If you know me personally you’d know I’m not a fan of the tactics genre. If you didn’t know that before you know now, which is better than never. I love RPGs and good turn-based combat, but not tactics. Partially because I’m not very good at tactics, especially ones that rely heavily on chance. It’s why I never really got into XCOM or tried any Fire Emblem title after beating Three Houses. It’s not a genre I hate though as there are a few outliers. One of my all time favorite tactics games is Into The Breach. A fun turn based roguelike where battles take place on miniature grids and not a single one should last more than five minutes. It solved the problem I had with these games in that battles often take place in too big of spaces, so at times you spend a majority of battles marching over to where you need to be. Into The Breach kept the pace going well, and was more reliant on skill than strategy. Clever play could save the player from a sticky situation. Making for some of my favorite moments to happen during turn-based combat. Some of my other favorite tactics games would include those Mario + Rabbid games. A lite take on XCOM, but an incredibly endearing one that knows how to strike a balance between being challenging and fair. Then you got FTL, which is a whole beast of its own. Point is if you present me with the right tactics game I’ll like it.
Which is the case today as I finally checked out a game that’s been sitting on my backlog for a bit now. Steamworld Heist, a 2D tactics RPG developed by indie studio Image and Form who are well known for the acclaimed Steamworld franchise. Steamworld isn’t one of my favorite indie series, but it is one I have a lot of respect for. Over the last decade Image and Form have proven that any genre they touch they can turn into gold. Throwing in unique ideas and creating creative core gameplay loops out of ideas that have been done dozens of times before. They did this with Steamworld Dig and its sequel. Two games that combine metroidvanias with the digging loop of Dig Dug. I reviewed Steamworld Dig 2 a few years back and remember really liking it. Polished and charming in all the right ways, and earlier this year I checked out the original which I quite liked as well. The original I picked up during a sale alongside Steamworld Heist, so I was bound to start up Heist eventually. I did this last week and what I did not expect was for time to go by faster than I noticed. Steamworld Heist is good. It’s really good. I think it’s the best tactics game I’ve played since Into The Breach and that’s going to be shocking for some as Heist isn’t doing much to revolutionize the genre it comes from. It was good enough though to warrant a sequel.
I believe Steamworld Heist 2 released a few months ago as of the time of writing this review. It got a surprise reveal during a Nintendo indie showcase, and from what I’ve heard from critics it’s a pretty good sequel. Image and Form are much like Supergiant Games to me in that they move from new idea to idea rather than go back to what they’ve made before. That statement is wrong now that Supergiant is making Hades 2, but the point is it’s better to move on rather than do the same thing over and over. That statement can also be proven wrong with how every game these guys have made is under the Steamworld label. Oh f*ck it. After Steamworld Dig 2 they went on to make a turn based fantasy RPG and city builder, so I assumed they like experimenting with all sorts of ideas. Then they made Steamworld Heist 2, so obviously the first Steamworld Heist had to be good enough for them to go back to the tactics genre again. So today we’re going to discuss why I really liked Steamworld Heist. All the things it manages to do right, why I enjoyed it more than most tactics games, and how Image and Form somehow manages to do well in every genre. So let’s gear up, grab some trusty friends, hop aboard a shuttle, and prepare for a good old heist.
Story
The universe of the Steamworld series is an interesting one. Set years after the human race goes nearly extinct and steampunk robots took care of what remained of earth. Something happened and it caused the earth to explode. If you’ve played Steamworld Dig 2 you would know exactly what it was. A few years have passed and now these steampunk robots are busy sailing the stars. Exchanging goods, trying to find a habitable planet to make a new home for everyone, and keep themselves together during these dark times. Powerful factions have arisen during this space age and some of them are hell bent on conquest. Evolving their bodies into stronger forms and then punishing those who don’t fit their standards. The strongest faction being the Loyalists.
There are those who oppose the Loyalists and one such is Piper Faraday. The captain of a bold team of space pirates who go around fighting scoundrels and protecting the locals. Things have not been going well for Piper as during her current heist she loses almost all her men aside from one. They manage to escape with some loot, but without a functioning crew they are bound to lose in any fights against loyalists and stronger factions. So their goal is simple right now. Find some poor souls willing to join their cause and continue pushing back on those who aim to oppress the people. They’ll witness magic and acts seen from the previous world. Acts beyond their comprehension and uncover a darker mystery lying beneath. A sinister plot being unraveled that only they and their skills can stop. They venture forward into the void.
Gameplay
The core focus of Steamworld Heist is to offer a well crafted combat loop, and thankfully they’ve managed to do just that. Heist is simple in that it follows a level to level structure similar to that of older Super Mario games. New levels can’t be unlocked until you beat the ones you have open now, and some are locked behind reputation stars. These are stars you get for fulfilling goals in levels and managing to get out without having too many crew members killed. The game asks of you to play perfectly and wisely, and the combat is flexible enough to make this achievable and not be too frustrating. Missions start out like this. You select crew members, equip them with any gears you have in your inventory, and then send them out into the field. Each crew member has their own stats, abilities, and can wield specific weapon types. For example, Ivanski can carry heavy guns and missile launchers, but he can’t wield lighter weapons as his build doesn’t exactly fit it. Piper can use pistols and sniper pistols, but can’t wield anything too heavy. The choice of team members you decide to bring on missions can drastically change your strategies and types of playstyle. Having a tank deal heavy damage from afar, lighter units scout up ahead, or keep a sniper in distance in case those you decide to send are being harassed by too many enemies.
When moving your characters around you’re shown how far they can go and what distance will determine whether they can act or not. Orange means they can choose to either move again or try to fire upon an enemy. Blue means they’ll wait in that spot and won’t move again until the next turn. It’s important that you place your allies in some sort of cover, as enemies will fire on them during their turns. Steamworld Heist is an incredibly skill based tactics game with little systems of chance. There are no percentages saying whether you will or will not land a shot. It’s either you line it up correctly or miss. Bullets depending on what guns you bring will ricochet off the walls, and headshots can do massive damage so precision is key. Sometimes an enemy with a shield can be thrown at you, so you’re incentivized to use the environment to your advantage. Combine this with a security system that spawns more enemies the longer you take to complete a mission and certain consequences you get a game that wants you to play smartly. During each mission there is swag to collect. Otherwise loot, and they contain a variety of goodies. Whether that be water to purchase equipment at shops, or new gear. That’s why it’s so important to loot as much as you can during missions as they have what you need to become stronger. Besides that there’s not much else for me to say. Down with the queen and open a new day for the people!
Thoughts
Steamworld Heist is the most confident tactics game I’ve played in recent memory. It might be a rather simplistic 2D take on the genre, but its clever design and moments are what make up for it. I have a few complaints outside of the core combat loop, but nothing prevents from giving it the love I think it deserves. Much like Into The Breach, the combat in Steamworld Heist fixes a lot of the problems I had with games like XCOM and even Fire Emblem. Encounters being weighed more on chance rather than actual skill and clever thinking. Overtime though I come to a further understanding why people like the chance based elements more. There are ways to make chance based systems clever in that if you somehow manage to land a hit when there’s a low chance number, and that’s what saves you during a stressful moment. It’s moments like that which make these types of games great, but it’s not always fun for me personally. Steamworld Heist avoids this with its aiming system. You are allowed to aim wherever you want and it’s all about putting yourself in the right position to land a hit.There’s a thing where if you plop yourself on the other side of cover where an enemy is you can land an easy direct blow, so I have my guy with a big shotgun run up and blast them in the face. It’s satisfying each time to do so.
The game does enough so that no mission can be spent standing in the same spot. Enemies are always moving about and every cover spot has its own durability number. When the durability hits zero your cover is broken, so it pushes you to move to new spots. The alarm system counts down as well and when it reaches zero it spawns more enemies and starts again. It even has the chance to activate turrets, which then forces you to determine whether to gun them down because they dish out more damage, or the enemies moving about. New enemy types are introduced with time and they make you switch up your approach. Those shielded blokes in particular having you position a guy behind them so you strike them or bring down their defenses. Then when you beat your mission goals you have to make way to an extraction point, so it’s a mad rush to safety. The game has all these stressful systems banging you about, but it never felt frustrating. Everything that happens in Heist feels fair. If one of my characters dies it’s because I didn’t do a good job offering support or moving them out of the way of danger. If I miss it’s because I aimed poorly. It’s fairness and escalation in difficulty that makes Heist an incredibly rewarding tactics game.
I like how the reputation system gets you to replay levels. I did fairly well so I didn’t have to go back for much, but those reputation points push you to pursue new challenges. One of which is to find the epic loot in each mission, which requires you to explore and face off against more enemies. Possibly increasing the alarm system more and forcing even more enemies than usual. Reputation can even garnish you more rewards in outposts. Allowing you to access new gear and even characters. It’s nice seeing a star grading system apply to outside elements instead of just being a good “you did a good job” symbol. Now as I said earlier there’s a few things I dislike. I don’t like the inventory system and for two key reasons. One is that gear has rarity elements and that’s something I normally don’t like in RPGs. It’s fine here because rewards brought back on successful missions feel earned and they needed a way for gear to get better as you got further. It’s just I never prefer rarity systems, because it means you get repeats of loot you already have. Another reason why it’s bad is because you have inventory space. You can only carry so much of the loot you get and if it can't fit you must sell it. This means you can’t equip everyone, which sucks because why experiment with new characters when you can only equip so many.
Speaking of not being motivated to try out new characters: everyone levels up individually. The game has the exact same problem Octopath Traveler has in that if you want to use someone else but you find them too weak you gotta grind them up to everybody else. It’s time consuming and you’ll save more time by just sticking to four characters you like and work well together. The max number of characters you’ll ever have out in the field is four anyways, so just follow that strategy. Kind of bums me I didn’t try the other characters, because they all have fun designs and unique personalities. I like how varied the mission objectives are despite some of them repeating pretty often. Destroy some generators, collect swag, survive a certain amount of turns, or get through with less than three characters. It’s constantly switching the objective in this extremely linear game that prevents it from ever getting stale. It also creates replay value as now you want to go back and see if you can do better.
A few more compliments before I wrap this one up. Steamworld has always had a very distinct art style and as Image and Form put out new games that art style gets better. Certainly the case when you compare Steamworld Heist to the first Steamworld Dig. Everything is more detailed, colorful, and everything has this nice sheen to it. Exactly what you want from a game where all the characters are gold or bronze. The music to Steamworld is one I never paid attention to, but Heist has a very lovely soundtrack. They got this band I never heard of to make licensed songs for all their games, and the ones they play in bars or when you beat a boss are relaxing to listen to. Just a nice soundtrack that I might play during peaceful car rides home. The story is not a plot I really cared about. However, I appreciate their attempt to tell complex narratives and expand their universe. Showing what these crazy cow folks can do when given space ships into the vast. All in all I strongly recommend Steamworld Heist. It’s going to turn ten years old next year, and thankfully it aged like fine wine. Image and Form can turn any genre they touch into gold, and I’d love to see what they do next. In the end I am going to give Steamworld Heist a 9/10 for excellence at best. Cheers mates.
Comments