MENACE

Haven't played a ton but game good.

Had some issues at first, some of the onboarding/tutorial parts could be better. But one of the biggest ethos shifts is that your unit's range is so much wider than their movement, something of an oddity in tactical turnbased. And there's not really much range penalty, more a point blank bonus. Dancing at the edge of each other's ranges is kinda the norm. Some of the mechanics could be better explained, but honestly the game is pretty forgiving in the early chapters where you can play around and find what your style is going to be. Just wish there was more about the various resources and systems of accruing them. Still trying to figure out how to get more squaddies passively.

outstanding

Y'all this is pretty much the only turn based strategy i play, or have ever played. it's so, so fun. give it a shot!

good ♥♥♥♥ i'm addictaed

Solid turn based combat game with some other mechanics that makes this game interesting with frequent quality updates.

In the late 1880's Daniel Beard describes how to prepare your kite for the sport of kite fighting. He describes how to roll your kite's tail in glue, then break bottles to get the right sort of wicked glass edges to affix to your tail. This prepares the kite for a winner-take-all duel to the death. Menace, in Early Access (EA), reminds me of jagged-edged kite fighting. At time of review, the game is a solid tactical game with a modest strategic layer where every choice is intense. It has wicked jagged edges - these cut at my command with incredible effect, but they also cut me unexpectedly. To be clear, I recommend this game, but if you don't casually enjoy EA titles or 'EuroJank' you're gonna have a bad time. I hope this developer puts Factorio levels of care into the game; it could exceed titans like XCOM 2 if they did. This one is special. Today, having played roughly 3 'operations' (chains of associated missions), I'd frame the game's current problems like this: [b]The usual EA suspects[/b] * New player onboarding is rocky. I think they're tackling this problem well, and it's about what I'd expect for an EA title in this stage. Better than old school Dwarf Fortress, worse than a typical release title. * Interface UI/UX still needs help. It's pretty, but not communicating what I need at the time I need it. Some examples: It took me about 2 operations to realize that vehicle frames take effectively permanent damage over the course of an operation, then are healed back up to full health at the end. [b]Tactical-specific speedbumps[/b] * Tactical layer unit readability is troublesome. Silhouettes are unique when zoomed in, but at the engagement ranges typical to squad combat I have to zoom out and can't tell the difference between my guys and their guys, much less the actual weapons they are fielding. Is that a rocket team or a chaingun team? Do these crawly bugs have a ranged attack or a suicide attack? Is that other squad my Rifle team or my SMG team? I can't tell without clicking or hovering. * tactical terrain generation is a bit boring. Most of my play so far has been on Dice of the Gods, with an excursion to The Backbone. Basically there's either walls or open space on Dice that I can see. No trees for concealment play, no towers. I feel like some bridges over glacial ravines, abandoned emplacements, underground transit pipe shortcuts, good old red exploding barrels, etc would really liven the place up. [b]Progression needs the most work[/b] * Lack of / confusing overarching narrative progression There's this epic narrative cutscene, then you get dropped into leadership. There's no bridge from the narrative cutscene to the start of the game. The intro dialog is okay, but I don't get a sense of why I should care about Field Marshal Zama's opinion. Then I'm picking operations without an intro to my SLs, my ship, the wayback, or really why I'm bebopping around the solar system. There's a smidge of intro to the potentially friendly factions, but not the definitely enemy factions - I wanna feel the pirates in the strat layer, for instance. Later, I get the chance to influence the opinion of various factions, but I have so many options to spend my nearly bankrupt resources on that annoying one to please another barely seems like an inconvenience. Why do I care if I can't have pistachio icecream when I can't even afford anything from the available menu of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, fruity pebbles, or vanilla with bits of concrete? * Lack of tactical layer narrative integration leading to sterile-feeling tactical missions There's also no narrative exposition / worldbuilding in the operations chains and no story exposition in the tactical layer. I'd love to see a tighter narrative cycle inside the tactical and operations layers where primary and optional objectives are revealed, changed, cancelled, etc by way of local civilians, Frankie, my SLs, or the enemy factions introducing them, rather than everything visible right away. Company of Heroes 1 and Shadow Tactics did great work with this in the tactical layer, and I think new XCOM and XCOM2 also did this well. What if I'm fighting aliens next to a big casino and Frankie asks me to baby-sit a high-roller to the evac? What if the backbone civvies want me to send a message by converting a landing zone mission to a elimination mission? Maybe our stealth team is having a oneupsmanship contest and needs to go undetected the rest of the mission? (I do love the SL bark interactions though, that's fun!) One interesting narrative dissonance: Once I pick an operation I get a slay-the-spire progression mesh of missions, but I don't get a narrative sense that things are unfolding as a result of my tactical choices. It doesn't really make sense when we put such a high focus on intelligence/imperfect information in the mission planning layer that we have perfect information in the operations layer. * Strategic information is overwhelming. So much of what I can see when I start in the early game I literally can't do anything about. I don't have any ability to influence the OCIs, I don't have any ability to unlock stuff with the factions, I don't have the ability to buy anything or promote anyone. I think I would have more fun if I didn't see these things from first glance, instead getting the chance to discover these things and savor them as they become relevant. I'm sure certain things are still hidden in the later progression, but I'm advocating for even less perfect information than I have today. * Blackmarket is overwhelming. Again, I can't afford anything here. This might be related to a focus on killin' bugs, helldivers-style, but I'm so broke, why taunt me with things I won't be able to afford until 4-12 missions from now? I have a lot more fun choosing the imperfect choice now than trying to theorycraft the best distant future path through the perfect information available.. * Tension between economy / artistic vision at strategic level I think I get the game's vision - it's a scifi game where you make hard choices and they have hard consequences, making victory feel satisfying. Unfortunately, I feel like some of the game's vision is overriding some of the fun. In my first couple operations I made some rookie mistakes, even with consulting multiple beginner guides. In one example I lost ~14 squaddies in one mission, then didn't take the one upgrade in the OCI that puts a tiny bandaid on the problem. At my recovery rate 1 bad mission costs me 8-14 to undo. This is so cripplingly devastating that I feel like I might aught to have restarted the whole game. As a player with only limited time, I absolutely don't want to play a campaign where I'm slowly death-spiraling over the course of many real-life hours because I made imperfect choices as a newb. I think there's room to improve here where the game keeps that sense of tension without a sense of time wasted on a failed run. The current situation makes me want to pick up a different game, and 'buying squaddies' in the black market doesn't help. I'd much rather see this tension at the operation level, where I have fewer overall squaddies, but I get notable quantities of squaddies back at the end of an operation, so I can feel like specific missions in an operation were disasters without it compromising my whole playthrough. * tension between economy / artistic vision at tactical level (running out of space) I love the combined arms aspect! I think: vehicles should move faster than squads, let me loot vehicle frames, let me shoot out of carriers, let my non-pilots drive badly :D * aliens vs pirates non-decision It seems like aliens don't drop actionable loot vs pirates giving all the loot. I care so little about the faction favorability (because the rewards are meaningless in the onslaught of things I can't afford) that I'm going to pick based exclusively on immediate-use rewards - which leans pirates today in the early game.. good game!