Played until I reached the end of the early access content, then I played a little bit more afterward.
Pretty good turn-based tactical game where you primarily deploy your squads/vehicles, then take turns one at a time between you and the AI. The early game appears to be highly polished albeit for the intro cutscene to the rogue army which legitimately made me believe I was watching an in-game ad for a completely different game. It was jarring, but that's so far the only gripe I have and nothing else feels poorly designed. Mid-game (and, what it feels like for now, the end of current EA content) introduces you to the titular MENACE, which I feel was introduced much better compared to the Rogue Army. I even see potential with the MENACE showing up out of nowhere in the middle of a different battle with a different faction to really blow a powderkeg up on the player, but having multiple factions in a map fighting each other that aren't allies to us or each other might be a dicey game limitation.
Outside of the tactical turn-based battles are the other two sides to the game, squad and hub management. You kit out your squads with what you find in the field or can barter for in the black market, balance out your supply points for your next mission (AKA Army Points for anyone familiar with warhammer 40k tabletop), and then choose who to put on the field. You can upgrade individual squad leaders and they generally all have a mix of generic and unique upgrades specifically to that SL. A favorite gear and upgrade combo of mine is to stick Harlan with a Hi-Cap SMG and take his upgrades that make him scarier up close and personal. With REND ammo and enough squad members at his disposal, he can rip apart some of the scarier critters out in the Wayback like swiss cheese, armor or not... so long as he's already close enough to reach out and hug 'em. Sometimes your squad leaders will get status effects, some good some bad, that generally give a good idea as to whether or not they should be fielded at the moment.
As for hub management, it's a bit simpler where you use points acquired from finished operations (collections of missions, typically 3-5 missions long) to choose different upgrades that give bonuses in the tactical missions, from flashy orbital bombardments to sneakier stuff like increasing the deployment area so you can stick your squads right on objectives from the get go on the first turn. I enjoy the approach to missions as well, where once an operation is selected you usually have a selection of different missions to choose from that progress you towards the end of the operation with each mission providing different bonuses, either rewarding extra points for different systems (promotion/upgrade points for SLs, trust points for different non-hostile factions' special hub upgrades, or hub upgrade points themselves), providing bonuses that apply only to the operation, or giving more material things like gear to kit out your squads or barter with on the black market.
I've failed to fully mention the black market so far, and it essentially provides a way to trade in gear found from missions that you don't want for gear that you DO want. It also allows you to recruit more squad leaders and vehicle pilots, more squad members if you run low, and even later in the game can provide you with research to develop some nice weapons and gear to use.
Everything slapped together, this is one hell of a solid game so far. The framework feels like its excellent, the tactical nuances are put together well-- the only thing that holds this game back right now I feel like is environments and factions. We've got a total of four enemy factions, three neutral/allied factions, and three planets/environments. The introduction of the rogue army in the later early game (apart from the intro video) felt like a good spice-up, and of course the introduction of the MENACE later mid-game really spiced things up nice, but despite that we're still only in the same 3 planets the whole time. I'd love to see some more environments and maybe another enemy faction, depending on where we can go from defecting militaries, space pirates, space bugs, and... well, not gonna spoil [i]their[/i] shtick, but the MENACE.
Pretty pleased. Keep up the good work, Overhype.
