SteamWorld Heist II Reviews

great sequal. estimating triple the content of first. worth picking up. a good chill game to play. Works great on Steam Deck

The first Steamworld Heist I played completely blind on a random night 8 years ago and layed the path for me to fall in love with indie and AA games from then on out. The second Steamworld Heist is not only on the same level as the first but surpasses it in nearly everyway, this game is awesome. Gameplay, story, character writing and music are out of this world (well done Steam Powered Giraffe). Story plot twists also deserve credit for being very well hidden. The visuals also got a massive improvement and whilst I was a bit unsure about the new water theme, it ended up being a lot better then the original space theme. The mechanics are added like the overworld, ship fighting, upgrades and bounty systems also help to flesh out the experience. HOWEVER, this game has the most unbalanced difficulty settings I've seen in the past 10 years so be prepared to play on easy mode and for difficulty spikes out of nowhere. Thankfully the new difficulty sliders and no difficulty based achievements are a step up from the first game and help to even things out. Other then that this game is absolutely solid and only makes me love these type of classic, well made single player games even more in the indie scene. Well worth the full price

Great game! Loved the turn based combat. I do wish there were more variations of the bosses. There were only two unique bosses which was a let down especially for a sequel. The class system was a bit lacking especially trying to do different class combos. Maybe devs can add more classes in the future. The story was great!

The last attempt of the original Steamworld team to make a great game - and it falls as flat as diving chest first onto a river. The gameplay of this game, in theory, is great. The customization is brilliant and really fun to play with, and it's really interesting trying other weapons to upgrade your stats and get more skills that you can mix & mash together. However, the sheer amount of enemies in every area after the first, especially in the late game, forces you to only play aggressively. This leaves you with only a few options to kill the enemies, as up to 5 of them can spawn in a single turn on the easiest difficulty (8+ on just the Veteran difficulty). This makes the gameplay way less interesting and just a kill or be killed scenario where you have to either rush and ignore every enemy or either gun everyone down in a single turn since you grinded, because, yes, you will have to grind in order to not die, or get killed in a single turn since 10 enemies ganged up on your engineer and now they cannot even move an inch. Plus, the characters don't TLDR, there is too many enemies and even if the leveling system is really interesting the only skills that are useful late game are the ones that allow infinite kills, as otherwise you get killed in a single turn. The story was also a big marketing aspect of this game, and it just falls flat. The main character and focus of the game isn't even playable until a very small and boring segment before the last area of the game and the very last mission of the game. The problem is, the main crew -the one who actually do the pirating and stealing- has no plot significance other than automatically being best friends with the main character right when they meet. The worst part is, the other main focus of the story, the toxic water, literally does not appear in the game before the final zone AND EVEN THEN it's very badly implemented. Over the course of the story, we keep hearing about how the water is deadly and toxic and dangerous to the people, and how they can't afford or find the water, however we never see this in action. People talk about it, but in no way we see this corruption and dangerousness in the gameplay or even just game world other than dialogue. And even the gameplay inclusion of the toxicity in the last zone doesn't reflect the impact it has in the story as it only provides a temporary effect that can easily be removed in a single turn. We never get to see someone affected by this so called threat and thing that could, in the story, kill every steambot on this island. TLDR, The story is totally disconnected from the main gameplay and we never get to see its impact on it, alongside the biggest threat of the game not being anywhere in the game, only mentioned and not encountered. The thing I dislike the most about this game is how it doesn't understand the original Steamworld Heist. Heist 1 had a clear message about overthrowing the government, how revolution can lead to a brighter future and how communities / friendships can help shape your own person, where has Heist 2 doesn't say anything. The best part of Heist 2 is when elements from the first entry are brought back. Late game spoiler but in the last act of the game, some characters reveal themselves to be Piper and Fen. You can have a long dialogue with them where they tell you where is their crew now. This is the best part of the game, since I had an attachment to the first game's crew. Even if I grew up with Heist 1, this isn't nostalgia, as I replayed Heist 1 a month before Heist 2 released. Heist 1 put in the time and energy to make you love its crew, where as Heist 2 only cares about 1 character who has no major role in the gameplay and even when he's there it is extremely boring. The story being so disconnected from the main game weakens everything in the game. And even then the story is just not interesting. It could've easily made a point about how more privileged demographics (in this case the Diesel bots) often use their powers to kill off the people they find to be problematic, either from racism or bigotry, but instead it only blames the big bad evil guy who has barely any buildup. This game doesn't say anything with what it has. I really wanted to love Heist 2. I tried overlooking its flaws for a while, but this game is a sequel that doesn't understand how to connect a story and its gameplay. This is the most corporate Steamworld has ever felt. I tried giving Thunderful a last chance after their two last mediocre steamworld games, but I think this was the last straw for me.

Finished the game on 7/20/2025. I loved it, spent like 80 hrs (some of them are afks, lol). It's still worth to play in 2025! Can't wait till the next steam heist game.

Here are my thoughts after a couple of completions. It's a pretty good sequel. My only complaint is that the over world combat has too large of an effect on how much money you have to spend. It feels like you have to spend 10 minutes between each mission clearing out the large enemy ships. The build diversity is great and lower leveled special weapons can still be useful or even better depending on your build. For a challenge run you can complete the entire game using a single character, even on the hardest difficulty, although it does take some grinding. For missions that require you to bring multiple characters just leave them by the entrance or hide them in a corner.

It is what I hoped it to be. The upgrade to Steamworld Heist in pretty much every way. More characters, a leveling system, more weapons to explore, more enemies to beat, more levels to play and I think the soundtrack is better too. Besides the round-based battling through levels there is some world map to navigate and some challenges tied to that. Though I folund the controls a bit meh it was still entertaining. On hardest difficulty it proved to be an acceptable challenge, didn't get stuck too long on any level but didn't feel so easy like I could turn my brain off. Big Challenges can be easened and overcome if it should be too hard by leveling and buffing your caracters up. Or just change the difficulty, if I remember correctly you can simply change it on the fly.

Great game, overworld navigation got dulled really fast but otherwise everything else is fantastic I will write down the things I disliked/I can constructively criticize: -Overworld navigation was cool at first but as soon as the novelty wears off it just feels like a waste of time, especially navigating between special shops or between regions, I can also see it being absolute hell if you are playing on a harder difficulty than I did and just having to grind and spend a lot of time just travelling instead of actually playing the game, to make things worse, unless you reduce the cost of credit rewards, you are sort of incentivized to fight and find the same artifacts over and over again just to stack up bounty credits which is not fun at all. They should have at least added some sort of quicktravel between taverns/special shops just to deal with this. -Skill tree system in general is fun at first, but I felt like in most cases I ended up picking up the same skills and passives in almost every character making almost everyone just feel the same outside of outliers like brawler builds, also having to grind each class for each character just felt extremely annoying, which got exacerbated even further with what I stated above with the overall navigation. -Alarm system felt annoying, honestly I turned it all the way down very early into the game but I can't imagine how insane it would be on normal or even hard, sometimes, especially on much later levels, the reinforcements are absolutely insane, especially when they spawn an immune shield generalbot in the middle of fucktown nowhere making everyone invulnerable. -Would have liked if all Boomer weapons had an indicator of AoE, making you guess in a lot of situations whether it's gonna hit enemies or not. -Story was cute but eh, I really don't pay much attention to steamworld story in general so I can't say much

I played through the entire game, and overall I liked it. There’s a lot to appreciate, but also some things that held it back for me. What I liked: == The visuals and effects are fantastic — the art style is gorgeous and fits the world perfectly. Music is great too. == The addition of the world map is great — it adds some nice strategy and makes the game feel more alive, especially with enemy ships roaming around. == The final boss fight was epic — genuinely intense and well-designed. ==Lots of mechanical depth — tons of weapon and ability combos, and different strategies you can build your crew around. It’s satisfying to experiment. What I didn’t enjoy: == Very repetitive gameplay. After a while, every mission feels the same: go in, shoot stuff, get out. There’s not enough variation in objectives or environments. == The alarm system gets annoying fast. Early in the game, it can cause you to fail missions very easily, even if you’re playing carefully. == Difficulty is unbalanced. The start of the game is tough, but by the end, it becomes way too easy. Once you have a good team setup, most missions are a breeze — only the final boss and maybe a few late-game missions stand out. == Lack of challenge near the end takes away from the satisfaction of progressing. Final Thoughts: I do recommend the game — especially if you liked the first one or enjoy turn-based tactics. Just don’t expect it to be groundbreaking or consistently exciting throughout. A solid game, not a must-play. 7/10 from me.

I really wanted to enjoy this after loving the first, but this sequel feels more frustrating than fun. Missions constantly push you to rush or get swarmed by enemy spawns and alarms. The pacing and tactical control just aren't there anymore.