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 Jagged Alliance 3 evolved the outdated turn-based combat, but alas dropped the ball when it comes to the management part.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.

I love, hate, and have some "meh" feeling about some minor stuff. I love it more than I hate it, going by the positive review, playtime, and my easy recommendation for fans of X-COM, Shadowrun, Jagged Alliance, and other similar turn-based tactics games in general. =========== WHAT I LOVE: =========== The moment to moment of the tactical stealth/combat is superbly fun, engaging and rewarding. This is the high peak of this game. I really like the gridless design that dictates movement, shooting and skill usage. Most classes are fun and balanced (for the most part). Another highlight here is being able to move stealthily (with enemies reacting accordingly, breaking LoS, noise making, relaying information, etc) delivers on something that X-COM lacks, which is the feeling of actually infiltrating a map and realistically avoiding or being detected in intuitive and fun ways. Doing those heists, even when the maps begin to repeat, even after the mission types and dialogue begins to repeat was fun and carried the whole 90+ hours of gameplay for me, which speaks volumes to what these indie devs accomplished, because overall I think they nailed this most important part of the game. =========== WHAT I HATE: =========== The HQ/homebase/hideout management gameplay is straight up poorly thought out, and throws at you a ton of s numbers and stats, which while at first may seem like a ton of depth, density and interactivity, but in the end are actually all meaningless. It boils down to 4 problems (all strongly related to each other): weak goal structure, bad (and over-stretched) pacing, ludo-narrative dissonance, inconsequential micro progression. 1) Weak Goal Structure: This game severely lacks an overall story/narrative objective or end-game goal. It sets up a decent enough premise, but it never went anywhere during my playthrough, which in this aspect just boiled down to "keep doing heists to hoard money like a dragon". After upgrading all of my HQ, printing weapons, installing cybernetics, there was literally nothing else to spend money on. And despite being team level 8 or 9, the game never present me with the pay-off of its premise to retire off-world or something like that. Take X-COM for instance, the HQ management in that game is engaging because the hook is that literal aliens are invading earth, and you have to research, make weapons, move up the tech ladder, and this is a good feedback gameplay structure. But this game simply copied the base management without also creating any strong rook beyond "get more money". It ends up feeling like a weak sandbox. 2) Bad and Slow Pacing: This feels like someone saw the "Long War" mod for X-Com and decided to make it the main course, instead of being an optional mode of play. In short, everything takes an absurd amount of time in the HQ management, because the devs wanted to take a more "realistic" approach to that side of things, by simulating days/weeks/months passing, again highly inspired by X-Com. But aside from the occasional "unique" Heists/Mission, there is no time pressure at all, there is no narrative hook or any enjoyable progression happening, unlike in X-Com where you're on a race against the invasion, you're discovering new alien types and new technology, with cool descriptions and cutscenes etc. The devs even tried to spice things up with "Eras": more or less a period of 6 months or so where a certain major event is happening in the city, which supposedly affects the missions available to you. But this also ends up falling flat for reasons discussed bellow. 3) Severe Case of Ludo-Narrative Dissonance (that is, a discrepancy between what the game/story tells or wants you to believe is happening, versus what you're actually experiencing as a player): A core element of the homebase are the Contacts and the factions of the game. Contacts are proc-gen people representatives of gangs, corporations, etc. There are relationship stats such as how much they trust you, how exposed they are, if they own favors to you or you to them. Now reading this in theory, you'd think that this system is super complex and engaging, well I had the same excitement at first, thinking there would be some great intrigue, backstabbing, interaction between contacts, etc, but it's all just... a facade, smokes and mirrors with no actual depth or mechanical interaction. It's just numbers, and meaningless ones at that. People with 0% trust will offer you heists, people with 40% will sic a head-hunter on you because you did a few jobs against his faction, and then a few days later ask you to run a job for them or rescue them. You do get the rare mini story arc, but even those are too short and end up with no major long-term consequence. 4) Inconsequential Micro Progression: This permeates the whole management part. Squad member gets hyped up, permanently gain 1% more of whatever stat. That is if you didn't roll (RNG) for a TEMPORARY inconsequential boost. With the aforementioned contacts it's the same thing: gain 1% trust, gain a handful of hype, that ultimately leads to a roll of more inconsequential increase. Upgrade a room in your HQ? Yep, smallest increase of usability again. From the weapons, to the items, to the side collectibles like blue-prints and data-files, it is all just the minorest smallest value increment, that makes virtually no difference if you have 1% more or less, and yet this is what passes for "reward" or "progression" in the game. It's all meaningless junk, to craft a minor slightly better weapon, to craft a minor slightly better health-kit or armor, data-files that are just glorified money, etc. All of those systems never build up to anything satisfying, not narratively, not mechanically. The crafting was too expensive and cumbersome, specially because I was getting good gear from the maps anyways. The favors have no narrative pull, they are mostly discounts on situational items. The "power plays" lead to no major shift in the game world, that contact just get a small increase in whatever. It's kinda mind-boggling really, how all of those systems combined ultimately have no pay off, they amount to nothing or at best, only ridiculously small increments to the sandbox of the heists. The origins, mystery and plot-line of the Cyber-Knight implant itself never got built upon or went anywhere in 90+ hours of game, after the initial surgery. The background of the character didn't matter at all too. =================== THINGS THAT ARE MID: =================== *Sound effects are decent, but music is bad and I mostly played on mute or with my own soundtrack. *The static HQ screen is boring and ugly to look at, compared to the dynamic panning, interesting rooms and visually pleasing with dynamic cameras of X-COM. *Shooting animations are serviceable but stiff, and action cameras are wonky. *Sim-Trainer should give passive XP for all, opposed to benches (Detox is fine with benches). *Hacking is OK for what it is, not bad not great, but the longer/harder ones do feel like a chore more than anything. *Maps are fixed pre-built, not randomly generated. Most maps are fine, but they do get repetitive after a while. All in all, the in-map gameplay of Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is superbly fun and enjoyable, and for that reason I give it a positive recommendation and I'm happy to have supported the devs, as I got a ton of fun time there. This moment to moment gameplay is better than X-COM and even many other tactical games, due in large part thanks to its implementation of stealth related mechanics. But the HQ/management side of things is frankly uninspired at best, mostly mediocre and simply a time wasting pile of dung. At a glance it promises a lot of fun potential in a cyber-punk world of intrigue, but in truth it is just a ton of numerical values and counters, that ultimately amount to just a charade that tries (and fails) to hide its mechanical/gameplay/narrative shallowness.

Excellent game, as demonstrated by the over 1000 hours I've spent playing it. There are plenty of reviews here describing the mechanics of the game, and how it plays, so rather than repeat that, I'll just mention how impressed I am with the developers themselves. Even now, after launch and out of Early Access, the updates keep coming. The developers are truly dedicated, responsive and a part of the community. I recently had an issue where Steam somehow corrupted several of my save files, and every other save file I tried to load became corrupted in turn. Despite it not being caused by the developers, they took it upon themselves to fix my files for me. Keep up the good work!

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.

If you like stuff like XCOM and cyberpunk settings you must try this. The devs update it so often its clogging up my news feed. I complained about the lack of helmets on the forums. They replied to my post and added helmets 10 days later.

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。

A text-heavy tactical RPG that lost me before play even properly began because its writing made every screen feel like fingernails on a blackboard. I lasted about half an hour. The opening alone gives us: - "It's been 40 years since the eco-collapse. 70 since we Q-Bombed the last Artificial Consciousness to death." The second sentence is a fragment, while "Q-Bombed ... to death" sounds like a child's explanation of what happened. - "Now worldstorms have settled to a record low..." Storm frequency might have fallen to a record low. The storms themselves have not collectively settled there. - "The corps outlawed the cyber and banned the procedure." They outlawed "the cyber". Back in my day, that meant internet celibacy. - "You're about to go under the knife to one of those implants." You go under the knife for an implant. You do not go under the knife to one unless the implant itself is performing the surgery. Character creation then supplies: - "respec'ed" Respecced, or perhaps respec'd if you insist on abusing apostrophes; not whatever punctuation accident happened there. - "When you were fired from assembling for near-Earth hab stations..." Fired from assembling what? Components? Stations? People ceremonially preparing to assemble stations? - "An ex-Brave Star detective who refused to back down on a corruption scheme investigation." It uses the wrong preposition and stacks three nouns awkwardly. You back down [b]from[/b] something and investigate a corruption scheme. - "Well-informed and practiced at the rules and channels used for milsec escalations." One may be well versed in rules or practised in procedures. Being "practiced at the rules" is not English. Across two character-creation screens, the game also uses "milSec", "MilSec" and "milsec": three capitalisations of the same term. On a single screen elsewhere, the sidebar calls your character history "Background" while the heading calls it "Backstory". Evidently, nobody involved had a style sheet. There are plenty of lesser offences too: strained metaphors, inconsistent labels, awkward noun piles, missing articles, viewpoint wobble, clichés stacked upon clichés and enough unexplained Cyber and Quantum terminology to stock a procedurally generated dystopia. None of this is an isolated typo. It is the first half-hour establishing a pattern in a game that expects the player to immerse himself in an abundance of descriptive and narrative text. The tactical systems may be excellent, but prose is part of a text-heavy RPG's interface, and this is the level of care the game displayed before I had even begun playing it. The developers' AI disclosure proudly states: "No generative AI is used to write content..." Yes. You can tell. An AI would have flagged this rubbish in a heartbeat. It needn't write a word for you; how about using the one entity already in your production chain that can call your confident literary incompetence out, so that you can fix it? Regardless, not for me. My neuroses are already going stark.