Into the Breach

One of my favorite turn-based strategy games. It is essentially an excellent "board game" made into a video game, with great music and sound effects, "16-bit era" graphics, with a theme of "giant monsters / giant robots" fighting large scale battles. During each turn, you can see the "planned attack" for each enemy, e.g. which tile their attack will land on when you end your turn. Some of the best times in this game is solving the unique puzzle each turn, with the unique set of enemies, unique map layout, and your unique abilities, to maximize damage against enemies, minimize damage to you and your buildings, and achieving the special objectives. If enemy is going to attack a building, you can knock the enemy back so their attack will just hit an empty tile, turn them around so they will attack another enemy, push them so their charge will land them in a pit or lava, throw them into the lake where they may drown. While I've beat the game on hard difficulty , i find that normal difficulty is most fun for me. I've unlocked all mechs and all pilots, and I enjoy selecting a random set of mechs and re-trying the campaign. I prefer to have all four of the "extra content" options active (e.g. extra enemy types, extra abilities, extra mission types, extra weapon types), but I'd recommend you familiarize yourself with the base game without these options. Mechanics like fire, water, acid, smoke, cracked ground, ice give you many tools and thus many ways to solve your fight. The procedural map generation keeps each mission fresh. Always fun to match new pilots to the best mech and buy and swap best mech abilities after campaign. My favorite squad that I can (often) win on Hard difficulty is [spoiler] Flame Mech with Camilla or Mantis as pilot, Rocket Mech, and Smog Mech. Flame unit makes fire, rocket and smoke make smoke, smoke will heal you / cancel enemy attacks / damage enemies, you're immune to fire. On harder difficulties where there are many enemies, accumulating smoke can help control the battle. Only downside is that you really cannot change abilities, as all six items for the 3 mechs are needed to make this combo work.[/spoiler] My favorite pilot for Normal difficulty with random mechs is [spoiler] The Mantis. It can take several runs to unlock him, but he's worth it. Instead of repair, you can knock back an enemy and do 2 damage. Great pilot for any mech, especially science vessels. [/spoiler] downside: like Faster Than Light, the "easy" difficulty is challenging, and "normal" is very difficult. I can only reliable win normal if I use a "good" pilot, probably lose 50/50 if I use a random pilot. Hard difficult is only feasible with my specialized team. I'm not even bothering with "unfair" difficulty lol. Due to procedural map generation, you can get scenarios where you cannot prevent damage, even with a top tier squad. If you can accept a crummy RNG setting up a harsh turn here or there you'll be fine. If it happens a lot, try switching your loadout. Not all squads are equal, e.g. I do terrible with the Frozen Titans and Steel Judokas, and can only do decent if I use my favorite pilot referred to above. Maybe they are poorer squads or maybe I stink with them lol, you can be the judge for yourself. If you like this type of "puzzle-based" combat that's almost like chess, with Godzilla robots and monsters, and people cheering you from the buildings you save, you'll probably like this game.