Templar Battleforce

Had a silly mechanical question, asked it on the forums, devs answered me in less than 10 minutes. That itself deserves a positive review, not to mention the fact that this is still one of the better "Elite Genetic Space Fighters In Big Power Armor" games out there, even compared to all of those in the Big Franchise.

TLDR: This is a simple but quite fun turn based strategy game with a few mostly forgettable flaws - Main positives - 1) Very detailed character customization and specialization There are 8 classes (1 special "Captain" class that only one character can be and represents the "main character", 3 "regular" classes that are immediately available, and 4 "advanced" classes that require a few missions to unlock). Each class comes with a set of skills (most of which are unlocked through research) which, broadly speaking, provide the option for specialization into roughly 3 different roles. For example, Scouts has skills that let it function as a long-range high-single-target damage sniper, a stealthy solo operative, or a radar specialist that, well, scouts the enemy position. You unlock skills and items to equip through research, and you can equip each character with armor, weaponry, and a couple accessories to help them lean towards the role you want. Each "skill" is leveled individually, so if you want to make a sniper out of your Scout, you just level his shooty skills, while if you want him to be more of a Scout, you level his radar and movement skills. This gives you tons of options for customization so you can play how you want, and you can expect to control 4-8 of such customized characters. So basically you'll have some basic classes at first, then as you get more "research points" to travel through the game's fairly large tech tree, you'll unlock more skills which allow for more specialized roles within each class. Simply research the classes that you find most interesting or compelling and you'll find the depth of each class essentially triples. This keeps the game feeling fun and fresh as you continue to play 2) Deep tech tree Goes hand in hand with above. Basically the tech tree is what determines your equipment and abilities your characters have access to. You get 'research points' each mission you complete, with more or less points being acquired depending on your performance on the mission What elevates it is how you get few enough points to always feel like your choices are important and you have to focus on a specific type of team rather than having so many points you can buy out the entire tech tree within the first couple hours. The range of options you have and the limited options you can realistically pursue at once is to the game's benefit; you always have some new tech to look forward to and replays of the game are fun because you can choose to focus on different tactics - Main negatives - 1) The music just sucks. Every track is a 10 or so second poorly looped bit of music, I mean you can literally hear an awkward cutoff of a note with every loop it makes. Mute the music, go download Warhammmer 40k Chaos Gate (1998)'s soundtrack, and play that instead. Not a big deal at all in my opinion but it's worth mentioning 2) Not a lot of quality of life gameplay-wise. For instance, you have to guesstimate line of sight and it's not always immediately apparent what type of terrain counts as breaking line of sight, and there's no tools or UI features to make this process easier so you kind of just have to learn through experience. The gameplay is generally simple enough that this doesn't matter a lot, but it's noticeable. Overall a pretty solid 4/5 game, would recommend, especially on sale

if you like the idea of a turn based Warhammer 40k Space Marines game, this is basically what you wish they were.

Wow, this game takes me back to Incubation (Battle Isle 4)! Don't let the simple graphics fool you - TBF has a surprisingly deep lore and combat system. While they might look like Space Marines, Templars inherit all the combat memories of their ancestors, which allows them to freely respec between missions. This gives you plenty of room to tinker around with your squad to aim for a high mission rating, self imposed challenges, trying out cool stuff or on the higher difficulties simply getting out alive. 

[i]В угрюмой тени предстоящего грядущего есть лишь противостояние[/i] Наконец-то я встретил игру, которая утолила мою жажду [b]Incubation[/b] и [b]Space Hulk[/b]. Коридоры не в одну клетку. Кампания с миссиями. Стреляем по ксеносам. Выполняем простейшие миссии. Теряем рыцарей-храмовников. В конце - победа! [table][tr][th] [h1][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26407069-FOSTER_ok/]ПОДПИСЫВАЙТЕСЬ НА КУРАТОРА[/url] И [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/F_ok]ВСТУПАЙТЕ В ГРУППУ[/url]. [/h1] [/th][/tr][/table]

There are too many easy to fix small quality of life issues that come from a lack of polish. The music is a short sound track that loops over and over with an obvious cut, extremely annoying. You have give 3 inputs to move by pressing move, then double clicking. The path is not displayed, nor is the character's remaining movement range like similar games do. Why not just right click to move, one input instead of three? Sometimes while moving, movement is aborted for no reason I can tell. There is no status summary of my units, instead I have to manually find units and select them, then remember which buffs are active. There are many abilities with many stats, but without a clear explanation of what they do that could have been fixed with tooltips or better yet a glossary.

a cool tactical rpg with permadeath if you like warhammer 40 i recommend it cause is very inspired by it xD

Don't sleep on this if you're a fan of squad based tactical combat games. Enormous attention to detail was paid when designing the game. It is very challenging deep into the campaign. Early on, Brutal difficulty feels merely challenging but eventually you will be forced to re-read and re-learn the finer points of game rules and tailor your strategy accordingly. Fortunately, the player is never locked into their level-up choices (skills, stats, special abilities) because they can be re-specced at will between missions. This costs nothing and eventually becomes part of the challenge on harder difficulties. The special abilities and equipment tree has to be unlocked progressively. Before higher tier abilities are unlocked, it makes sense to specialize a Templar one way but with better unlocks and more skill points to burn, re-speccing the same Templar using different talents becomes a game within a game. In my experience, this is especially true when abilities become available that can reduce enemy movement or otherwise cause a significant jump in buffs/debuffs. The tree itself is enormous and seems overwhelming but most "nodes" in the tree are quite cheap so it is possible to make progress quickly. Some of the higher tier nodes unlock only moderate gains as well, so diverting attention to cheaper nodes affecting other classes can better strengthen the team as a whole. During missions, the most pressing concern is whether to make progress rapidly and risk overheating in a rough spot, or deliberately adopting a slow pace, letting enemies pile up (and even trip over each other and get in each others way) but keeping overheating at bay while making progress and racking up an impressive kill count. Overheating can affect Templar builds depending on difficulty. Brutal and above (recommended if you are familiar with turn based combat games) and the heat damage can cost you dearly if you let it spiral out of control. The choice of how hard and fast to go also depends on the teams abilities and sometimes my own skills using them. On easier difficulties the game is more approachable for casual players who want to whack and sack hordes of Xenos using different classes and abilities, or haven't got time to get bogged down in tough and dirty trench warfare. If you're put off by complexity and difficulty, rest assured that there is a difficulty level for you. All in all, if you're in the mood for some very well designed turn-based combat, this is one of the best games in the genre. It follows the thread all the way from Laser Squad and it's fascinating to experience the evolution of tactical turn based games. While it lacks the humor or flash of some of the other greats and has no strategy layer or base management, it has enough meat on the bone in the campaign missions to satisfy even the die-hards. Highly recommended, esp. if you want a challenge.