Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Nice game with good but simple strategy mechanics, standart story, pretty graphics and character's development. Don't want to play again but it was quite interesting to play one time

The idea is cool but it feels a lot more like a proof of concept. The variety is really small and there's barely any meaningful customization options.

XCOM-like TBS game with heavy emphasis on narrative and stealth. I recommend playing this game on the highest difficulty, because on easier ones you probably won't be engaged and will become bored quickly (my playthrough was on Hard without Ironman mode). The main reason for this is that the game is really user-friendly in many aspects, for example: 1) Abundance of resources if you clear side locations 2) Invisibility when in cover, even if the enemy is facing you from the uncovered side 3) 100% hit chances when you position yourself right (not 95% like in XCOM games) 4) Medkits fully heal your squadmates outside of combat. 5) You can always switch weapons from your backpack, equip new grenades and armor, and change passive and active perks, and even the entire team composition during your mission (just not during the fight). It allows you to always be flexible when facing different enemy compositions and to choose the best tools to deal with threats. Overall, the game loop looks like this: You go on the mission and farm resources. Then, you ambush isolated patrols, making sure you can take them down in 1 turn with silenced weapons (this is why you want to fully upgrade them first in this game). After taking down patrols, you may have 1-2 engagements with 2-3 enemies where you will need to actually fight. You must then take advantage of your positioning and incapacitate or kill or immobilize as many targets as possible during your first turn. After that, you kill them all. There is, I believe, only one full-scale tactical engagement with overwhelming enemy forces, and this is a side quest activity, not even the endgame boss (but I have a feeling that I broke the last boss fight with stealth lmao). After beating a mission, you can return to the hub or proceed to the next location. In the hub, you can upgrade your weapons, replenish consumables, and buy some armor/weapons (I didn't do that though; all I used I found on a mission). Weapon progression is pretty straightforward: you have silenced weapons (pistols and crossbows), shotguns, sniper rifles, and assault rifles with 2 general tiers: ballistic and plasma. Also, you can upgrade your weapons twice to make them deal more damage and critical damage. Also, you can use scopes and attachments to boost their range/crit chance/damage/stun effect for robots, etc. To me, this game loop was really satisfying, and on Hard difficulty I've never found myself in a situation where I wouldn't know where to spend my resources up until the game ending. Character progression is fine, although some perks are shared between different characters. But they have some specialization and situational application. It was fun to use these perks; most of them are useful for fights. The other thing I liked a lot is the setting. Because it is a post-apocalyptic Sweden, not really this popular as a location for a post-apocalyptic world. It feels authentic. Although I've seen a lot of Russian vehicles in their cities, I don't think people in Sweden really like VAZ-2109 or "Gazels" so much lol. But all text on location (billboard advertisements, graffiti) is in Swedish. The characters are likeable, different, and have some charisma. As for the downsides: 1) The enemy's circular line of sight, which enlarges when you approach its border, combined with the inconsistency of mouse input to get yourself in cover, can easily lead you to be revealed and forced into the combat phase. This problem is mostly actual when you deal with stationary enemies. Given that, I don't recommend doing Ironman here, because you will be frustrated dealing with this, 100%. 2) Game lore looks promising but overall underdelivers. Writing in in-game notes is very mediocre and not really informative 50% of the time. 3) This is not really a downside to me, but a sheer warning: the game HEAVILY relies on stealth and killing isolated patrols (on Hard difficulty, which I highly recommend playing on to feel the game as intended by the devs). This means you won't be having too many epic fights a la XCOM. Your job here is mostly to prevent that from happening and start fights only with odds in your favor. It can break your expectations a little bit, but I embraced it and genuinely enjoyed it. 4) The plot was very good in the early and mid-game, posing many significant questions you wanted to have answers for, but in the end... Well, you can read about it in Steam discussions; I won't repeat what they say. I would just point out that the journey itself was captivating and interesting. It was a fresh experience for me, combining puzzle elements of a stealth game with XCOM-like TBS combat. I feel these 2 systems worked together pretty well most of the time. Also, game length is reasonable, felt just right to bear it in 15-20 hours (For me it was 25 with idle screen for several hours at least). Definitely recommend it, even if you're not a hardcore TBS gamer.

Love this game, imagine X-com but with post apocalyptic Furries and more focused on stealth. This game is definitely more about patience and stealth planning then it is about sheer firepower. You're often outgunned significantly and if you make to much noise you'll attract other enemies. So, you gotta scout and pick off the stragglers, quietly and quickly. It usually takes your whole team and good positioning just to take out a single enemy before he calls in the army. Plan on save scumming your first play through or lowering difficulty.

I got this game on a summer sale for slightly over $13, so my positive review is tentative and with the lower price in mind. The best I can say is that I seriously wished I could return it for a refund at the 5 hour mark due to a difficulty spike, but pushed past it and the game is... not bad. Graphics were amazing by 2019 standards, but it was never going to be GOTY material and still isn't. So far I think the game is well-made, though it takes a lot of adjusting and it's linear -- given how slow and scripted the gameplay is I don't think this is built with repeat playthroughs in mind. I played on "Hard" difficulty (recommended for players who are familiar with tactics/strategy games). What I will say is that it's superficially similar to X-Com 2 but the emphasis on stealth is much higher. Now that's where my biggest problem was: in the earlygame, the game teaches you the incredibly slow, painful lesson that each and every fight requires you to sneak around and pick off as many lone, isolated enemies as possible or else you'll get plainly overwhelmed. More on the why later, but just know that the game punishes you heavily for not following a scripted stealth sequence of picking off every enemy you can before dogpiling the remaining 2-3 enemies left over. One problem with stealth games is that they sometimes boil down to feeling boring when the player essentially has to wait to follow a "script" of knowing exactly which guards to ambush with which specific tools and weapons or else the game punishes you. This frustration clears up further in since you get more characters with abilities that let you squeeze out that extra 2-3 points of damage you need to prevent a sentry from surviving long enough to call for help but it still feels pretty much like following a script. I still think it's a good game but it says something that I can't put up with it for more than 1-2 hours at a time without just feeling bored and slightly frustrated. And again, in the early-middlegame transition the game will often punish you anyways even if you do your best to try and follow the "stealth script" for each group of enemies because of shaky RNG. I don't hate this game enough to give it a negative review. It's not like Pathfinder: Kingmaker where certain moments are so horribly designed that I get the suspicion the gamemakers are just a bunch of sadists getting off on wasting other peoples' money and time (10-minute inescapable web traps, feywild mist puzzle, Darven's questline) but if I wanted to impress my friends with my good taste in games, I would not show them this one. The game doesn't hate you. Despite all my complaining: It's alright. It's ok. But it could've used a bit of extra time in playtesting for balance.

Интересный сюжет, персонажи. Из минусов довольно быстро заканчивается. Непонятно как менять способности в бою.

this game would be decent if it didnt force you to listen to it's horrible writing and walk so slowly around each corner before walking to intended path. the graphics and animations and mechanics are great, voice actors did what they were told but they didnt have much to work with I assume. gameplay alone, it's good and fun, but the stealth is overpowered. I assume the devs tried to balance it out by having the main units have more health, but when you can take out the weaker guys with a fun team of silent weapons so early on and then grapple and slam the main guys who are conveniently grouped in one spot with cover and high ground everywhere, it's just a matter of surviving long enough to chunk through their health bars. obviously an Xcom inspired game without what makes Xcom good as a tactical game. the game forces you to burst down guys and not exactly take good positions and make smart plans. with the terrible idea of being able to hover over a tile and click the action number and it just happens, i kept running out of cover and dying when i just wanted to select the move button. also, it's not obvious that where you click with the medkit is where you will be standing. I also died many times standing out in the open when i meant to heal the downed player next the the character. Also i noticed that some and walls where obviously not meant to be used as cover or not programmed to be a tile in combat, so many times your characters will suddenly not have the cover they should have or straight up not be able to move through plainly open ground. I appreciate the riff on Xcom-like tactical stuff, but this just feels like a a 5 year old smacking blocks together and not understanding what theyre doing. Edit: i tried to play without the voice, and then the 4th guy was just never added to my team but let me shove money into him in the upgrades. waste of money

This game is a hidden gem. If you like games like X-COM, you will love this, too.

Впервые пишу обзор, тем более негативный но этот кусок фекалий меня настолько разочаровал, что я не сдержался. Я решил проходить игру на макс. сложности и на железном мутанте. Первое, что показалось странным это то что враги в 90% случаев это буквально статуи, которые стоят на одном, тем самым обрубая вариативность прохождения. Второе - это идиотская и ничем не оправданная механика с кольцом вокруг врагов. Если ты попадаешь в кольцо, тебя заменили и неважно что находится между вами: стена, вагон, машина. Абсолютно любое препятствие игнорируется врагами. Третье и как по мне самое важное это скриптованость абсолютно всего, вплоть до промахов в определённых местах. Переигрывая не один раз начало и середину игры, я заметил закономерность если ты стреляешь из за скриптованого места на карте, ты в 100% случаях промажешь. Условием является определённый персонаж и очерёдность хода, по игре я встречал подобный бред постоянно. И что самое обидное, такие места это буквально лучшая позиция на карте, но видимо разрабы хотят чтобы ты страдал, так что негоже тебе заранее продумывать тактику и грамотно расставлять юнитов. На максимальном уровне сложности и отсуцтвии адекватных сохранений это Game Over. Четвёртое, издевательские автосейвы. Сохранения происходят в начале боя и ПОСЛЕ твоего хода, то есть если ты сделал ход, промахнулся и тебя убили, игра сохраняет тебя ровно в момент смерти. Пятое либо баги, либо просто хреново сделанные моменты игры. Твой персонаж при расстановке на поле показывает возможность попадания по врагу, то есть враг на линии огня. Враг в этот момент прячется у края стены на половину его тело торчит из за укрытия. Игра пишет, что ты можешь по нему попасть. Ты стреляешь иииии попадаешь в стену, ход врага и ты умираешь. Если что я также находился за укрытием пуля просто прошла свозь текстуру и убила меня. Причём это также закономерность и скрипт если стреляешь ты, шанс попасть 0% проверено на личном опыте. Лично я очень хотел поиграть в игру много лет, а когда наконец появилась такая возможность, меня ждало это. Игра очень странная и напоминает БЕТУ версию, а не полноценный продукт.

I loved XCOM and its how I found this game, admittedly I was kind of looking for a 'forever' game in XCOM, or like a live-service version that I could grind. This is not that, the enemies are fixed, there's no grind. And actually, I love that. I can work through the areas however I want, pick off enemies when available, or engage in full combat. It feels finite in a good way, once an area is clear, I can always just go back and explore in case I missed anything, but the enemies don't respawn. Overall, highly recommend, it's more casual than xcom, but fun, chill, and frankly I've spent a ton of time over the last few days on it.