts. Each squad member has 20-30 equipment slots, so you'll spend a lot of time in there tweaking with equipment loadouts, which is kind of fun at first. However after a while of playing, the system starts to feel shallow, as there's a pretty small range of values that can actually be adjusted, and thusly not much room for "builds" or any real modding strategy. You basicalyl want everyone to be reasonably tanky, and all their weapons to be strong enough to 1-shot enemies, with reasonable amounts of range and ammo. this isn't hard to accomplish. Eventually you'll stop caring about most of the loot you get, and just briefly scan the inventory for unusually high values, there's too much of it, and once you've seen one +50% damage mod, you've seen them all. There's no unusual combinations or interesting unique equipment, just ever-increasing generic values, the novelty fades quickly. Each squad member has a small (preset, non-changeable) selection of weapons, and with certain missions they can get a permanant upgrade which gives them additional weapons and equipment slots (again, preset). These upgrades are nice and add an interesting power spike to things, but there's exactly one for each squad member, and they're no-brainers you'll want to grab asap. ***** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** ***** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** ***** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** Despite the constant warnings and foreshadowing, and especially the warning that i'd have to hold off a massive assault from hundreds of enemies, the final mission was a colossal letdown. It threw a grand total of 80-ish enemies at me (there's a counter) in a single, boring mazelike interior environment, much like any other mission. There was no colossal assault, it was literally a hunt-and-destroy mission like hundreds of others. I had to go and find THEM hiding in tiny pockets of resistance, and just nuke them with aoe weapons. I spent a long time building up a perfectly engineered sniper and engineer-scientist combo, and created a huge fort of sentry guns expecting to have to fight off thousands of bots, and maybe some colossal monster. What i got was a pathetic skirmish with only slightly more enemies than an average mission. it was a dismal and hollow end to the game. There's no real reward or sense of closure either, after the battle you jsut get a "congratulations you won, now go and relax" textbox, and the game just stops on the main map screen with nothing being clickable. No ending cutscene, no conclusion to the story, just nothing. I spent £1.74 on this game, and my initial thoughts after buying it were that i'd gotten an amazing deal. But as the novelty wore off, that seemed like a pretty reasonable price. It's great fun for an hour or two, and mildly entertaining for a few more after that, but there's no real reason to replay it. You should probably quit before you finish the game, and just imagine that it had a good ending.

"Why should the race always be to the swift, or the jumble to the quick-witted? Should they be allowed to win merely because of the of the gifts God gave them? well I say, 'Cheating is the gift man gives himself.' " Bionic dues is a roguelite game where until very late in the game, every enemy will be bigger, stronger, and tougher than you. What they won't be is smart - the AIs are never clever, and many have funny personality quirks that hinder their combat effectiveness. Take the Thunderbot, a powerful sniper that, once alerted, will explosively shoot all the cover anyone (you or its allies) hides behind. So if you fight fair you will die. Brainwash enemies, use explosives and shotguns around corners, fight from out of range, etc. Eventually you can unlock class upgrades that give more powerful weapons and notable stat boosts. other notes: -You can enable a true roguelike "ironman" mode. -You can fail a few missions with a TPK and still beat the game, even on this mode. You've got 5 'lives', essentially. -If you beat every mission with 0-1 exo losses, then (on normal at least) by the endgame you're extremely powerful -The pilot who gives you free access to the upgraded classes is best avoided while you first learn how to play; they'll teach you bad habits, and everyone else can get the class upgrades eventually -The default reccomended party is pretty good -A regular campaign takes ~12 hours. A mission takes maybe 30 minutes? -The Science exo is toppest tier.

It is an interesting game, especially when on sale, there's a lot of playtime for your money. But you have to enjoy tactics and tinkering with abilities. If you are looking for high polish and story-driven adventures, this is not for you. That being said, the higher difficuilties are just frustrating and the achievements like winning with a single bot will only please a glutton for punishment. Totally ridiculous. In addition, the developers tried to be funny smarta$$es with their quips. Maybe focus on better balancing and a little more depth next time. This game could have been really good instead of "good enough when on sale".

On first impressions when I started playing this game, I wasn't too impressed. The difficulty seemed all over the place, there were a lot of numbers and stats everywhere, and things were confusing. But, if you stay on and keep playing, you eventually start to get a hang of it. There is a bit of a learning curve here, but the game has a very nice tactical depth to it and can be loads of fun. Upon starting a new game, you get to select your preferred pilot and 4 mechs/exosuits. Each pilot has a bonus perk of some sort, and each mech has its own strengths and weaknesses, some being more offensively based, others more to do with support stuff, like hacking and stealth. So it's up to you to pick your preferred team. The campaign itself has a simple concept - a robot army is going to attack your HQ in 50 days. Do whatever you can to prepare yourself for this attack. Each mission you do in the city counts as a day. You can go for missions where you find shiny new gear for your mechs to make them stronger, or you can go for missions which weaken the enemy and slow their expansion. The best thing is, you can see on a side of a screen the details of what units currently comprise the enemy army, so you can see how it is affected after every mission you do. The missions themselves take a form of a randomly-generated dungeon with tile-based movement. You can swap between your mechs at will, but doing so counts as a turn, so you have to be very careful in your advance. It is very easy to make a wrong move and to have several enemies on you at once. Both, your units and enemy units, might feel like glass cannons. You could kill an enemy in 1-2 shots, but so can they! So you have to utilise tactics to outsmart them - use range or perhaps area of effect weapons, or even just pull back and surprise them around the corner. You can even deploy sentry turrets to help you in firefights if you've got any available. And in between missions you can customize your mechs with the loot found. The customization is very rich and detailed. Each mech has several slots where gear can fit in, ranging from weapons, to shields, to propulsion systems. It can feel overwhelming at first because there are a lot of things on the screen, but you do get used to it, and everything in the game has a description if you're unsure what something is. Speaking of descriptions, they're fantastic. Everything has an edge of humour in it. When you hover over an enemy, an object, or anything else in-game, you see a bit of funny flavour text about it. The music is also amazing. I first got interested in the game when I've heard its main theme, which is very beautiful with great vocals, but even the tracks that play during missions are also great. I've been enjoying the game so far and started a new campaign already. I would highly suggest to play the first game on an Easy or Casual difficulty level to get familiar with the game. After that, the higher difficulty levels don't seem as bad anymore. Great game. Highly recommended for fans of tactics-based games.

Basically, Bionic Dues is a rogue-like mix of rpg/strategy dungeon crawler with hi-tech setting, where you fighting ever growing hordes of killing droids with your own droid. War of the machines, basic "save the humanity from annihilation" stuff - that's all you'll ever catch about story. You can think of it as of another small thing for touchpads, but no, it's not that simple. Actually, it is like an iceberg, where major part of the game is hiding beneath the surface. And yeah, if you're looking for light walk with painless achievements - that's a very wrong game for you! While its quite easy to catch an opening pattern, farther you go - more skill and luck you need. On Every Turn. Now, the real game is where its mechanics. You have dozens of basic options like which droid class do you prefer, what strategy will be the best with grading that given droid, and how do you planning to save the world? Destroying every enemy bot in the reach from the start, when they are still weak? Or just cutting their numbers by destroying their factories and supplies while building up your muscles for the final battle? Dozens of basic strategic options - and thousands choices on tactics. Will you prefer to raise power of single shot or ammo capacity? Range of sight or splash effect for your rockets? Stealth and traps or brute force and assault? Closer to the end of each match you'll get enough mods for your droid to make him an ultimate death machine of choice. And still you'll be vulnerable, remarkably outnumbered and outgunned in every mission. So you have to consider many steps forward. Always. And that's why I'm satisfied with that "small looking, gross bearing" tactical game. There are minuses, of course: - very basic visual part. No, it is not XCom or Jagged Alliance with destroyable 3d environment, that's top-down view rogue-like indie project. Surely not for DOTA kids who are filling about half of Steam auditory. - while it's quite easy to get along with, if you are in any way familiar with rogue-like games... finishing Bionic Dues even once can be very challenging and sometimes boring. - if you're an achievement hunter, that game is a disaster, for to make complete of this game, you'll need to invest Hundredz of Hourz. Not dozens, but hundreds hours of your precious time. And there will be no detailed video guides, like for the Civilization, "how to prosper on Deity". To get all 220 achievements, you'll need to master all combinations of battle classes, beating the game about 20-30 times in average. And except diversity of tactics related to these classes, the rest will be repeated again. And again. And again... - inventory, the part of the Bionic Dues, which makes it RPG-like, by selecting a combination of two dozens of attributes installed on your war machine... that's exactly the most boring part in the whole game. In the start, where you have about 5 spare parts, it's ok. But after 10-15 missions you'll be buried with dozens and even hundreds of items, from which you need to choose from. So many players get stacked and bored at this point! But after 20-30 hours of play you'll overcome it, hopefully. Managing one droid is much easier than all 4, and real challenge is where you making through with just one robot, not a squad of them. Pluses are less: - never ending challenge and need to think much forward - many different strategies, which always should be adapted to every mission - fantastic music! to the point where I can start a game not for playing, but just to hear that ambient again. Starting song is gorgeous! I can listen to it over and over again, for hours Overall, I would recommend Bionic Dues to all fans of turn-based tactical games and I would NOT recommend it for achievement hunters and casual players. This game may looks nice and cosy, easy like the most of the games for touch screens... But in fact it is a very engaging time-killer. 7.5/10 saved cities

I thought I'd put up a review for this really underappreciated little game. Developer Arcen Games makes wildly creative, deep, and eccentric genre-benders, the most celebrated of which is their asymmetrical space RTS/4x/tower defense, "AI Wars." AI Wars is clearly a great game, but somehow it's this one that I keep coming back to. Bionic Dues is Arcen's take on a "roguelike," but of course in proper Arcen style it is totally unique. Basically, it has a lot in common with a proper roguelike: you guide your characters through a series of procedurally generated dungeons. But there are a *lot* of interesting twists: - You have 4 characters, (which are actually some sort of mecha exoskeleton?) in any combination of "classes," but can only use one at a time, and it takes a turn to swap them out. - Loot and inventory customizaton is of primary importance. Each bot has *tons* of inventory slots, in several categories, and each class is different. Carefully poring over the hundreds of components you find, and optimizing their arrangement on each robot chassis, balancing your overall strategy, is the part of the game that I find utterly addictive. (It feels a lot like ship design in Gratuitous Space Battles, another of my favorites.) - There is a sort of top-level strategy layer linking the dungeons. In between runs, you re-arrange robot parts, and choose your next raid target based on likely risk/rewards and your overall position in the map, with a global counter ticking down to a final level full of particularly nasty enemies. - Understanding enemy AI and abilties is really important. There are a lot of enemy bot types, with simply-defined behaviors that are nevertheless complex in their interactions, and they appear in randomized combinations that can really change the way you approch a given dungeon. - The game can be played with a number of different difficulty options, and core gameplay modifiers like the addition of permadeath, ironman mode, and time-limits on turns. This really allows you to tweak the game to your liking; you can choose to allow save-scumming, seeking the perfect run, or you can make it a much more tense and chaotic affair. One thing that needs mentioning: a lot of the art assets are just awful-looking, especially on the strategy and inventory-management screens. To enjoy the game, you will have to be able to get over this, and see the item illustrations as purely functional conveyors of data. This works fine for me, but I'm sure it turns a lot of people off. Thankfully, I think the dungeon art is pretty nice-looking. Frankly, I also found the music and voices to be awful (though a lot of the sound design itself is pretty nice,) and I tend just turn it off and listen to my own music. Despite all the ugly warts, I keep coming back to this one. If you like procedural turn-based dungeon crawling, and find yourself spending a lot of enjoyable time comparing stuff on inventory screens, this might be a good one for you. I also like that it lends itself well to short play sessions; you can pop in for a quick dungeon or a bit of stat-crunching without feeling too committed. It's also a good game to have running in the background while you're doing something else, taking a turn now and then. All in all, this is a deep little game that's well worth its price tag - at the time of this writing, it's available at the ridiculous sale price of $1.99, and no roguelike fan should miss it.