Most of you have probably heard of the old mantra “don’t judge a book by its cover.” It basically means that you shouldn’t make a decision without knowing anything about whatever you’re making a decision on. Well, I have an expansion on this mantra: “don’t recommend a video game until after you’ve beaten the entire campaign.” After all, a game can start off promising, or even good, but it can devolve to the point of being unrecommendable at any point afterward, and the game I beat today is yet another reminder of this fact.

• Frozen Synapse
  

  34 hours playtime

  6 of 16 achievements

This game is a hybrid between turn-based tactics and real-time strategy. During your “PLANNING PHASE,” all of your units and the enemy’s units will be stationary, and this is when you place way-points for your units, tell them which enemy units to avoid/focus on, etc. Once you “PRIME” (end) your turn, you’re shown the “OUTCOME,” where your units and the enemy’s units move in real time for 5 seconds before the game pauses and it goes back to the “PLANNING PHASE.” Since you can’t interact with your units during the real-time parts, the game-play isn’t about reacting to the enemy’s moves, but about anticipating them, and it works really well! I actually thought I’d be able to recommend a game unconditionally again. The game even lets you place way-points for enemy units so you can see what would happen if an enemy unit moves in a certain way and plan your turn around it (priming your turn overwrites these way-points for whatever the game wants the enemy to do, of course).

However, even at the beginning of the game, metaphorical cracks started to show themselves. My first big issue with the game was that the in-game tutorial only covers the basic controls; it doesn’t even cover how priming your turn works (which is half the game, and why I lost my first unit) or what all the different unit types do. What’s the difference between a machine gun unit and a shotgun unit? Which one is effective against the other, and in which situations? Oh, but the tutorial does cover how a shield unit works, even though said unit never shows up in the campaign at all.

The second issue I had with the game is how it handles reinforcements. If you read my post about Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, you’d know that game had subtle indicators where reinforcements would show up. Not only does this game not have any indicators where reinforcements show up, they don’t even show up at the end of turns, which can result in a unit being killed unfairly (and that’s how I lost my second unit).

EDIT: Oh, on top of your units and enemy units, the game will sometimes have ally units, though these units don’t offer much help. In fact, during one of the first missions that had ally units, one of the “ally” rocket launchers shot a rocket right at one of my units, killing it on the first turn. With allies like that, who needs enemies?

Despite those issues, the game still managed to be fun for a while. As for what really took away from the experience…well, the campaign has five unit types, two obstacle types, and four mission types (though most missions are the “kill all enemy units” type), and the developers somehow hoped to spread this out over a campaign that lasts over 30 hours. On paper, this could still work, assuming the levels were all carefully designed to provide a consistent difficulty curve (and make up for the lack of unit tutorials). Unfortunately, the devs opted instead to make the levels randomized; if you lose a map, the map is randomized again. Sure, there may be a few constant landmarks for specific missions, and sure, the number and type of units each side has are consistent, but the majority of obstacle placement and even unit placement is random. In theory, this randomness would force players to think of new strategies instead of just trying to brute-force levels, but when the randomness is combined with the lack of content mentioned previously, its easy to see how the game stagnates and becomes repetitive long before the campaign is over. You might think the game could still try to increase difficulty by giving the enemy side more units (as that’s pretty much the only option left for a difficulty curve at this point), but the game does do that…sporadically, throughout the entire campaign. Being outnumbered does begin to become more consistent by the end of the game, but by that point, it’s nothing new and doesn’t result in anything more difficult than what the player has already experienced in the game.

Oh, and for as much faith as the devs put into this randomization aspect, it can still get units stuck in walls:

Oddly enough, the game does have a bit more than the little bit of content mentioned in the last paragraph, but they are things that only ever show up once. The shield unit only shows up in the shield unit tutorial (and maybe the multiplayer). One mission introduces lasers that trigger explosions when a unit moves in front of them (and, of course, the game liked putting enemy units directly on top of said lasers). Later on, around the 20 hour mark, a new unit was introduced, though it was just a faster version of an already existing unit, and it only showed up during those three missions (and once during the endgame). Right before the endgame, there’s a defend mission that only lasts one turn, but said turn has been stretched out to 50 seconds rather than the usual five, and the map isn’t randomized. Of course, due to the length of the turn and its sudden appearance, you’ll probably end up failing on your first attempt (and having to wait out the outcome of that whole turn is a test of patience).

The endgame also tries a few new things, but this is where the game really begins to fall apart, almost literally. For the first mission of the endgame, you’re told you have to get a unit to a certain location in 10 turns, but what sets this mission apart from previous ones is 1) this unit is separated from all other units, 2) this unit’s side of the map isn’t randomized, and 3) the snipers on this side of the map are programmed to rotate clockwise rather than act along the lines of the game’s usual AI. However, this map has a few problems. First, it’s another mission that has reinforcements, and nothing has been done to make them have any semblance of being fair. Second, reinforcements have more triggers than simply which turn it is (unlike previous missions), so this mission shifts genres and becomes a moon-logic puzzle where you have to figure out what triggers the reinforcements and how to avoid being killed by them. Third, if a reinforcement unit isn’t killed in two turns, it just straight up disappears. Plus, if you try to place way-points for an enemy reinforcement that’s about to disappear, the game crashes (although the game still remembers where your units were after the crash, at least). Oh, and to top it all off, the game lies to you; you only have five turns to win. It’s the only explanation for how I lost the mission twice despite my target unit still being alive.

The very last mission, which is a “get a unit to this point” mission, also goes for that puzzle aspect by having a large, nonrandomized structure with static enemy placements, and even going so far as to have the enemy outright say that there’s a pattern to the movement of the hostile units. This one is much fairer than the last mission I mentioned because it doesn’t have reinforcements and doesn’t crash. However, it still isn’t much fun since 1) your unit placement and the surrounding structures are still randomized, and 2) the solution seems to be “camp out for a few turns to take out units who walk into your path, then make a run for it.” (and camping out = waiting = boring = not fun). Plus, I encountered another bug on this mission: I had a unit move past an opening on one turn, and said unit lived, so I placed way-points and primed my turn, only for the outcome to show said unit dead. When I watched the replay of the previous turn, it showed said unit getting shot by a hostile unit, something that didn’t happen when that turn initially played out.

Overall, even though this game is fun to play at first, it’s hard to recommend. Even if you think you can deal with the game’s stagnation, the endgame’s sudden shift in genre and overall bugginess will surely test your patience. Even if you’re still interested, I say wait for a sale (specifically, an 80-90% off sale).

P.S. I am interested to know if there are other games in this genre that don’t suffer from the same issues as this game.

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(mood music)

THE NEXT STORY!

WHEN A YOUNG BOY FALLS INTO A CAVE FILLED WITH MONSTERS, HE BECOMES FAMOUS! LIKE, REALLY FAMOUS!

COMING NEXT SCENE:

“DETERMINATION”