[h1] In A Nutshell [/h1]
Strike Team Hydra (STH) is a turn-based tactical RPG set on the Battleship TALWAR, a human spaceship invaded by aliens, and that must be liberated again by your strike team.
The game will be divided in five chapters, each having five missions, except the first that also includes tutorial ones. Each mission will be stand-alone, with a defined objective, and once concluded you will unlock the next, and also be able to return to your Camp to manage your team. The last mission of each chapter will always contain a Boss fight. Campaign Missions and also Special Missions are present, the latter have to be unlocked by completing Campaign chapters first, and count basically as "side quests" to get more loot and XP. Each mission can be farmed any number of times to get loot or XP if needed.
You will be able to manage your team, and select who is going to be deployed from a roster of 12 specialists, but only 6 can be put in the Strike Team at the same time. Of course, each hero has unique abilities and roles such as Support, Medic, Frontline, Assassin etc. Also, your team members can be equipped with RPG-style loot, featuring different randomly generated statistics for each piece, and rarity levels. Some equipment can only be put on certain specialists, while most of it is universal. Equipment is gained at the end of each mission, most of the time, but in small quantities, or purchased at the Shop using Credits earned.
Combat is turn-based on an Hex grid, it features cover systems with different levels, classic RPG elements such as crit. chance, dodge chance, armor etc. and uses an Action point system. Generally, combat is tactical-paced and using the abilities of your team correctly is paramount, especially creating effective combinations between them to gain great bonuses from multiple skills stacking together, creating powerful buffs.
Overall I found STH to be a decent turn-based tactical game, it is far from perfect and has some problems as you will read further, but still can provide enjoyment to those who like this type of game and have already played all the other similar titles.
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[h1] Gameplay Analysis [/h1]
[b] General Gameplay [/b]
Gameplay will mainly be divided into Team Management and Combat. Each team member will level automatically when getting enough XP, and have better overall statistics such as max. AP, health, armor, precision and so on. Leveling up also means unlocking more advanced and powerful skills for each specialist. Gear has no level restrictions so you can equip very powerful gear on any of your soldiers from the start, if you manage to get it. An hero getting KO on a mission will not receive XP, and be resurrected when the mission ends.
Missions generally have a handful different objectives. The most common being to exterminate all enemies, while also escort, defense, survival and timed missions are present, but in lesser frequency.
The fact you cannot customize how your soldiers level up takes away depth, with no branching skill trees or different progression options. The addition of RPG-style loot is unusual and good in some ways, but also is unbalanced and too much relying on RNG (chance) to determine if you get very good, game-changing pieces of equipment. In later missions, you may be forced to grind already completed ones for money and items, in order to finally get good equipment on all your soldiers.
[b] Story [/b]
Story will be quite minimal and consist of mission briefings, an introduction, and little else. The whole game story is basically the fact you need to cleanse the TALWAR from aliens, and that's about it.
[b] Combat System [/b]
Combat is classic turn-based, hex-grid style, with a strong focus on positioning and buff / debuff stacking on allies and enemies. Preparing your team adequately with such things will be invaluable to survive the alien attack. Enemies come in various sizes and shapes, and aswell have classes such a frontlines, assassins, heavy, etc. each with unique abilities. As you progress in missions, enemies will come in more powerful variants and some also will be completely new.
Combat may be decent enough but also relies a bit too much on random chance for my taste. An unlucky critical hit on a team member will mean instant death in most cases, while in later game enemies will have to absorb way more then a couple of criticals to be destroyed.
An interesting mechanic is Counter Attack: any targeted player or enemy, if in range of the aggressor, will counter attack immediately after being attacked, up to a certain number of counter-attacks per turn, that can be improved with skills and levels.
[b] Content & Pricing [/b]
It takes around 14 to 18 hours, depending on your playstyle, difficulty, grind amount etc. to finish all the campaign missions and special missions. There is nothing else apart from this to do. for being a mobile port the quality is decent, but i'd still advice to wait for a discount before buying, as the overall quality does not justify full price.
[b] Balancing & Challenge [/b]
There are some balance issues: critical hits rely too much on luck and disfavor the player's side considerably, some skills both enemy's and player's are way overpowered if stacked together, easily granting monstrous stats such as 100% critical chance, or 80% evasion bonus, or absurd weapon ranges and damages all the time. When stats like these come into play, a lucky shot is all that makes the difference between losing and winning, as enemies can insta-kill you and aswell you can insta-kill them, or kill even the toughest ones rapidly.
Difficulties above normal transform enemies into huge bullet sponges, with also a little increase in damage (it already is high in Normal). This leads to battles lasting longer, and also be frustrating for the sheer amounts of HP the enemy has, overwhelming you just because you simply have not enough DPS, hence it all goes back to the "farming more gear and levels" shenanigans. Better ways to implement difficulty such as different objectives, more advanced (and not spongy!) enemies, or additional mission parameters, would have been so much better.
[h1] Technical Analysis [/h1]
[b] Graphics [/b]
Graphics are not that good, but considering it is a mobile port, they are decent enough. Animations are a bit janky, effects are mediocre, and textures are not the top, but sufficient.
[b] Sound [/b]
Soundtrack, voice lines and effects are really nothing special, nothing impressed me enough to be mentioned, negatively or positively.
[b] Performance & Stability [/b]
Nothing to report. Good.
[b] AI [/b]
Enemy AI will not be very smart, as it will run in AOE damage areas such as fire all the time, and die in the process, or attack less vulnerable specialists when a more vulnerable one is in range.
[b] Quality of Life [/b]
UI has some problems of scaling, as some elements of it are very small and hard to read, while others appear deformed and stretched in weird ways. Nothing of this breaks the game, it just makes it clunkier and less user friendly.
[b] Bugs / Issues [/b]
Obstacle detection regarding firing ranges is quite broken and many times you will see enemies, and also allies, being able to fire through walls or at impossible angles and hit enemies. Cover system is also not always reliable and sometimes it will just not give cover, or give cover when there isn't, to both enemies and allies.
[h1] Conclusion & Rating [/h1]
Strike Team Hydra is a sufficiently well-made tactical RPG, with several issues, part deriving from being a mobile port, and part being not very good design choices. It is not THAT bad, but it's not very good either.
[h1] RATING: 6.0 / 10 [/h1]
