Gem Wizards Tactics
Ok, I don’t know how to write reviews so I’ll just tell you an experience I had with the game wich shows why I think it’s great.
My small team of Potato soldiers were about to be wiped out by an overwhelming force of soldiers from the Azure Order. I had already captured three of the four flags I needed to win the battle, but I was getting swarmed and pushed out towards the northwestern corner of the map. And my leader, Andromeda Robin, was already dead. My only chance to get the last flag was to kill an enemy squad leader. Unfortunately the squadleader was behind a ton of spearmen, knights, archers and catapults.
– Real player with 381.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Tactical Turn-Based Tactics Games.
Exceedingly good and long-lasting gameplay value for those with limited time–each match lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes at most. The player factions are varied and fairly balanced from my limited exposure of each. Gameplay is simple at first glance, but the synergies among units adds deep, tactical and surprising complexity to the Advanced Wars-like formula.
About the only thing that would add value to an already enjoyable game would be at least two or three more player factions, but the developer has already hinted that this is a possibility. Could we get a robot faction please?
– Real player with 38.9 hrs in game
Kaiju Wars
Kaiju are approaching the city! Scramble the jets and deploy the tanks in this 2D turn-based strategy game.
Command the army!
-
We need more time! - Play as the mayor of Floatio city, tasked with holding off the overwhelming strength of a kaiju attack. Park tanks and jets in the monster’s path to slow it down (don’t worry, we have a good insurance policy).
-
Construct buildings! - Build sacrificial army bases and airfields to distract the kaiju and line the city streets with fodder.
-
Deploy experimental weapons! - Conventional weapons aren’t enough; deploy experimental weapons such as freeze rays and transforming mechas to keep the kaiju at bay.
EVACUATE!
Our chief scientist is working on an anti-monster serum, but it’s not ready yet! Be prepared to evacuate the laboratory using transport trucks, boats or planes when the kaiju get too close.
Fight the KAIJU!
-
Five unique kaiju - Each specializing in different types of destruction.
-
They mutate! - Tremble in fear as each kaiju grows stronger and gains devastating abilities through mid-level mutations.
-
Unstoppable! - Kaiju can’t be killed, but can only be slowed down and forced to fall back… for now. Pepper them with ammunition, if you can.
-
Predictable! - They move towards the nearest building, and them scientists have mathed the exact odds they step on each tile!
Campaign Mode!
-
Uncover the mystery - Strange things are happening: frequent volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes. Find out why over the course of an 8+ hour story-based campaign.
-
Embark on a Campaign! - Play missions from all over the world as you progress through the globe-trotting fight against kaiju. Test your wits in tactical puzzles, command dozens of units in large-scale scenarios, and fend off repeated attacks while developing your city economically in city defense missions.
-
Upgrade your ACES - Veteran ACE units accompany you throughout your campaign. Spend medals to upgrade and customize your top fighters.
-
Customize your Project Deck - Unlock powerful Project cards, customize your deck, and bring your best strategy to compete on the online leaderboard!
Play AS the Kaiju!
-
Local Versus Mode - Two players duke it out at the same computer (or online via Steam RemotePlay), with one playing as the KAIJU, the other as the HUMANS
Create your own battles!
-
Create your own city or scenario - Simple and easy to use, scenarios can be crafted in minutes using the drag and drop map editor
-
Share your creations online - Share your cities or maps online using Steam Workshop integration
-
Compete with other players! - Gain the top spot on the Weekly Challenge leaderboards
You thought being mayor of the world’s greatest city was all about zoning bylaws. Then the kaiju came. Good luck.
-
Read More: Best Tactical Turn-Based Tactics Games.
Bionite: Origins
At its current state I can’t recommend. I’ve re-downloaded when new updates were made, but sadly the game does not feel like BZ. The controls are too sophisticated (couldn’t implement the original’s?), unit AI needs a huge improvement, and many bugs just build on top of it all. Seriously though, commanding your constructor to build a guntower shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes. Bad pathfinding and controls plague a game where basic game mechanics should be a priority. Besides, 6+ years and it’s still in early access? Sorry, but donating to them was a mistake.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Tactical Multiplayer Games.
As others have said, this game unfortunately seems to have grinded to a halt since 2018? Developers obviously lost interest. It’s a buggy mess that is COMPLETELY unplayable at this stage; controls are wacky and nothing seems to work correctly. Don’t buy it.
I think everyone was hoping something great would come of this spiritual successor… it’s a shame. Oh well, Battlezone 98 Redux and Battlezone: Combat Commander are on Steam now at least.
EDIT in response to developer:
I fully understand that game development is very difficult, especially when starting out or with only a small team, and as such, many projects take years to develop.
– Real player with 0.8 hrs in game
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six® Vegas 2
This is hands down my favorite FPS game of all time. I know I don’t have much time played on PC, but on my XBox, I can say with confidence I have well over 1,000 hours into the game. I play it with a friend very frequently.
When you have a good co-op partner, this game is really all you need. Terrorist Hunt is where all my time is spent. If I’m not making America safe again, I’m customizing my guy. It WAS a solid co-op shooter that I’d say HELD up even when they SHUT THE SERVERS DOWN. It’s only $10, but unless you’re willing to fiddle with LAN, go play Insurgency: Sandstorm.
– Real player with 111.8 hrs in game
Played this game back in the day tons of times. Good memories.
The good:
Graphics are a later Unreal Engine so they aren’t bad.
Highly customizable loadout that is made available to you as you progress through the levels with experience.
A very detailed upgrade model based on experience and types of shots made. You gain experience points based on the shot you make, be it close quarter, long-range, assault mode, etc. Each shot gains you XP points for a specific type of ladder and each ladder (CQB, assaulter, marksman) has its own rewards and perks.
– Real player with 98.0 hrs in game
UFO: Aftermath
I just completed the game. Holy crap was that fun!! This game is like crack!
Controls take a bit to get used to, but once you have, they’re not an issue. Only one bug I found, and that’s when one of your party sees a reticulan/bad guy, the movement orders you’ve given up to that point can be reset if you accidentally click the next destination point right as the enemy is sighted. This won’t even occur to you until you get a few rifleman with super-heroic speed that you use for ambushes anyway. If you even do.
– Real player with 90.8 hrs in game
The first and my personal favorite out of the UFO: After(??) series. (I seriously recommend the “Combo-mod” for newcomers and UFO veterans, it turns the game from a good game to a masterpiece.)
A true hidden gem that even fans of the series tend to overlook.
Sadly it hasn’t aged that well so playing the game today might feel like trying to drive a car with flat tires on a sheet of ice so if that is something that would turn you off from the game then i recommend going to one of the newer games, but if clunky controls is something you don’t fear then this game will reward you for mastering it. Unlike the newer games, it’s a lot more raw, chaotic and difficult.
– Real player with 47.5 hrs in game
Brigade E5: New Jagged Union
Squad-based tactical wargame, with the very complicated and realistic engine, one of the best in the whole genre.
It’s been more than 10 years after the first release of the E5, but up to this moment, you can’t find better gaming experience, when we speak about tactical shootouts “like in the Jagged Alliance”. Sadly, but all this richness on the battlefield goes with considerable amount of bugs, and total insolvency of “Brigade E5” in all gameplay aspects except from shooting.
E5 New Jagged Alliance was designed as an heir to Jagged Alliance 2, in the country where JA2 is still have one of the biggest fan bases in the world – in Russia. Another one country in that short list is Germany, and there was successful and almost successful alike gaming projects as well… But let’s return there to the E5 title. In short, it is the first attempt of the amateur team of programmers to make “our own JA2 with smart enemies and blondes”. Surprisingly, they succeeded! No, they don’t build a perfect starship which can take all humankind to the stars. And even while I’m calling E5: New Jagged Union the game, in fact, it is a bad game. By all criteria, except one. Normally, when we see something like this, we call it “a project” at best, and turning away, because it is not worth neither our time, nor money. But the engine, created by Apeiron team, up to this moment remains the most prominent and complicated in the whole gaming industry. For comparison, the bits that we saw in the overall decent German game Jagged Alliance Back In Action, are that simple and rigid, so, for one, yeah, almost every 5-years-old can manage it, for two, it certainly gives not enough challenge for the adult connoisseurs of the genre.
– Real player with 118.8 hrs in game
A not-bad pausable tactical game. It plays out in real-time, but you can pause to give orders.
If you like Silent Storm, Jagged Alliance or maybe the original Fallout series (1 & 2) or X-Com, then you’ll likely find something you like here.
Some Pros:
Stats & Skills level up through use.
The ability to toggle specific features, such as ‘no critical hits’, ‘no misfire’, etc., is really nice. I wish more games let you have more choice as to how features like this go.
The ‘Fast Turn’ feature is quite nice for turning corners. You can use this by getting against some kind of cover and then holding Alt and moving the cursor around the corner. It’s a little finnicky as to where you need the cursor to be and it doesn’t always work, unfortunately.
– Real player with 37.7 hrs in game
Conflict Desert Storm™
Italian part down below.
ENGLISH
conflict desert storm is an amazing videogame from an unfortunatley dead software house called pivotal games.
conflict offer a 14 missions set during the guld wars where you’ll get to play as either the u.s delta force or the british sas troops.
we are talking about a videogame for 2002 so the movement aren’t amazing the aim system is a bit clunky and difficult to use when you first play the videogame.
i would raccomend it if it wansn’t for the big amount of problems this game has with steam, sometimes it doesn’t even start up and it crashes in the middle of a mission, so i feel like i should advice you NOT to by this game, at least not on steam.
– Real player with 49.2 hrs in game
Conflict: Desert Storm is a personal childhood favourite. I put many hours into the PlayStation 2 version of this title in the early 00’s, and was very pleased to see it available on Steam. The console and PC versions have some minor differences between them.
Pros:
-
Control up to 4 characters at once. Allows for surprisingly fun and creative tactical approaches to missions.
-
Each character represents a specialist class, affecting their weapons and gear.
-
Decent campaign length, promising multiple hours, if not days of playtime overall
– Real player with 36.1 hrs in game
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified was not well received by mainstream reviewers, but I personally enjoyed it a lot. Overall, it feels like a stripped down version of Mass Effect, but the combat stands out above other cover shooters. The game has a lot of flaws, but I encountered no bugs in the core game. The Hangar 6 DLC, however, would freeze briefly every few seconds and rendered the game nearly unplayable.
The Bureau’s combat puts you in control of William Carter, a rather generic protagonist with a gravelly voice. Conversations in the game are carried out with a radial menu lifted directly from Mass Effect. The dialogue isn’t terribly interesting, and some of the characters facial animations appeared to not actually be finished. Their mouths move with odd robotic motions, and their eyes look eerily dead. Carter himself, and some of the other core characters have much better, albeit repetitive animations. The story is forgettable overall, but moves the game on well enough. It doesn’t come anywhere close to the likes of Mass Effect though, and the fact that the developers chose to base their game design so heavily on Mass Effect is unfortunate given the weak story. Even still, the combat made the experience worthwhile.
– Real player with 54.6 hrs in game
“The Bureau: XCOM Declassified”. There are three major aspects of the game to talk about.
For one, this game was created for XCOM fans, with an extra layer of associations from the 60’s era. The player will see all the major events of an alien invasion on Earth, from the first contact to the last repel battle, which, by all standards, will unfold on an alien ship, from where the entire invasion is organized. Keen on the setting, the player will be able to examine in detail the sequential construction of the XCOM base, go over all its iconic locations, from the headquarters and medical unit to laboratories and workshops. The player will take part in the capture of aliens and in their interrogations (without vivisection). He will have to defend the base from a full-scale attack in one moment… All in the third-view perspective. If this is not a quality fan-service, then what else? Unfortunately, not all XCOM fans appreciated the change of genre from strategy to shooter, but for me personally, the Bureau in this aspect is a very successful project.
– Real player with 44.9 hrs in game
Archer boy
Archer Boy is a bare basic asset flip tier minimalist Unity based first person archery shooter game where you shoot arrows from a stationary position as enemy archers rush your position. There’s no real goal to the game apart from collecting coins which erupt from the corpses of your enemies.
The best thing I can say about this is that I don’t think it’s actually an asset flip, it really does seem like they tried to make a video game here, they just didn’t know how. The quality is deplorably low, with low poly assets, no actual game loop of any kind, and really clunky arrow physics. Would adding a crosshair have killed them?
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
NICE GAME
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Ash of Gods: Redemption
Do you like story-driven turn-based tactical RPGs? Even those who have nothing to do with Japan and with fantasy in general?
Well, I was just searching for other turn-based games, and this one popped out as one of the recommended titles on Steam.
And I was not disappointed at all, as a long-time RPG player and turn-based lover.
The gameplay isn’t really innovative, but I wanted exactly the contrary - here you’ll face a classical turn-based system in which everyone will stay put until you choose which action to do (each turn is timed anyways).
– Real player with 191.4 hrs in game
Choices. Much like the choice you’re making on whether to buy this game or not, making difficult choices is one of the key aspects of this game. It will affect how the characters react, whether they’ll live or die, how the story develops, and ultimately how it will end. A lot of that takes time and setup, and in many ways this is the kind of game that takes patience to love. It has its share of faults, but if you can get past them I think there’s an excellent strategy game just waiting to be played.
– Real player with 64.9 hrs in game