You have hero characters, with a fixed name and appearance, and then you have random recruits. Your soldiers are also split into two tiers. Does “+15 damage” actually matter when I do 450 damage per shot? How about a 10 percent bonus to accuracy? I don’t know, and worse I don’t really care. At the end of Act One I already have dozens of attachments with the usual arcane stat bonuses. The armor and gear customization gets really unwieldy. You do outfit and recruit soldiers, and assign skill points, but in Gears Tactics these are mere moments to catch your breath between missions-and to put all your soldiers into hot pink armor. There’s not even an equivalent to Chimera Squad’s less stressful “City Anarchy” meter. Like the recently released XCOM: Chimera Squad, there’s no base-building or anything. It’s a friendlier tactics game, made even friendlier by the lack of an overarching strategy layer. Your soldiers seem to hit more often than not, and finding yourself out of position doesn’t mean instant death like it usually does in XCOM. But with the exception of one terrible mission (where I found myself completely taken by surprise by enemy reinforcements) I haven’t really missed the ability to save scum. Gears Tactics has no manual saves, which I think is blasphemy in a tactics game. Plan A breaks down, and then Plan B collapses, and then when it tells you that your sniper has a 95 percent chance to hit she misses anyway and XCOM twists the knife. It’s not a punishing game though, or at least I’m not finding it punishing. ![]() It’s not uncommon to find yourself outnumbered three or even four to one, wretches and drones and grenadiers all closing in on your position. These three factors-more actions per turn, bonus actions through executions, and the ability to tank damage-mean Gears Tactics can throw hordes of enemies your way. Your Gears can also self-revive once per mission, an ability known as “Second Wind,” and no matter how badly a firefight went your soldiers still heal back to full in between missions. Another, the support class, carries grenades that can revive and heal a downed squad member. One class, the Vanguard, heals itself at the start of each turn and with every wound inflicted. Doing so gives every other member of your squad an extra action that turn.Īnd lastly, Gears Tactics is generous with its heals. If a Locust goes down, you have a chance to send in one of your soldiers to execute them. Anything larger than that is typically “Downed” first though. ![]() The smallest enemies, wretches, are killed outright. Likewise, if you go into Overwatch with three actions in reserve, you’ll still fire three times at any enemies who enter line-of-sight-which they do almost in real-time, with groups of enemies moving all at once in a rush to minimize downtime.Įxecutions are also important. If you want to fire your gun all three actions? You can do that. These actions can be split in any way you’d like. Soldiers typically have three actions per turn. Combat encounters are brief, and the body counts high. Gears Tactics isn’t a shooter, but it inherits shooter sensibilities. It’s fast and fluid and lively in a way XCOM 2 never managed, even after patches fixed the worst of the stuttering. Gears Tactics also differentiates itself mechanically though-and I’m loving that aspect even more, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in Acts Two and Three. It’s helped solidify Gears Tactics in my head, anchored individual missions and moments in a way I rarely see with tactics games. Others have been sprawling hour-long slogs through never-ending reinforcements. Some are quick jaunts through small environments. The main missions have all felt noticeably different, both the overall vibe and the end-goals. IDG / Hayden DingmanĪs someone who typically plays games through only once though, I’m finding the variety refreshing. If you’re deep in your fifth XCOM 2 campaign or whatever, that might be a drawback. The downside of such heavily authored missions of course is that they’re less replayable. ![]() It’s pretty incredible, at least the first time through.
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