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[i]Recon Control[/i] is a 2D turn-based tactics game where you put together a spec-ops team and attempt to complete various missions. On its store page, there is an odd claim that this is a hybrid of strategy and platformer, but I can’t imagine how this could possibly be considered a platformer aside from literally having some platforms in the game. Regardless, this is a straightforward tactics game that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, for better or worse.
[h2]Presentation[/h2]
Starting off with presentation, [i]Recon Control[/i] does a decent job here. The art isn’t going for anything overly realistic, there’s a nice stylized look to the characters with chunky heads and arms to highlight each soldier’s equipment. It’s readable as a strategy game, while also not looking too shabby either. In what will be a recurring theme, there isn’t a ton to complain about, nor praise here. Visuals aren’t hugely important within the tactics genre, but what you get is still decent, maybe even above average for a small indie title.
The audio was solid, but like the visuals, it’s par for the course. Guns sound good, tools and equipment have sound effects that fit fairly well, and the background music sets the tone of the game. All that being said, if I wasn’t playing the game knowing I would be writing a review, I probably wouldn’t have made note of any of this. The curse of having good but not great audio design is that the player won’t notice it much at all. Nothing is laughably bad, but it also lacks charm or anything to make it memorable.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
The meat of every tactics title is going to be the gameplay. You can have a hideous looking game with obnoxious sound effects and music, but if your combat system has engaging mechanics, all will be forgiven. For [i]Recon Control[/i], it’s a mixed bag. I enjoy the overall loop, where you complete missions, which lets you unlock more gear, level up your squad members, and improve your ability to complete harder missions. Characters that die on missions lose the gear they had with them, which I like as a way to add weight to mistakes, but I wish there was another mechanic to allow you to retrieve some of that character’s gear. Some sort of trade-off like you can overload one character for them to carry out their dead ally’s most important items, at the cost of slowing them down for the rest of the mission.
A major element of combat involves ambushes. You can set a character to ambush, which will skip their turn but allow them to shoot if an enemy comes into range on their turn. The biggest problem is that you can’t have overlapping ambushes. If you have your entire squad set to ambush, only one of them will shoot if an enemy comes into range of all of them at once. This can result in strange situations where every squad member is aiming at a door, but only one shoots when an enemy comes in. Then that enemy gets a chance to shoot will the rest of your squad just watches, waiting for the next enemy to come through the door. Later on, enemies have higher level gear, allowing them to absorb one ambush, then throw a grenade to try and disable the ambush of your other characters. On its own, this wouldn’t be a huge deal and could be ignored as a weird quirk of the game, but this is unfortunately not an isolated incident.
The largest oversight is the lack of a fog-of-war mechanic. For some reason, you can see every enemy at all times, which takes away the unexpected surprises that add a lot of fun to a tactics game. Instead of sneaking into a building where each room could hold a guard waiting for you, you can easily plot out a path that is the most likely optimal way to play. You are almost never surprised when the enemy turn plays out because it’s obvious what their next move is. I suspect the large number of enemies and the high level gear they bring later on is an attempt to balance around the fact that the player gets to cheat a little bit, but it actually makes it more frustrating to play. The difficulty level makes it so you almost need to take advantage of your ability to see through walls, but it results in a playstyle that I don’t find particularly interesting. The best strategy is to find a chokepoint where you can lure enemies through a door and one-shot them before they get an attack off. This is because doors close if the unit holding them open dies, so if you can setup a one-shot kill, the ambush limit of one attack per unit gets reset after each kill. On the flip side, if you setup ambushes without a one-shot kill, your remaining units will almost always have their ambush broken by the surviving enemy that came through the door first. After that, the entire enemy team will take potshots at you while your squad stands around helpless.
The other optimal strategy is a reversal of camping the door. You can setup your soldiers on one side of a door, have someone hold the door open for them to shoot, then back away from the door before ending your turn. It allows you to take free shots without the enemy retaliating. This works because you can see every enemy ambush due to the lack of fog-of-war. In my 25+ hours of playtime, I only ever was hit by an enemy ambush if I was trying to draw fire on purpose, or if I simply wasn’t paying attention to the screen.
The overall vibe of combat is that you are an underdog with regards to gear, numbers and stats, but you also have cheats enabled. While it can be fine to play as an underdog trying to win against all odds, it’s undercut by how easy it is to abuse the system, and how it’s almost encouraged due to how the game is designed.
The final critique I have is the bizarre decision to have your gear and squad reset after each campaign. You can retain one soldier to carry over, but they stop receiving experience and don’t keep any of their gear. This is already not a fun mechanic because you spend the whole campaign building up your guys just for your progress to be taken away at the last minute. But it's compounded by the fact that the game seems balanced around your soldiers actually carrying over their gear. The first mission of the 3rd campaign is way harder than the first mission of the first campaign. Enemies have way better gear, yet you start with the same gear as always. This is mitigated by marathon mode, which in my opinion is the way this game must be played. It chains the campaigns together, lets you carry over gear and soldiers, and fixes this pretty big problem easily. I have no idea why this isn’t the default game mode, and I really regret spending the majority of my play time on the normal mode when I would have enjoyed this secondary game mode far more if I had know about it from the start.
With all this negativity, it might seem like I hate [i]Recon Control[/i]. In reality, I think it’s a decent strategy game that really could have used some refinement, or perhaps a sequel to improve on the formula. I liked the skill tree available, even if it was a little barebones. The variety of guns and equipment was a nice touch that enhanced mission variety. There were definitely moments I enjoyed, especially in the first campaign when the combat seems to flow a lot better due to the smaller number of enemies and the rarity of expensive equipment. But as the game goes on, it starts to feel more and more flawed until you can’t ignore it anymore.
[h2]Verdict[/h2]
I really wanted to like this game. I love strategy and tactics games, especially ones with in-depth progression systems and characters that can die and be lost from the team. Marathon mode fixes some of my issues, but combat has a handful of notable flaws that prevent me from ever loving it. I still give it a mild recommendation because there’s some fun to be had early on, but don’t expect a great experience.
[h2]5/10[/h2]
