Tactical Breach Wizards

Absolutely deserves a positive review. Tactical Breach Wizards has interesting things to say about game design, dialogue writing, and psychology. It's a turn based tactical game with multiple characters at a time, like x-com, but each mission is self-contained and randomness is removed, making it more of a puzzle. An issue I often have with games like these is that the optimal play is often to graph out everything that would happen in response to your choices and "solve" the level in a notebook or document outside the game before committing to any actions in the game, but that's simply not fun. Tactical Breach Wizards remedies this with the rewind function: allowing you to check what would happen without fully committing to it. The rewind feature goes against the ideology of a lot of hardcore games by allowing you to make mistakes, however, this prevents you from having to solve levels outside the game, and shortens the "run back" time-waste of getting back to where you where before you made a mistake in other games. This actually could allow the game to present very hard puzzles without being as taxing mentally and emotionally. The rewind also allows you to safely learn how mechanics work, and removes frustration from mis-inputs. The rewind feature and the pre-breach information are integrated into the story via the powers of a wizard which is nice, although there are a few times where there's logically no reason that anyone with those powers would be present. I thought the game would take away those features at these times, but it did not. I don't see a good solution to this, without cheapening those powers, shoehorning characters with them into every situation, or making parts of the game lose out on the game design benefits of those features. The game isn't particularly hard on normal difficulty, but I'd still recommend it on a first playthrough primarily for pacing reasons, and because of another set of game design genius: Characters do gain xp and level up, unlocking new abilities, but this is not something you can really grind or optimize, so I never felt required to. The optional objectives in each level keep each puzzle engaging even if the main objective won't stop you, and the fact that the optional objectives don't have any gameplay benefit for completing means I never felt forced to go back and retry a level for them. I got invested in the story and even a few times towards the end came up with my own optional objectives for roleplay reasons: for example, don't smash the cultural relic, and don't let any friendlies end the mission with lung cancer(notably different than "don't let any friendlies GET lung cancer"). The campaign took me 16 hours to beat and there was only one level I actually had to reset to the beginning to beat. However, I will definitely go back to get the option bonus objectives I missed, and maybe even go for all achievements.

Tactical Breach Wizard's most significant flaw is that there isn't more of it. I was initially wary of the hype surrounding the game, but a fellow fan gifted me a copy and demanded that I play it. Now I wish I'd played it sooner. I got a good, leisurely 25 hours out of the story mode, which left me hungry for more. The characters, the snappy dialogue, the world-building and the well-constructed stakes kept me interested, and the storytelling between levels kept me riveted. There are a lot of really excellent ideas in full plumage here, and I can't wait for the studio's next entry. Special props for the excellent controller support and the reward screens. I laughed every time. Thank you for the excellent game.

It’s a great game that’s paced competently and every clever idea is utilised to its maximum potential. The story has witty moments, albeit it does verge on the eye-roll-inducing marvel movie-tier dialogue of every character having to have some sort of back-chat which grates on me. I guess some would call that ‘millennial writing’ but I hate the semantics that phrase brings. Nevertheless, the plot is an enjoyable concept that compliments the gameplay and art style. Highly recommend for what it’s worth.

What if XCOM encouraged save scumming with a rewind feature where you could rewind each individual round until you were happy, and treated each level as a puzzle? You get this game, with a more punchy, humour filled story, and some very unique characters and abilities. Highly recommended.

PUZZLE. That is the first tag the game has on the store page. Something I wish I was more wary of before getting the game. It is done well, though. After progressing some more I was more open to solving the puzzles (Spoiler: they give you cosmetic incentive for doing cool stuff). Was bummed at first but now excited to play more. So, yea, this review is an extra warning that it is one of those puzzle turn-based strategy games. Alright I beat the game. It's actually so peak. the game becomes everything you want it to be halfway through(Act 3). You have more characters, and everyone is getting more perks. I started finishing levels in 1-2 turns with these extremely cool abilities. It's actually, genuinely genius how the pacing of this game was designed. Early on, it appears barebones, but you get introduced to cool outfits, and you need to basically play perfectly to unlock points to get the outfits. Then, by the time you have the outfits you like for everyone, the game opens up like crazy. You get two paths: do you want to kind of start playing like it's XCOM, or do you want to play like a perfect completionist puzzle master? I picked the former, and was super happy to do so. Some extra notes: The world/lore is really cool, the characters are written quite well (but dialogue specifically can be shaky sometimes), and they lean into their concept so well. I would play a million iterations of this contemporary wizard SWAT game.

Does what it says on the tin. They're tactical, they breach, and they're wizards. If you like puzzles or tactics, buy it. It’s not rocket science; it’s magic. 10/10

Tactical Breach Wizards is a masterfully crafted tactics/puzzle game, backed up with brilliant writing and a genuinely gripping story. You play as a team of wizards, each with a unique tactical/magical role, and breach your way into a series of rooms filled with enemies to take out, cover to hide behind, and windows to tactically defenestrate enemies out of. Gameplay wise, what at first seems like a typical tactics game gradually reveals itself to be more of a puzzle game (it reminded me of Into The Breach in that respect). You have to complete your objectives, but are given a lot of freedom in how to do so, especially when it comes to inventive use of your wizard’s abilities. Each mission also has optional “confidence” objectives, which provide an extra challenge for specific party members (such as completing the level in a certain number of turns, or use an ability in a certain way) in exchange for points you can use to unlock cosmetic rewards for your wizards (the idea being that they already have the outfits, but need the extra confidence to pull them off). As you progress, you earn experience points for you wizards for use in unlocking new modifies for their abilities, sometimes radically changing them and opening up new play style options and even more creativity. Each level is handcrafted and offers unique challenges, and solving each puzzle remains deeply satisfying throughout the experience. The game has strong visuals, combining stylistic, simple faces with outfits and environments with a surprising amount of detail when you take a closer look. I particularly like Zan’s gun, which upon closer inspection isn’t actually a gun, but a wand in a combat stock. The game is also backed by strong audio design, both in terms of the music, which provides the required thriller vibes whilst staying comfortably in the background while you are planning your next moves, and general audio design, with each shot and spell having great audio feedback. There is no voice acting, which is a shame, but that’s a minor gripe compared to the whole package. I had an absolute blast with Tactical Breach Wizards. It is both satisfying to play and incredibly well written, and I was excited to see what new twists and challenges I would be facing next. It doesn’t take too long to beat the main story, but there are also plenty of extra challenges to take on, from the confidence goals mentioned above, to additional challenge missions and a survival mode, so if you love the game there is plenty of extra content to keep you entertained. Great game, strongly recommended.