Stirring Abyss

Very good. X-com terror of the deep inspired, lovecraftian turn based tactics game. Hella hard. Recommended to play on easy your first run.

I found Stirring Abyss quite fun - I was looking for a turn-based game to play on my phone and, while I never got it working on there, I ended up getting hooked on it on my PC. It has very good writing and solid gameplay, which is gradually introduced as you play through the game. The save system can be gamed to maximise outcomes, but I don't see that as a problem. If you're looking for a satisfying turn-based tactical game, this is the game for you.

TLDR; nice setting, ok gameplay loop, limited builds, needs more content, claims of the difficulty are greatly exaggerated I like a lot about this game, just feels like it's missing quite a bit to be more fun. Once you realize exactly how much runway you're going to get and how little there actually is to do, it becomes a rather joyless march toward the end. I would recommend playing on hard to start as that is probably the only way to keep any sort of tension in the game. I can't imagine what the easy or story modes are like, the normal difficulty is basically point and click. You will get so many side missions and you'll have every meaningful submarine room so early, you'll almost never suffer casualties unless you're really trying - in one mission I separated everyone, got ambushed with my weakest character alone, and there is just so much firepower and different elements you can bring to bare that while it was my tensest moment it was fairly easy to remedy. Your strong melee characters or officers with the right mutations or equipment are basically unkillable and once you unlock your fourth diver everything goes straight to autopilot. There are relatively few mutations and some of them are only for boutique builds (which I admit can be quite powerful, but not necessary - at least for the campaign) so you will realistically be looking for 2-3 mutations per diver depending on class, rerolling anything else, and in the event you get stuck with a subpar mutation you still have tons of opportunity to get others, or more likely it won't even matter. There are 2-3 "scenarios" you'll encounter so most maps play the same and the parts where they don't are not as much hard as they are kind of annoying. I just walked right up to the last boss and killed him without healing or using really any kind of special tactics. I'm recommending this game because it's fairly well made and I'm sure the endless nightmare mode offers some better challenges, and I like the STYLE of game. The music, visuals, atmosphere, world-building, and character building are all well done. Above all, the game is not plodding. You can choose to do side missions but the main campaign is fairly brisk, which is a positive because after a full campaign sadly you'll just want to be done with it.

Stirring Abyss is a turn-based tactics game with a nautical Lovecraftian horror theme. You manage the repair of a submarine grounded on the ocean floor, gathering supplies and recovering lost crew members while aquatic hominids try to kill you and/or drive you insane. The tactics aren't tremendously deep. Cover is rarely useful, weapons are basic melee (knife) and ranged (speargun). The abilities and mutations you acquire as you level up add more options. Every mission has a timer of sorts, in that each diver has a supply of air that runs out after a certain number of turns, though once you get some gills that becomes less of an issue. There's also a global timer that makes the world a bit more dangerous as time goes on. The graphics are simple but suitably creepy. The isometric view usually works, but sometimes it's a little hard to see something behind something else. (Tip: you can Alt+Click to select the square behind something.) There are some places where the QA department came up short. Saved games don't store which divers are "active", so you have to reset that more often than you should. Helpful tutorials continue to pop up long after they stop being helpful. In one mission I found a thing and needed to get the next two things; I found the second thing, saved and exited, and the next time I started playing it immediately declared that I had all three things and the mission was complete. Some aspects of the game are a little hard to discover. For example, if you're not playing in single-save mode, the in-mission system screen still offers only "load last save". An earlier reviewer thought that meant there was only one save available, but if you back out to the main game menu you can load an arbitrary save point. I spent about 18 hours playing through the game, with all "side missions". Overall it's a limited but atmospheric experience.

В целом неплохо. Пишут о том что игра похожа на 2 часть УФО-шки, незабвенный Terror from the deep. Но разве что сеттингом, дном океана. Стратегическая и тактическая части заметно беднее, Однако это не делает данный продукт плохой игрой. Сюжет в наличии, некоторая скудность врагов, компенсируется наличием довольно интересных боссов. Любителям жанра возможно зайдет, всем остальным мимо. Сложность весьма условна, основную компанию проходил на нормальной сложности, бесконечный режим опробовал на "харде", разницы особо не заметил, разве что зверье стало "толще". Вывод; Для своих денег сойдет, разрабам в следующем проекте добавить глубины, тактической и стратегической.

Overall, I enjoyed my time in the depths with Stirring Abyss. It scratched the squad based rpg gameplay I was seeking when I bought it. It's a bit on the shorter side, I'm thinking of this game as more of an appetizer than a main course. I played it on easy, and I feel like there is a level of strategic mastery required to beat it on Hard mode, but that's not for me. The atmosphere of the game is stellar. I enjoyed the music and sound effects. The combat side of things felt good (even compared to the almighty X-com). There was an amount of wiggle room in how to build characters. However, the depth of base building felt a bit shallow (but maybe that was because of the mode I was playing in). All said, I would recommend this game. I had fun with it. It's very different from Terror of the Deep, but it is a tighter narrative experience, and I think there is merit in that.