Into The Breach game Review: A Mechanized Masterpiece
Into the Breach: incredibly effectiveOf course, when the creators of FTL: Faster than Light set to work on a new title, hopes and expectations are high, even a little excessive. We could then have been tempted to believe that the craze around Into the Breach, new baby of the duo of Subset Games, was more conditioned by the aura that released the previous game from the studio than for its intrinsic qualities. And yet no, it is not, Into the Breach is a nugget of the tactical game.
You might as well get away from the scenario ersatz posed by Into the Breach, which incidentally constitutes one of its weak points. The world has gone out, invaded by awkward bugs of the genre known as Veks. The pests in question have annihilated humanity, but fortunately, you are a time traveler at the head of a squad of Mechas capable of turning back to contain the invasion of insects which threaten the human race.
In short, nothing frankly interesting on this side, and if however you were put off at the idea of seeing a game only available in English, do not have too many worries, the narration is more than dispensable and the mechanics of gameplay are so visual and so simple to assimilate that one would come, during the first parts, to doubt their depth.
DO NOT BE FOOLED BY APPEARANCES
And yet, under its air of rudimentary play, Into the Breach is a tactical game of a depth which one does not perceive at first sight. What you should keep in mind once the first game has started is that the game is not so much an attack game as a defense and anticipation game. Far from being pampered in the mechanics of the turn-based tactical game, of which he nevertheless adopts the model, Into the Breach prefers to evacuate almost everything that is random to leave the player facing his own strategic choices.Finally, the concept of the game is simple: you have three units, each with special abilities, arranged at your discretion at the start of the game on a grid of 8 * 8 boxes. Your goal? Protect at all costs your "Grid Power", which symbolizes the "life bar" of your game during which you will have to secure different zones on at least two different islands before winning the final fight. Once arrived on a combat area, you can place your three mechs, each with a pilot on board, on a portion of the map, without first knowing the movements of the enemies, which is one of the rare doses of of Into the Breach. On the playing surface are located various buildings, civil or industrial, which must be protected at all costs, each assault made against them decreasing the gauge of the Grid Power which, if it drops to 0, is synonymous with game over. It is this first element that should be kept in mind constantly, it is better, in Into the Breach, to bet on the control of the damage than on the frantic attack.
To do this, the game does almost everything it can to never take you in a traitor and offers you a sufficiently rich action panel to allow you to protect the population as much as possible and thus advance further and further in the game. The first set of 3 mechas is made up of devices with complementary capacities: one will be mobile and powerful in close combat, the other will be able to shoot crosswise over the length and width of the card while the last will fire mortar allowing as much to inflict damage as to push the opponent adjacent to the point of impact one square. Each unit can move by a determined number of boxes and the only right to make mistakes for you Into the Breach lies in the possibility of canceling a move if however you have not concluded with a shot or even d '' cancel an entire lap in order to reset the counters to 0.
For their part, the enemies, which vary from one island to another and also depending on your level (each mecha driver can gain experience and also enhance the efficiency of their vehicle), have a large panel suddenly available to them. Some will be able to shoot from a distance, jump over an obstacle, canvas a unit to immobilize it, while passive units can, for example, boost the lives of opponents or cause them to cause a point of damage in each square adjacent to the position of their death. Each zone is completed in 5 turns and not one more. If there are still opponents alive during the last round, nothing serious, the Veks return to their burrow and you can move on to the next. If, on the other hand, all your Mechs are knocked down, you start from 0, losing on this occasion all the advantages relating to the pilots and vehicles accumulated so far. On the other hand, if your Grid Power gauge drops to 0, you keep your pilots, but will have to start again to secure each island to try to arrive at the final combat.
KNOWLEDGE CHOICES
You would be right to think, reading the previous few lines that Into the Breach did not invent hot water and that its concept could be limited. But in reality, its great strength, which gives it its depth, lies in the systematic indication of the actions that the Veks will perform in the next round, thus allowing you to anticipate your positioning for your next round. The Veks' attacks will be fixed no matter what: if for example a creature plans to hit a building two boxes from its position, choosing to send a Mecha to push it back could pay off since the impact zone will retreat with the enemy, which will allow his projectile to strike an empty area. Are two insects located side by side? Send a mortar fire to repel one so that it strikes his partner and at the same time begins his life bar. The friendly fire is here and it will often be appropriate to arrange to position the enemy units so that they kill each otherNote that depending on the island or area in which you are located, you will have (like the enemy) other assets, including environmental, to defeat your opponent. One card will be gradually flooded, while another will be regularly subjected to air raids. Again, the modification of the morphology of the map or the location of the air raid will be clearly indicated before it occurs in the next round. It is up to you to anticipate each of your actions in order to take advantage of any situation.
The hypnotic and rewarding thing about Into the Breach is that the player is never caught out. Everything is clearly indicated to him, from the order of passage of the creatures to the nature of their attacks. Thus, it is out of the question to be satisfied simply to send units to the fight without first having a head start and tried to preserve the balance between number of adversary to be defeated before being completely submerged and buildings to be protected for keep a full enough gauge to reach the end of the game. Not far from the game of chess, Into the Breach makes you a real tactician who must mature each action for a long time before passing his turn. There is not one element of the game that should not be taken into consideration before positioning your troops. Placing yourself systematically before calculated choices between risks and benefits, the game of Subset Games will also force you to show a certain sense of sacrifice since it will sometimes be largely preferable to concede a life point of a unit to block the appearance of a new opponent or prevent a shot from reaching a strategic building.
INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT OUTLOOK
In addition, each zone systematically has secondary objectives which will be almost mandatory if you want to boost your Mechs and recharge your Power Grid. Protecting an electric building from attacks will recharge your gauge with a bar, trying to finish the map with less than one or more damage will give you reputation points that you can spend once an island is finished, i.e. after having secured 5 zones and succeeded in a somewhat sturdier end fight. At this point, spend your points as you see fit: you can spend them to get new skills for your Mechs, but also to recharge one bar after another your Power Grid. In addition, elements attachable to Mechs can be randomly collected during combat, but also be purchased, in order to boost the life or movement of your devices, but also to generate enough energy to activate their secondary skills.Into the Breach: a formidable efficiencyInto the Breach: a formidable efficiencyInto the Breach: a formidable efficiency
Once done, you can move on to the next island. Once two of them are secure, several options are available to you and you are again faced with a difficult choice: the final zone, materialized by a volcano containing a fight in several phases, becomes immediately available. It is up to you to decide if it is better to go there immediately to try to finish the game, or if you do not prefer to secure one or both of the remaining islands to be better prepared for the assault, at the risk of losing Power Grid points or even Mechas doped with hormones.Ultimately, as you play and achieve predefined achievements clearly indicated by the game, you will have the opportunity to unlock new vehicle drivers, each with special abilities, but also new sets of mechanics, each with naturally its own gameplay. It is also quite admirable to note that each set is played in a very marked manner, some betting everything on the attack, while others will be more focused on the control of the field, by smoking certain boxes or certain enemies. for example. But things are not set in stone and perhaps you would prefer to mix different types of vehicles to perfect your strategy.
If you have arrived at this stage of the test, know that these few lines do not fully do justice to the pleasure taken to lead the securing of an island without any civil loss (which the game also knows how to reward) or to achieve one handful of clicks to save a situation that was thought hopeless. The moment of long reflection that precedes action is often delicious, especially when it ends with a succession of successful acts.
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