Cyber Knights: Flashpoint

The best developer support on Steam, bar none. (Plus, the tactical RPG I've always wanted!) If you enjoy X-COM or Shadowrun (or Tactical Turn-Based RPGs in general), buying Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is an absolute no-brainer. It delivers everything you want from those games, but without an impending doom timer breathing down your neck. I easily sank 50 hours into it in my first three days alone and felt like I had barely scratched the surface. The 70-Hour Save File Miracle recovery: After 70 hours of playtime, I accidentally deleted my auto-save, which completely wiped all of my progress and save games in one single click. I was devastated, bitter, and couldn't find a local database file anywhere... Enter the developers, the Trese Brothers. After reaching out, Andrew Trese went completely out of his way to manually locate my most recent save file on their side and emailed it to me in less than 24 hours. My 70-hour file is fully recovered, and I am right back where I left off. I have never had a game developer go to that kind of personal trouble for me. The fact that they are this supportive, while also actively pumping out massive content updates, makes them next-level creators. If you are on the fence about this title, buy it. Buy it for the deep tactical gameplay, and buy it to support absolutely amazing human beings. I'm going to buy their entire backlog now just to show the love.

Okay, so I'm comically old by the internet standards. I played the original X-COM around the time it came out, when I was a pre-teen. And even before I spoke English at any reasonable level of proficiency. X-COM was way ahead of its time, and still is to some degree (Y NO destructible environments, Cyber Knights?) when it comes to this fusion of (base) management and tRPG. The reboot just didn't do it for me. At all. A lot of what made X-COM special was dumbed down and simplified. And even the combat was kinda just traded in for something very similar, but flashier with its killcams and whatnot. I never finished it, because I got too bored by it. I did finish X-COM back in the day, and back then it wasn't my habit to finish games like it is today. So that means that X-COM was something very special. Jagged Alliance 3 evolved the outdated turn-based combat, but alas dropped the ball when it comes to the management part. I dare say that the management was better in JA2 that was released at the end of the 90s. Cyber Knights is legitimately the first game that I can say is the proper next step for the genre. The base management, and management in general is delightful. There's all these little systems that work behind the scenes both for and against you. You can have friends and enemies, with friends, of course helping you out, but with enemies actively trying to stifle your efforts by sending assassins after you during heists. The combat is spectacular. I for a long time avoided the turn-based genre because it became stale, but with JA3, Baldur's Gate 3 and now this, I must say that we live in a golden age revival era of turn-based games. The turn-based of today is much more dynamic and cerebral than it used to be. You're not just limited by moving once and attacking once anymore. You have a myriad of options before you. The central idea to make the combat be driven by the heist gives a number of very interesting mission scenarios, from freeing a prisoner, to hacking a mainframe, to assassinations, to well, a heist itself. The escalation mechanic synergizes beautifully with this philosophy. But don't forget to tune it to your liking as it can get quite brutal, punishing mistakes much more harshly. The RPG part of Cyber Knights is not just a skill tree, despite there being a good number of classes and the ability to mix and match them to one's heart's content. The story is driven by decisions the player has to make during dialogues, both major and minor. For instance, I was asked to perform a very vile task for one of the corpos, which I refused because it goes against my ethics. This inadvertently soured the relationship between us, pushing the contact towards the enemy end of the spectrum. Anyway, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is an exceptional game, driven by systems and their complexity. So if you're missing the feeling the original X-COM gave you, you really can't go wrong here. I give this game my utmost recommendation.

This game feels like the culmination of over a decade of tactical rpgs innovating upon each other, starting with XCOM (2012). There are no grids for movement and while I was initially wary of that, it works excellently here. You can multiclass, build better equipment, even get traits to improve yourself from certain missions. Second, the game has two gameplay styles, "loud" and "quiet". Loud is when you go in guns blazing and quiet is when you are stealthy. A lot of games, both real time and turn based have pretty bad stealth mechanics but not this one. You can mix stealth and combat as you wish. The devs described the gameplay as "pick two. Loud, quiet, speed." The sheer flexibility in how you can approach each mission is great to say the least. And then you can expend resources before even starting the mission to further boost your odds. This can range from increasing the quality and quantity of loot to boosting movement speed for a turn of your choice to blocking enemy reinforcements that spawn when you go loud. And then we come to the most innovative and yet controversial part of the game. The story. This game doesn't really have a single overarching storyline but smaller stories that are usually randomly assigned based on the background, history and skills of your units. Like one unit may randomly get a sibling who is a genius hacker and needs bailing out, and another who has a personal beef with a corporation and refuses to work with them getting a lead on a secret facility where they make unique weapons for you to steal. Some stories are entirely random and some are fixed to certain units. The game assigns tags in the background to each character, even npcs, and then dynamically assigns them storylines. For example, an npc who likes guns can be assigned a quest that lets them sell unique guns if you help them rise by working for them. And then have to save that same npc from death because an enemy npc sabotaged them because of your closeness. I probably made it sound more comprehensive than it is so let me clarify. This is possible in game but about the limits of what the engine does for now. But the devs have added almost a dozen new stories in just one year and apparently are still adding content to their previous game that is 8 years old??? So I expect things to get even better with time. And then there are Eras. Larger storylines that alter how the cyberpunk city your band of mercs operate in permanently. An example from my own playthrough. A scientist contacts me to intercept a transportation convoy and upload a virus. Then we learn this scientist is hiring us to sabotage her own corporation because she was sidelined from a project she was heading. And then we are later called to help her escape from there with her research. She betrays everyone, including us during this but ultimately becomes an ally of sorts. Now at the end of an era storyline with no relation to her, a gang war that was tearing the city apart, a neutral party is hired to set up a ceasefire treaty. The party being the corporation the scientist defected to, and they assign her the task of mediation. Now the story will unfold the exact same way with anyone else, one party's leaders are called in on false pretenses and killed, while the other party is kept in the dark because they are not trusted to not accidentally leak information. You basically screw over both to bring peace. But because the one arranging all this is a person we know has a habit of deception, it is wonderfully in character despite being procedural storylines with no intentional connection at all. Recommended, as a TRPG fangirl

I will start with the sidenote that the controller support is just play tedious and quite buggy. The rest of the game is technically pretty solid, but I started with a controller and was constantly having to grab the mouse to unstick myself. I ended up giving up and playing M+KB. Caveat Emptor. This being said, very good turn-based tactics game in the x-com genre. It's more in the AA or even A grade of production value, and the name is tacky as heck, but beyond that, it`s a solid game with good depth and solid gameplay. The universe is very nice and rich, tapping deeply the cyberpunk and "shadowrun without magic" IPs. In many ways, it's the game I wish the shadowrun series was at the character and combat level, but the story here is thinner and partly procedurally generated. I took 95h for a first playthrough, which is good value for the price. The replay value is questionable though, as I feel there's mostly one right way to play (see below), but the stories are diverse enough to support it. I'm fine with one playthrough. If you like the genre and the universe and don't mind less production value (no flashy cutscenes, no voice, etc.), then I would be surprised if you don't enjoy this. --- So what is the "right" way to play you mentionned: The game rewards stealth gameplay (heat, objectives, injuries, etc.) which can be a turn off, but here it's not just "don't be seen" and stealth can take the form of "brutally murder anyone who's seen you before they can report", which honestly is a lot more flexible and fun. However, later in the game, heavily armored enemies dominate the roster, and killing with silenced weapons which won't alert the whole map becomes difficult. There are a few ways to deal with heavy armor, but in the non-noisy category, there's really only 1: swords. So 2xAgent-Cybersword, CB-Cybersword main, and the hacker. Everyone focus on reaction stat and movement boosts. It rips through everything and all other options feel suboptimal. There are more options if you go loud, and a few pure dmg smg appeared late which were nice, but overall, it's fighting against the tide.

As a fan of XCOM games and of the Cyberpunk genre, this game has been a blast so far. The mechanics enable a variety of play styles, endless character class builds and the cosmetic builder for characters allows you to have a diverse roster of choombas to take on any mission in style. The hacking system is unique and adds an extra layer of optional complexity. The random events make the game's world feel alive, with contacts popping up to offer tasks and members of your roster having affiliations or beef with certain gangs and corps, that impact their attitude toward missions. The devs also care about the game and its community, with fast responses to feedback and even quicker fixes to any bugs that arise. Absolute recommend from me!

This is one of the better turn-based tactical RPG games I have played. It's very much a blend of games like XCOM with a cyberpunk motif. Instead of defending against an alien invasion, you're a titular Cyber Knight working with a team of mercenaries to complete heists. Your ultimate objective is to retire after amassing enough renown, wealth and ability. Exactly how you and your team get to that point is up to you. There's a lot of opportunities for stealth versus pure combat; you're rarely forced to play through a mission in a way you don't want to. Whether you want to slowly creep through, or rush in and tear up those in your way, you will be able to build a team that does it well. It's by no means a [i]perfect[/i] game - the graphics are simple for this era, you'll end up seeing a lot of maps and dialog on repeat, and it doesn't quite generate the same attachment to your troops that other games in the genre can manage. Extra bonus points for the devs being active and accessible. I didn't encounter a lot of major glitches, but the few I did report were handled quickly along with direct communication from the development team. Issues get resolved, not just noted and logged for all eternity. They're involved with their community and their product in a way that isn't common nowadays, and I hope their approach never changes. It's a steal at twice the price.

I'm still in the early days but this game gives strong modern XCOM vibes with a ton of content (classes, skills, etc). Shout out to the devs who are pushing out updates constantly and are active on the forums.

The game scratches the XCOM itch like no other. I would argue it does many things better than XCOM mechanically and it allows for true stealth unlike XCOM 1 and 2. It has a lot of mechanics that took some time to figure out and it also took me some time to figure out how to best execute stealthy runs. But once it clicked it got me hooked hard. True stealth will be kinda hard initially until you get characters like Vanguard and Scourge in your team, so get those. The game does lack a bit a bit when it comes to overall presentation compared to XCOM. There is no voice acting and model variety is sometimes a bit lackluster. But since the gameplay itself is so good that doesn't matter much to me. Sounds could also a bit punchier in my opinion. The devs also seem to still add content regularly with free updates so that's great. Overall a great game if you enjoyed XCOM, like Cyberpunk aesthetics, and want a bit more stealth in your experience.

So I get the developers are constantly adding updates and have good communication, which is great, and I loved their previous game startraders frontiers (clocked hundreds of hours). Unfortunately this game falls short. Fundamentally, there's so few ways to progress or solve issues/missions you are forced to play in certain ways, and because of the tedious starting missions, you can't treat it like a roguelike as there's a significant time investment to "restart" (unlike startraders). If you hate the hacking minigame (which I do) it basically completely kneecaps you in being able to progress, and even some character plotlines/quests become unfinishable, meaning if you want to be successful (without having lots of characters dying) then you HAVE to make sure you level up and have good hackers. For comparision, in startraders, there are so many ways once could approach a mission, and because you can build a crew that meets your needs relatively quickly, you have the capability of solving any challenge with enough experience and prep. Here if your hacker needs to repair their deck, or is incapacitated/dead, etc you're completely f-d. While I admit I haven't fully explored the possibilities of the game as much as star traders, as far as I could discern, there was no real way for me to hire a new hacker to make up the manpower shortage. This basically invites savescumming and makes hardcore/single save playthroughs deeply unsatisfying, as there's no tactical or strategic reward (no way to plan), you either have the luck of hiring the class you need, or you don't and you're screwed. Of course, you can multiclass a character to hacker to make up the difference, but in the end you just have a sub-par hacker which makes the minigame even ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to play and less fun. If there was an option to actively recruit the classes you want in a timely and non-frustrating manner, OR a way to solve various problems through more than one means (e.g have the options to solve a problem either through hacking, or a "go-in-hot". Get rid of ONLY hacking missions) then this would definitely make the game much less frustrating and more satisfying to play.

我是看了更新中文的预告购买的这个游戏，但是你们并未信守更新中文的承诺。