Ticket to Earth

A fun strategy/puzzle game that has a decent amount of depth. Story is cool, nothing groundbreaking, the gameplay is what shines through. Cool soundtrack, though limited in number of tracks. Recommended from a Brandon Sanderson video!

With 4 chapters, Ticket to Earth is an interesting attempt to combine and innovate upon a number of genres, including turn-based tactics, match 3+, rpgs, and visual novels. I think overall it's admirable what they're reaching for, and it's a worthwhile addition to most of the genres the designers clearly enjoyed. At the moment, I didn't spot any obvious game-breaking bugs or broken mechanics. In my run-through, everything worked as it was supposed to. There aren't any moments where I was left wondering where I went next, although after a while the sidequests seem set aside, which makes sense to help players get to the final stage. Some players may not like the constraints/railroad or lack of consequences for Ticket to Earth: You can retry a mission as many times as you need to until you win, and in some cases it's better to restart a mission to try and get a better starting tile layout for your characters. The characters don't die, but "nope out" and are fully healed for the next mission (except if you used a justice power and reset it, then you have to collect those tokens all over again.) So, you don't quite need to panic that you'll have to go through the next 2 or 3 chapters without a major character's powers to back you up. You also won't be presented with a bewildering array of choices or feel a need to give the sword specialist a gun or vice versa. People have a very static equipment tree. The crystal crafting element to enhance weapons almost never came in handy. At a 10-20% chance to activate for most of them it was a nice attempt but after a while I stopped stressing out about collecting them. The approach to leveling up is at turns straightforward and a bit arcane in its logic but also doesn't seem to really affect most battles. The art is fitting and engaging for most of the characters with a good range of emotions and angles for each character during their dialogue sequences and I think over time, you'd be able to recognize the world of Ticket to Earth from afar. The overall storyline isn't quite Shakespeare but the twists are fun and the characters are for the most part well-formed for the roles they need to play. I'm not left wondering very often why they're motivated or if I'm missing some crucial subplot information for accidentally skipping a cut scene. I wouldn't say it's quite up there with, say, Citizen Sleeper, but I enjoyed it more than the dialogue for X-Com: Chimera Squad. I think I would have appreciated multiple ending options but it works for where the studio is at in terms of development resources right now. There are instances where it would have been nice to play with the whole team. The game often obliges you to pick 2 out of 3 or 4 for a given scenario. Sometimes the story is set up where that makes sense., but other times you might think: Well, what, are the other people just sitting on the sideline like a tag-team wrestling match? Getting a multi-tile combo and then hitting an opponent is usually a very relaxing and satisfying process. And I think that's part of what ultimately wins me over here. It's not absurdly easy, but it's also not Axis and Allies and X-Com like Phoenix Point, where you'll have to worry if you blew it right before the mid-game and the rest of your experience is going to be a slog or you'll have to start all over. In individual battles, I'm also not worrying too much about tactics and enemy movement patterns/weapon capabilities like Into the Breach and a few others. Ticket to Earth fulfills what I think is a very interesting bar for itself, much like Invisible, inc.: There aren't many other settings or ways to present the mechanics of the game except in they way it's been presented here. I don't know if this would quite work in say, a feudal fantasy setting, or giant mecha, or a hardcore Rainbow Six/Team Fortress setting. I'm always on the lookout for something that stakes out its own territory next to X-Com and Jagged Alliance, and I feel like this is a good game to turn to once you've completed it to kill some time but can't spare tooooo much time. An average battle seems to take you between 5 to 30 minutes, ,and you won't feel much of a need to save every 3rd turn unlike many games in this genre. Some players will love that, others will hate it. I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did, but I do like it and consider it a good value if you know what you're getting with this. The venn diagram of players for whom this is perfect is a little wild, but I wish the developers all of the best in whatever they come up with next. Good show!