Planetfall Rising

"I need new enemies

I need new strategies

I need the pain to feel something 

 

I've got the world inside my head and it's ticking like a bomb"

 

MDFMK - Be Like Me

 

 

Last week I complained about Sanctus Reach, including interposing three mandatory, nearly identical randomized maps before every actual designed level, as a flagrant timesink.

Hmm, now if all you're offering me is randomized maps for turn-based tactics, where else might I get that? Oh... right.

Feeeed on his flesh, my pustulent children! AaarroooooOOOOOooo!!!

 

My 6-unit squad above consists of:

- a ranged attacker with a stunning, AP-draining chain shot and AoE blast

- a mid-range armor-melter with a chance to disable target's abilities

- a sniper with a shield-bypassing, ability-disabling DoT and blinding attack

- an AP-draining, short-range sleep-spell caster with an added ally ressurection ability

... and of course a couple of Pustules, armor-melting, terrain-hopping, enemy-infecting xenomorph melee fighters well on their way to metamorphosing into towering tentacle monsters assuming they survive a few fights.

A couple of those units gain immunity upon hitting 1HP.

Most of them have two sources of regeneration per round.

This is not even touching the basic details of hit points and armor / shield or damage types or the split between biological / cyborg / mechanical or subdivisions like animals or Synthesis units.

Don't even start on the various "operations" (spells) you yourself can rain onto the battlefield every round.

Oh, and the battlefield itself, in addition to basic obstacles, might cast its own damaging or disabling effects on random combatants.

Compare that to standard-issue space marines. I can find more tactical depth and diversity in this one image than in twenty missions of most squad tacticals or tactical RPGs.

 

Oh, and this is a small subsample of available units, a minor infantry dust-up not even showing any air, navy or heavies, of which there could be dozens in a full-blown city siege complete with reinforced positions and persistent effects. Every unit comes with three slots for modular customization, and despite some unnecessary overlap (every playable faction has a sniper and an air scout) and some inevitable imbalance given the sheer number of gimmicks in play, you can build endless combos for both pragmatism and your own aesthetic preferences.

Oh, and did I mention this is just one fight on a strategic map of hundreds of contested locations?

If you can't tell what's happening in that image, the orange computer had surprised me with three armies across the no-man's-land at the far eastern edge of my territory. The base in question managed to finish a teleporter just in time for me to scramble a defense, turning what would've been an agonizing series of defensive border skirmishes into a staging point for a decisive counterattack. Can I get this 4X angle in XCOM copycats? Can I get the squad management angle in Master of Orion copycats?

Oh, and did I mention the last big patch added a planetary conquest and faction rep metagame?

 

Granted, it's not all perfect.

The auto-generated planets in empire-building mode can shift a bit too heavily from basic gameplay (no naval units, cities capped at under half their potential population) and while you'll need the bonuses from faction rep to tackle the harder planets, they undercut your progression more than expand upon it, by forcing an "accelerated start" mode on you.

Still, the game has grown noticeably since launch. Map generation lays out coherent climes and geographic barriers. The two new races' writing and voice acting sound at least more competent, if still uneven, and their practical options round out the existing factions nicely. Housing developments make city expansion a great deal more satisfying, and even the tactical AI seems to be getting better at retreating its wounded units to minimize attrition or using status effects to disable your heavy hitters.

This potential always lurked beneath the surface, but other elements aside from tactical gameplay were rudimentary at best. I've been critical of the series in the past, and the best hope I could voice for AoW in 2019 was that it might finally make good on its promise to replace Heroes of Might and Magic as our go-to fantasy TBS reference.

Damn Triumph, with Planetfall's post-launch content they've been making me eat my words lately. It's set to redefine two or three genres altogether.

Think about it: where does this leave tactical RPGs? 4X? Squad management games?

This is your new metric for success.

Squad management should never have been considered a genre in its own right anyway, and it was only strategy games' lack of flexibility and cRPGs' laziness with regards to combat mechanics (I'm looking at you, Torment: Tides of Numenera) which has allowed the likes of Fallout Tactics to persist.

If you make a 4X from now on, you'd better make damn sure your political / city building angles can compensate for the lack of squad-level tactics.

If you make a multi-unit RPG, make damn sure you can deliver a gripping, convoluted narrative with enough moral choices to compensate for your lack of empire-building.

Otherwise, people will just point you to Triumph Studios and ask: why should I pay for your product when all your content basically amounts to rolling up just one new hero / planet in Age of Wonders?