Frozen Synapse 2

On paper, this game introduces new mechanics and a whole new level of gameplay. I really like the idea of the city mode, in which you have multiple squads stationed in different buildings and off completing different missions. However, the controls are clunky, everything feels just a little bit less than complete, and the game periodically crashes. It's seemingly been that way for a while now so I wouldn't expect this to change. Shame though: the broad strokes are all there... it just needed a bit more development time for it to all come together. Basically: Frozen Synapse 1 was better, so play that instead.

The game feels unfinished. There are constant bugs and crashes, for example: - Mine units can very rarely change their behavior to that of a regular unit, meaning they will try to "fire" at enemies by staring at them while continuously placing mines underneath them. If this happens, you completely lose control of the unit until they either die or the enemy goes out of sight - The game can give you contracts for attacking buildings that can't be attacked because the building's squads are still regenerating - Even though the game says you automatically win if you defend your building for 14 turns, you actually lose if you do that - Knife units can spawn inside areas completely surrounded by low walls, meaning they can't do anything but stare at enemy units Several things also seem poorly designed: - It's nice to have a lot of unit types, but a lot of them are completely useless. Pistol units can't kill anything besides other pistol units. Especially considering the limited amount of money that you have, there's no point buying most of them when you can just buy scoped rifles and shotgunners - I was able to defeat a faction in the first second of attacking their HQ because the faction leader happened to spawn right in front of my units, allowing me to completely ignore their 14 other units - Mines are stupidly effective for defense. The AI just walks into them and there's no way to remove them unless you brought a dedicated grenade unit just for clearing mines - The map generation seems nonsensical, frequently generating trees inside buildings. Trees are also so thin that they're really annoying to plan around because it's really difficult to tell when a unit can see past a tree and when they can't - Other factions have an insane resource advantage compared to you: each of them has several full squads from the get-go and you have to defend multiple bases and complete contracts all over the city with severely limited units - Fighting on the street is mostly just wasting time trying to inch closer to the enemy by leading your units from cover to cover. The environments are too open to be fun With more time, the game could have been good, but it's just not. Frozen Synapse 1 was a much more solid package.

this is still broken

I don't think the game is working properly for me. When I tried the tutorial city it crashed during the first battle. I reloaded it and I think it turned off the tutorial messages? I finished the first level anyway and then when I was back on the map I never got any new incursions. I clicked around the menus until I found contracts and so I made a bunch of money by standing in buildings for 6 hours. I bought up a bunch of the city. But, I never had the plot progress. Even if the game was working properly I'm not sure how interesting it is to have this strange abstracted turn based combat. I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing even in that aspect.

They were so close. They were SO close to something special. SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ close.

It doesn't live up to its full potential and drags on for a lot longer than it probably should, but it's definitely still worth playing. Just... maybe not worth finishing. In 2024 it's still a bit buggy -- you'll get some crashes and occasional weird behavior, especially with the mission generation -- but not nearly to the nigh-unplayable extent that old reviews make it out to be. Crashes aren't a huge deal since the game autosaves extremely often, so it takes like two minutes at most to recover from them.

The game is a bit buggy and would have benefited from more patching (and perhaps a bit more time being worked on before it was released in the first place!), but regular patching ended at the end of 2018 so the state of the game is basically what you're stuck with. Everyone's experience is slightly different, but I've personally experienced crashing (crash to desktop either when loading a mission for the first time, or when loading a turn's results) roughly once every 3-4 hours on average - thankfully in these instances the auto-saving means I've lost minimal progress each time I've experienced a crash (several minutes at worst). A few parts of the game feel slightly underdeveloped, and several aspects of the game feel quite under-explained, which is unfortunately exasperated by not having strong third-party resources to fill the gap (no comprehensive wiki etc). Despite these shortcomings, I have personally LOVED playing it so far - so much so that I've racked up 30 hours in 2.5 days (!!). I loved FS1's tactical combat already - you get most of the intensity of real-time combat combined with the careful planning that turn-based inputs allow for. Some of the additions in FS2 take it to another level again - it's definitely among my favorite tactical combat in any game I've ever played. I thought the extra city metagame works okay and it does have some cool aspects (like tactical maps being based on how they look on the city map, allowing a cool transition as you zoom in from the big city map to the tactical map!). It's kind of a shame, really. If some of the game's weaker points (most obviously the technical stuff, but other things too) had been improved I think FS2 would've been a GOTY contender for plenty of people. Instead the game's withered away into near-obscurity, and a player count in the single-digits also makes the multiplayer largely untenable unless you recruit a friend to play with or something. I'm honestly a bit surprised at just how little traction the game's gotten; a look at the Steam review chart (combined with the shockingly low number of reviews) tells a pretty sad story. I think if you enjoyed FS1 (which has a free demo if you want to check it out if you've never played!) it's definitely worth at least trying FS2 - at sale price if you're hesitant.

Amazing open world, turned based tactical strategy game sandbox. If you like Door Kickers and would like a similar experience with a greatly expanded, randomly generated, and extremely re-playable campaign; Get this game. Massively underrated. Despite a few bugs and performance issues that remain after the devs could no longer continue work on the game Frozen Synapse 2 is still a great game and well worth the asking price.

Frozen Synapse 2 is a niche tactical experience. It's one of its kind and even though this still is in a Beta condition it was well worth my time. The gameplay loop can get repetitive during city gameplay, is incomplete and there is the occaisional crash. The game had limitless potential and it is sad to see it beeing discontinued allthough for understandable reasons. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Frozen Synapse as this iteration comes with many improvements in comparison.

Ужасно! Три года прошло с момента последнего обновления, и игра вылетает когда завершаешь ход. Ни поиграть, ни деньги вернуть. Ну и качество графики какое-то мыльное. Первая часть на веки в моем сердце, а это, увы, нет.