Miasma Chronicles

This review is quite difficult. The game has the basic standard tactical strategy print with % to hit and squared maps during combat, otherwise free to roam. The mechanics are similar to the previous game of these develpoers (Mutant Year Zero), that I enjoyed so much that I was enthusiast to finally play their newer game, so why the negative review? Because the script, the story, the characters and the voice acting are simply painful. Beware, the lore of the game is intriguing, I was actively searching for documents and pieces of background, but the main story/quest, boy how it hurts! In the end I completely refused to keep playing and streamlined the end, just to be able to say I completed it. Hear me out: buy the previous game of these developers (Mutant Year Zero), it keeps the same deepness and mechanics but with much better script and characters. Such a wasted opportunity.

I quite enjoyed this. It looks good, the story while simple was sufficient (though the bit towards the end is silly), there could be more gear/loot/skills, but the gameplay loop was fun enough for the experience. The voice actors for two of your companions makes me want to smash my head in. The robot in particular and you can't swap him out for someone else. So annoying. There also is a really frustrating bug (or really bad game feature) when setting up ambushes. It is absurd and obnoxious. Those issues aside the game was quite enjoyable and I would recommend if a fan of turn based tactical games. The people complaining about difficulty etc aren't custom to turn based tacitcal games I think. I played on regular difficulty on "full tactical" and only got wiped once at the last fight because I didn't realize the behavior of a certain enemy (trying not to spoil it) but once you realize it then it becomes a good fight. I definitely had way harder tactical fights in other games. My squad was pretty busted and there was one fight in particular I remember that was supposed to be hard but I beat it without taking any damage at all. If you take 10 seconds to change up your weapons/powers/mods when you are facing off against different enemy types it makes a huge difference.

[b]TL;DR:[/b] Compared to their earlier game, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (MYZ:RtE), it's bigger, prettier, and WAY WORSE in terms of gameplay and balance. MYZ:RtE was one of the best and most interesting tactical games I've ever played. By keeping a small squad size, adding large groups of enemies but also suppressed weapons & ambush mechanics (not overwatch), character skills with turn-based cooldowns, and guaranteed shots when flanking, MYZ:RtE balance relied on paying attention to the opponents, singling out those you could, and taking the rest within one or two turns, without the enemy being able to do much against you. This dynamic changed during bosses and harder fights, but this balance of you having higher control over the outcome of the battles was always present. Playing the highest difficulty and even Ironman mode on that game wasn't proof of luck, it was proof of knowledge over the game. In Miasma Chronicles the devs decided to call that balance "Light Tactical" and introduce a "Full Tactical" difficulty modifier (beyond the difficulty options) that effectively kills the game. Weapons have short ranges and variable hit chances based on distance, making positioning for optimal hit chances near impossible, and it takes ages until you get silenced options (and only one weapon on the early game, the only other one is a skill with cooldown). This broke the balance so hard that the game makes enemies take really nonsensical turns, doing things like moving twice to stand on low cover when they could've either went to high cover or went to low and shoot you, ignore a flanked target and instead move from cover to cover, despite having clear shots and not being exposed to any other player character, taking shots against full cover targets when they had clear shots to low cover targets... it's ridiculous. The boss encounter on the Side Quest to rescue the last Vaart (?) family member was looking to be incredibly difficult (if not impossible for the recommended level), and it cost me lots of resources (knockback grenades to group 3 enemies together into a single grenade blast twice on the same encounter twice), but the ONLY REASON I won that encounter was because the enemy ignored a flanked character while they had cover and clear shots THREE TIMES, and shot a high cover target instead of a low cover one TWICE. I didn't win that encounter, the game gave it to me. All the positioning, combos between consumables and abilities, prioritization of threats, and I only won because the game decided so. None of that preparation would've fly if the enemies had two brain cells to rub together. And there wouldn't even be a way to win that at the recommended level either, specially because an enemy that was on high ground and wasn't immune to knockback somehow decided he was immune and wouldn't budge to knockback grenades. MYZ:RtE was so fun and challenging. Making decisions mistakes on that game usually led to party wipes or loosing a character forever. Pity the developers gave up on doing something unique, decided to copy the rest, realized that it goofed everything up, and then dialed back to keep it playable. Don't know if I'll have the motivation to finish this, but after putting it down I'll just replay MYZ:RtE to clear the palate.

Pretty much a copy of the previous game of the same devs, but in different settings. The game is good, especially for fans of tactical games with RPG elements. It has nice atmosphere and an interesting story, but lacks certain elements. Exploration is rather symbolic, weapons variety limited, and you can fight with only three members of your squad at once, which was a dealbreaker for me. Your characters' skills are often not very useful and you can't master them to dominate a battlefield. There is almost no mangament of the squad between fights. The game has a potential for something big, but it finished only as a chain of small skirmishes on a way to the final cutscene. I enjoyed it all the way, though. I hope that the next iteration will finally deliver ;)

Worth a play if you like turn based tactics games. Not amazing, but solid. I only got about a third thru.

Игра неоднозначная, но рекомендовать ее любителям всяких Commandos и XCOM вполне можно, если уже все прошли и совсем не в чего поиграть. [h3] Из плюсов [/h3] • Выделил бы работу графического дизайнера, стилистика артов которого напоминает Guild Wars 2, только в постапокалипсисе. Не красота, а красотищщааа :) • Неплохой сюжет с легким налетом Кодзимовщины, про странную субстанцию, экологию, роботов, ну и кожаных мешков. Отличным сюжет язык назвать не поворачивается, так как эта просто история про пубертатного подростка в стилистике красивого постапокалипсиса. • Проработанные второстепенные персонажи, их мотивация, диалоги. Каждый герой обладает своим характером. • Проработанный и детализированный мир. Каждая локация интересна, много деталей и мелочей, которые хочется рассматривать (жаль в игре не предусмотрели удаление и приближение камеры). [h3] Из минусов [/h3] • Вымораживали кат-сцены и лицевая анимация. Это просто жесть, графоний уровня мема про Дрейка из Анчартед. А могли сделать просто кат сцены со статичными артами и субтитрами – было бы лучше в разы. • Cтелс — это не просто опция, а единственный способ пройти многие битвы. Приходится выманивать и убивать врагов по одному, чтобы был шанс в основном бою. Особенно туго на начальных этапах игры, когда не прокачался. • Пошаговая боевая система. Ты в укрытии – врагам пофиг, они лупят по тебе со всех позиций. Игра показывает тебе шанс попасть в противника 50% - забудь, ты попадешь 1 раз из 10. Про шанс попадания 20% - вообще молчу – за всю игру ни разу с таким шансом не попал в противника. Зато враги всегда снайперы из любых позиций. И это я играл в сюжетном режиме. Респект тем, кто мучался на хардкоре и прошел игру до конца. • Отряд всего из 3 бойцов и двух дадут в запас по сюжету. Сборка командных билдов скудная: классическая святая троица — танк, снайпер, поддержка. • Мало вариантов оружия – снайперки, штурмовки, дробаши и дисковые пушки…всё. А, ну гранаты разной системы и разного радиуса действия. Из магии – миазма, но активными могут быть только 2 боевых фаербола, остальные, как и команда – лежат в запасе. Зато нарисовано все красиво. • Кому плюс – кому минус, но в игре не подсвечивается лут. Вернее, он подсвечивается, когда близко подходишь. По кнопке сканирования – тебе только показывается куда бежать по заданию и всё. Приходится, как собакен обнюхивать всю локацию, каждый угол, чтобы нарыть деньжат, апгрейды и найти информацию для Кодекса. • Загадки к секретам сложноватые и без поллитры не разглядеть их в игре, благо есть всемогущий Гугл, ищите коды к дверям там.

5/10, which is as good as a thumbs down for me. The graphics want to look good, but are far too spotty; screen tears everywhere. However, the artwork is good, the story just doesn't shine as much. It's a typical story, stolen and reused countless times by a near infinite number of "writers" these days. Also, there's a ton of "tutorial" type missions at the beginning, while the game isn't really that complicated. You can edit your gear and skills at any time with zero cost to you, which I find always leads to an overabundance of control, ending up in an obsessive and eventually annoying compulsivity. Basically, it feels like most other turn-based strategy games, except I'm not at all familiar with the overall story, which this is seemingly a sequel to.

I really wanted to love this game, but the more I played the more I grown to... cringe from it's existence. At the very beginning, I was like "how could a game this polished have completely flown under the radar?" The graphics are good, the story is engaging at first, the mechanics are seem to be well made. But the deeper you get in the game, the more rot comes to the surface and you realise, that they were probably either running out of time or funds as they progressed deeper in the development of this one. The biggest downside is the writing. If it wouldn't have come out before the AI craze, my bet would be it is written by AI. The story doesn't make a lick of sense, the dialoges are like made of a 14 year old, writing a fanfic for an otherwise successful franchise. There are logical loopholes all over the place. Like, the post apocalyptic people call crashed planes "Sky whales" while the First Family, the ruling class still very much uses planes to move their troops and collect tax. This is just an example, but the whole thing is painfully dumb. The characters try to be loveable, but when you make your main character, who you ALWAYS need to have on your team an annoying, dumb, whiny little b*tch, you cannot hope for much sympathy from the player. Anytime Elvis opens his mouth, I want to shoot either him or myself in the head. Then there are serious mechanical issues. They wanted some of the characters to have special powers by controlling the Miasma, but they probably very early realized that this is absolutely broken, so instead of spending time to balance it properly they connected it to a mana system. This magic battery can only be recharged 3 ways: Special grenades that give power, one single ability of one single character and a modification for weapons that generates this power with each hit, but such a low amount, that it does not even worth mentioning. That is it. Not even between battles this battery recharges, so you can barely use the powers that the whole story is written around, which leaves you with just basic combat, which gets old, real fast. Especially when the cover system makes 0 sense. Basically: Half-cover is no cover (for you) and full cover is only cover like 20% of the time. From a development team that made tactical shooters before this is unacceptable. Beside all that the game starts glitching out and having more and more bugs and issues in the latter parts of the game, which just proves that no proper testing was done and the code have massive holes. You can even run into game breaking glitches which forces you to ALT-F4 out of the game and restart the encounter you were just having, which is despicable. All and all, this one got swooped under the rug for a very good reason. Buy it, if it is dirt cheap and you are bored out of your mind, while itching for some turn based tactical shooter and you played all others, too many times. Otherwise, steer away.

Mechanics are aggravating, and its a bit short. Not terrible otherwise.