As much as I'd love to say it is a good game, I've to be honest here:
It is not.
First things first, AI is utterly braindead moronic, leading your squad members (be thankful if it is a thrall) to often get stuck inside walls. Necessitating you blow them up using grenades (if you even have them) or let the enemy kill them, if that is indeed possible. Sometimes they drop into the literal void beneath the level... Sometimes they travel -not through safe passages like the rest of the team- but through a test lab, a military zone, a checkpoint, or whatever the hell it is that is most dangerous to you at the moment... and then get killed, necessitating you to eat the death (meaning expenses and an automatic -1 on your death tally)... to rush in with the rest of your poor fools and revive them no matter the amount of enemies swarming about the unit... or to quickly press Alt + F4, say 'fuck this game' and quit, maybe to pick it up later on.
Secondly, the utter lack of specific commands in at least a semi-STRATEGIC game (seriously, fuck off, strategic is the name of the game here, to hell with your semantics) is utterly unforgivable. Need everyone else BUT the hacker to say, shoot enemies while he's working, but got a blob of units milling about cause, you know, the hacker? Too bad. Not having say, a Ctrl + 1, 2, 3, 4 sort of shortcuts for selecting multiple units at a time, like so many other games do, means that you now have to either a) select all. b) select multiple by dragging your mouse over them and praying to god hacker isn't there or your current action will be canceled, or c) always keep them separate, greatly hindering what otherwise could be a semi-smooth gaming experience. Same manner of problems with grenades etc, all or nothing, baby! That door? No more! That mech? Guess we got one left... maybe... I hope at least the armor is dented...
Thirdly, camera shakes and cannot be rotated. Fuck you for trying to do anything that needs even a modicum of accuracy like- say, taking cover. You know? A pretty BIG fucking thing in a strategic game like this.
And finally, none of the achievements work proper save maybe the ATM ones, so if you're after them, sorry. This is not it, pal.
Aside from all these excruciating little tickbites, the game is fun enough. The cyberpunk aesthetic is great as always, all the little factions from the heavy armored corporate types to the cult zealots to the police-wannabes all feel interesting enough at first, even if past a certain point they're really all the same. More armor, more shields- lasers, ballistics, plasma... This guy's got a heavy gun, this one has shields, this one's a commander- dog, drone and heavy mech, blah blah blah...
What I mean to say is:
Don't look for any amount of roleplay here, no immersion, no none of that kind of play. This is for strategy and strategy only, despite what the cloning (better stats from hijacked units), the black market, leveling and other miscellaneous design tidbits would have you believe. Again, strategy is largely kneecapped by lack of specific commands and AI hiccups, among other things, but it is all there is. Period.
Other than that...
Nothing really. Buy it, don't buy it, not my problem. But if you do do buy it, at least get it on a discount for your own sake...
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