Into the Breach Reviews

This game is slick. Polished, challenging, deep and highly replayable. Has seen many AAA come and go in an out of my library, but this mini beast never gets uninstalled. Deserves much praise, a no-brainer really.

I usually despise turn-based strategy games (and mechs) but this is really fun. You basically have different squads of mech and pilots you can pick on a run, you go through 2-4 islands in any order and your goal is to stop these insect aliens from taking out the power grid and ending humanity. But on top of that, you have optional missions each level which can give you some really good upgrades. The only flaw imo is sometimes RNG makes it impossible to survive or clear a mission on the Unfair difficulty. ...And the rage you'll experience after almost getting a Perfect Island only to mix up which unit should move/attack first (or which one causes collateral damage). You get 1 free 'Reset turn' and you'll spend 100% of your brain power for 10 minutes using it on 1 complicated chain of attacks, only to mess up and abandon timeline.

The game basically gives you a ton of information and then allows you to approach it in many ways. Map layouts and bonus objectives are revealed before you can choose to do a level, the attack order of enemies are shown, information of every enemy and tile is provided and is very thorough, and you have some control on where your units start on a level. Besides having tons of abilities and mechs to choose from, there are tons of ways to deal with problems. For ex, instead of killing an enemy just from pure damage, you can: - Make a different enemy commit friendly fire - Push them to something solid (a mountain, an enemy or an ally to take collision damage) - Set the tile under them on fire - Push them into water - Use objective-relevant units (tons of ways they can kill or help) - Push them into an about-to-emerge enemy - Make the actively changing environment kill them (meteors, air strikes, volcanoes) It is kinda strange to me that advanced content can be turned off in the first place

You can use the ~ console command "undoturn" to reset a turn as many times as you want. Then the game is a nice puzzle.

Would I recommend this game? yes. Do I like the mechanics? yes. Are there some bullshit moments that ruin the game? yes. I really try to love the game, but sometimes you get in impossible scenarios where you're forced to take hits that you don't think you should. You always get the second turn, you almost always feel like you're on the back foot, and it just feels like every fight is a struggle. I like the game but it's just frustrating 99% of the time. I like playing difficult games but it just get tiring after a short bit.

Really didn't end up being my thing - I was looking for mecha and this really didn't have anything but the faintest whiff of it. Could've been magical girls or wizards or wrestlers or pretty much anything else, because it's essentially a logic puzzle. Basically, you push/bodyblock a bunch of massive bugs to rearrange them like furniture so they don't blow up a series of buildings/objectives with telegraphed attacks (oh, except for the one where they tie something down the instant they spawn and move - very fun when it's several of 'em). I'd imagine this kind of thing surfacing if someone held a few guys at gunpoint and forced them to code some weird sokoban tie-in for Pacific Rim. If that's what you were looking for - especially if you're coming here from something like Last Spell/Shotgun King/Tactical Breach Wizards - look no further. Consider this a glowing endorsement or maybe even a saltpost - you're probably gonna have a much better time than me. Personal high points: the occasional "change da world"-y pilot death messages at tenser points and the buildings full of civvies cheering you on when you don't let them get bulldozed by kaiju. Actually, the pilot/civvie barks in general - they really did glue the whole thing together for me.

I only have 9 hours on record for Steam but I have significantly more on my Switch, and this is hands down one of my favorite turn based strategy games. It scratches an itch I didn't know I had. The game takes place on an 8x8 board, much like chess, and a lot of the moves are chess-like. I don't know how to explain it but it's an extremely fun experience. I didn't know I needed a roguelike mech strategy game but here we are. Really no complaints, I think I can give it a 10/10 tbh. The only people I wouldn't recommend it for are those that want something to turn their brain off for. I'll spend as long as 5 minutes on a single turn trying to analyze how I can play my cards right to complete an objective and not sacrifice any citizens. The stakes and "between a rock and a hard place" situations it puts you in creates a very engaging challenge so yeah, grab it on sale and enjoy! Now I play it on my Steam Deck, it's a fantastic Steam Deck title.

(9/10) What if XCOM, but chess? That to me seems like the defining through-line here. Its got very solid tactical game-play and near endless replay-ability with a ton of different squads to try out each with different and unique mechanics. The big seller here though is all the RNG is mitigated. Essentially every turn you have full knowledge of how the *NEXT* AI turn is going to play out and you can react accordingly giving you a much more chess-like strategic feeling where luck is very very distant and always mitigatable as every single action you perform is entirely deterministic given the units in play and the board layout of each turn. The graphics are pleasingly pixel art vibed, the sound track is never offensive, and gives a somewhat pensive and thoughtful air to each match, and the story is decent if a little bit on the thin side. Truly excellent through and through and anyone who likes tactical turn based combat should give this one a try especially to see just how well you can do a game of this style without falling back to RNG() to provide challenge or 'excitement' like so many previous entries in this genre can.

Into the breach is a turn-based tactical game where each battle is on a very small scale. Each run consists of multiple battles with one culminating battle at the end of the run, where your units progressively become better with purchased upgrades. My opinion on this game is mixed. This is undoubtedly a very polished game, each unit and ability is useful and the combination of units works well overall. However this game is very abstract in its nature. The setting and story are absolutely minimal, the only purpose of a run is to complete a run for its own sake (and because it’s challenging). When I think of this game, I think of a sudoku. Each battle is somewhat of a puzzle because the number of possible actions is quite limited but only a few moves are essentially good. This is different from other tactical games I played (and enjoyed), where the number of possible actions is much higher. Having a diverse pool of actions is (for me) an important aspect of a tactical game because it allows for very creative solutions and this is where the fun is. Into the breach is not as fun in this regard. Some people never get bored of sudoku and enjoy sudoku for the sake of it, and similarly some players will enjoy replaying lots of runs of into the breach for the sake of it because the gameplay loop is well refined. As for me, I didn't feel like it.

Clever puzzle game. For fans of Advance Wars, Disgaea Unfortunately, there is no fixed campaign. It is rogue-like, and that means every run of the game is different. The AI is overtuned for each difficulty, which also often means you will often find yourself in game states which are completely unwinnable through no fault of your own, and no strategy or clever thinking can prevent a loss and run reset. Due to the roguelike nature, you'll often find yourself in unique tactical positions, where you wonder if a particular maneuver will work or not, but you'll not actually be able to test, and reload a save if it doesn't work, and so you have to restart from square 0 all over agin. Why can't games just do proper level design anymore, and stop with this randomly generated crap. As much as I dislike rogue-like design, the developers don't deserver a thumbs down on their game. So I will rate it thumbs up for the steam review, but thumbs down for the particulars and details. 10/10. I hate the roguelike nature and the constant run resets, no saved progress, and no trial an error. You should buy it. But get it on sale. If you like tactics games, this is one of the best... but only on a per level basis, and not in the context of the whole package. 1/10.