Worth a look!
2 Likes
So… large mechs fight off giant alien monsters?
Welp, I’m sold. FTL was fantastic.
2 Likes
Same I thought. And FTL is one of the very few game I couldn’t beat despite putting my best into it! RNJesus is not kind with me.
2 Likes
to be fair, RNJesus couldn’t save you 99.9% of the time in FTL. Never stopped me from playing it though, probably the only rogue-like where I repeatedly said “oh now that’s just BS” but still kept playing anyway 
Oh! That’s me playing FTL you just described!
There’s a few techniques you could employ in FTL that really boosted your chances.
Spoiler alert:
One example is: Get a transporter really early and as many Mantis crew as possible. Use the Mantis crew to teleport onto ships and kill off their crew. That increases the loot yield and helps you get better weapons quicker.
RNJ cares not for your strategy lowly space ship captains!
Even having done that I think I might have won once in @50 hours of gameplay and that was on easy if i get enough to execute that part of the plan i never have enough to defend myself, if i can defend and attack, i can’t teleport the crew, RNJ is so cruel despite his wink and smile
2 Likes
Good deal on Into the Breach. I’m curious about it, but the rogue-like nature of FTL sort of kicked my butt. Anyone got it? It looks like a mini Advanced Wars sort of deal.
You get a FTL key with this as well, which is good if you haven’t got it…
So I bought this on the GOG.com sale. Not a huge discount, but the game had interested me the last time I saw it, anyway.
I’ve logged between 1 and 2 hours of play so far. Played on EASY mode, and completed the first of four islands (clearing 5 maps). This is shaping up to be exactly what I hoped.
The game looks very thin, going in. There is no manual, and only a passing glance at a tutorial. A sense of concern about having wasted $12 set in, but it was unfounded (IMO). The brief instruction gave me what I needed to dive in head first and start having some really good play.
Each map creates a sort of chess board, with not only the friendly and enemy units as playing pieces, but also nearly every part of the terrain, too. The gameplay provides a steady flow of player choices, starting with which battlefield I want to play (based on it’s rewards), the drop zone, and how and where I choose to damage enemies, and often more importantly, where I choose to leave the enemies (by pushing them with impacts and explosions) when their turn begins, forcing the to suffer collateral damage.
Often, the map becomes a series of choices of “lesser evils”. Choosing whether I’d prefer to suffer damage on a friendly unit, against the map’s power grid (which is my life-line), or a secondary objective (which costs me the very bonuses I choose the map to earn). There are many things I want to do while playing a map, but I usually don’t have enough actions to do them all.
Then after completing an island, I can shop/trade for weapons and equipment for my mech team. I have choices in what weapons I mount, and which weapons or performances aspects I enhance on each mech. On one map, a Time Capsule crash landed, and I recovered it. A pilot from the future had come back in time, and brought some mech upgrades with him. I can use both the pilot in my team, and the parts on my mechs… if I prevent them from being destroyed by the enemy during that map!
All together, it comes together as a solid experience for me. But be warned… This is a game about losing. Mistakes and my choices of lesser-evil add up with each map, and I can see where the threat of failure is going to be ever present. There is some forgiveness. After a move action which doesn’t leave me in a good place to fire, there are infinite “Undo Move” actions. But firing can’t be un-done. And once per map, there is a “Reset” option which sets the current turn back (via time travel) for when things have really not gone well.
The gameplay has minimal RNG. I can see every enemy attack pending, before their turn, and I work to either prevent or redirect those attacks to suit my purposes. The game does offer surprises, however. Where enemies will spawn, what type, where they will move or attack the following turn. There is also a bit of RNG bonus as sometimes the enemy will attack a building, but the building will withstand the attack (and I can increase the odds of this). But at the end of a map, when I messed up, it was my fault. Never bad luck.
When the game does end in failure, one lucky mech pilot can be put into a Time Capsule, and sent back in time with his earned experience for the next play. But it looks like everything else, the upgraded weapons, and mech stats… All of that is wiped when the game ends.
This isn’t doesn’t seem as bad as I imagined, though, since playing through a game is relatively short. I’m completing a map in 10 to 20 minutes. Maybe one or two maps per play session, then I save and quit. The entire campaign of 4 islands will be a modest time investment, and customizing my mech team is a good bit of the fun along that play time. It’s looking like the “wiped” customization progress will actually turn into a good thing, letting me make different choices on what and how I upgrade.
It almost feels like sitting down with a board game, where I’ll setup and play a few hours to completion. Then next game, it’s fresh from the box for another run.
Anyway, I’m glad I bought this.
4 Likes
A final followup:
My first campaign is over. Time the game logged was 4 hours, 1 minute, 57 seconds. Two islands cleared.
While clearing the 2nd of 4 islands, my mech team had some ups and downs. Firstly, I made great headway on increasing my power grid strength, and upgrading my mech weapons (adding stuff such as dash-mele, aerial support strike, and emergency repairs). All of these really upped my team’s firepower, plus some mobility and health buffs I added here and there.
There were a few stumbles, trading the loss of a few cities on my power grid for key objectives. The biggest downer was my own misunderstanding of how an enemy attack would play out. As a result, I left one of my damaged mechs exposed to enemy fire, and it’s human pilot was killed. Her loss was sad, she had some good experience and useful skills.
Moving to island 3 of 4, again further upgrades and almost 100% power grid, plus 21% chance of buildings on the power grid withstanding damage. The first 3 maps on this island went great. The 4th map I lost half my power grid, as I labored to keep the mission objectives alive.
Up next was the “boss battle”. The enemy was attacking the HQ on the island, and off we went. My mechs faced a pair of flying enemies that dealt a 3 space path of high damage… Every turn. Half of my turn efforts were spent on spoiling these attacks (both by pushing the enemies with blast damage, and dropping smoke barrages around the HQ.
Finally I had the key badguy exactly where I wanted him. A one-two blow for the kill (scoring mission objective). But I snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, getting too tricky on my play. This battle had left me down to ONE link on my power grid, and my last move resulted in ONE measly weak bad guy scoring the ONLY shot of the final turn… Which of course killed my last power grid link.
Game over.
Still, my power grid was so weakened by the end, even if I hadn’t goofed my last move, I don’t know how long I could have lasted on the final island.
I selected my mech pilot with the most advantageous skill set (a human) and sent him back in time, in a capsule for my next play. The two droid pilots of my other mechs, lost in time.
Two solid thumbs-up.
3 Likes