Into The Breach [Switch]

[JNAProductions]

So I was at Target to pick up some meds, and since it takes a little while to fill a prescription, I checked out the videogames. I saw Into The Breach (https://subsetgames.com/itb.html), as a download card.

I didn't buy it, because I've found there's often sales on the digital store that aren't in proper stores, but I did like FTL (hard as it was) and was thinking about picking it up. Anyone have any experience with this game? Is it good?

[Thomas Cardew]

I haven't played it on the switch only the PC. I enjoy it, but it's brutally fair. You control 3 giant Jaegers fighting kaiju. There's a great variety of weapons and decent variety of enemies. It's aesthetics are great and the game mechanics blend perfectly with their 'story' justification. There's not really a story just some set dressing.

As for gameplay, you get to see the enemies moves for the next turn and have to counter them. You can move and unmove freely until you make an attack, at which point those moves are locked in. You get one reset per battle, each battle is usually 5 turns. You try to kill or reposition enemies to stop them from damaging you, civilians, or objectives. It is easy to pick up, even win, but hard to master or play perfectly. It rarely offers you initial unwinnable scenarios but you can get yourself into them through your own actions. It's definitely less RNG heavy than FTL where a bad roll could easily cost you the game. When you lose it feels like your fault, not the RNG generator's decision.

If that sounds at all appealing I recommend it. It's also shorter than ftl, full games can take .5 to 2 hours depending on how fast you play and how many missions you go on. It offers the same great replayability with lots of pilots, mechs, or other goodies to unlock.

[DataNinja]

I've not played it on the Switch Version, but the PC version is pretty fun. Easy is nice for being able to learn how everything works (since the game, while it gives you perfect information, will punish your mistakes), and Normal is, to me, the perfect difficulty - tough, but fair. Hard just feels a tad too brutal at times - you will be forced to decide what the lesser loss is. Do you lose a pilot, and thus their extra skills? Do you lose grid power, and be ever so closer to a game over? Or do you fail the optional objective, which might get you a power core that you desperately need to keep up with the ever more Vek.

It's fun, and not too long - at a pace where you think about things, it'll be about a half-hour per island (of which you choose 2-4 to do in a run), though there's an achievement with one of the squads to get through 2 in a half-hour. It's stressful, and you need to manage your time carefully, but it's possible.

The mechanics themselves are fun, there's nothing hidden from you, and every run will be at least a little different. Taking on islands in different orders, different combinations of enemies and missions, combined with trying for all the challenges to unlock more squads? It's a lot of fun. There's enough randomness with the meta-stuff that you can't just fall into perfect complacency, but everything in-battle will be fairly predictable. And it feels good when it finally clicks. Tactical positioning is key, as is knowing what can be sacrificed, and what doesn't need to be done - if a mission doesn't say to kill every enemy, you just need to play defensively, and avoid getting overwhelmed.

As Thomas said, the "Story" is minimal, but is just enough to work well and integrate with everything. There are character bios that were referenced for creation and can be found on the internet, but all you have to go on in-game is the various brief clips of the pilots and NPCs to give inklings into their personality. (For instance, take my personal favorite - Prospero: His main lines all reference his past as a guardening robot, and turning Vek into fertilizer, and preserving the natural world. Some Archive missions have lines from him saying how he was rescued and reassigned there. And if you have a Detritus acid bath mission, he makes mention of hating the place, because he was going to be scrapped in one.) You really want to take every person into every situation just to learn more about them. It's just enough to keep you engaged without becoming distracting from the gameplay.

I would say it doesn't quite have the replayability value of FTL - I have 30 hours in the game, and have unlocked all the pilots and gotten all the achievements, which has made me lose some impetus for playing - but it's a dang good value, and it's easy to want to give it more of a go. Especially if you're dedicated to mastering every squad on Hard. It has my heavy recommendation.

[Cespenar]

I see Into the Breach as the espresso of the tactics genre -- it's as pure and condensed as a tactics game can get, and in that regard, it delivers the most flavor a tactics game can deliver (in my opinion).

Also, it's pretty deterministic (though not completely) as that genre goes, so most of the mistakes you make are your own. It's very different from FTL because of that.

[iTreeby]

I see Into the Breach as the espresso of the tactics genre -- it's as pure and condensed as a tactics game can get, and in that regard, it delivers the most flavor a tactics game can deliver (in my opinion).

Also, it's pretty deterministic (though not completely) as that genre goes, so most of the mistakes you make are your own. It's very different from FTL because of that.

What exact enemies spawn and if a friendly building resists successfully are the only random things that don't get telegraphed.

There are a decent number of fan mods so consider getting it for the pc.

[Sermil]

So I was at Target to pick up some meds, and since it takes a little while to fill a prescription, I checked out the videogames. I saw Into The Breach (https://subsetgames.com/itb.html), as a download card.

I didn't buy it, because I've found there's often sales on the digital store that aren't in proper stores, but I did like FTL (hard as it was) and was thinking about picking it up. Anyone have any experience with this game? Is it good?

It is incredible. I've gotten every single achievement on hard even though I'm not usually a complete-ist because it was just that much fun. It's like an endless series of little strategic puzzles -- how can I pull off a victory this turn? This turn? This turn? How can I deal with 5 critical problems this turn when I only have 3 actions? And you feel so clever when you come up with these awesome Rube Goldberg tricks of pushing a monster over and having it block another monster while taking enough damage that it dies before it shoots....

Remember, you always have perfect information on what the enemies will do, even down to what order they will do it in.

(I've only played on PC but I think it's pretty much the same. )

[Eladrinblade]

I played it pretty hard for about a week. It's good but kinda shallow. There's really not that much to it.

[DataNinja]

I played it pretty hard for about a week. It's good but kinda shallow. There's really not that much to it.

I've found there's as much as you want to get out of it. For me, what I wanted was to get all the Achievements, and unlock all the squads. After that, I fell off. For some it might just be win with all squads. But then there are the people who want to skill up enough to do perfect 4 island runs on Hard, and just... man, my respect to them.

[Draconi Redfir]

from what I've played, I've noticed that so long as you don't royally screw up and let a whole bunch of Vek (the enemies) spawn all at once, then there is always some way for your mecs to completely prevent any damage to the grid within any given turn, no matter what you have or where you're positioned.

perhaps i was just being optimistic or lucky, but it always looked like that no matter where i was or what i had, there was always some way to counter everything that was on screen, like the game took my position and abilities into account when moving the vek around. Often times i'd notice this when some Vek moved but didn't attack, like there had been some cap on attacking vek. of course this all goes out the window if you spend three turns moving vek around and blocking vek from emerging without actually killing anything, then letting all those blocked up vek emerge at once, but otherwise, yeah.

Granted i also used to believe that some server admin on Hypixel (the minecraft server) had secretly given me a very small buff to attack and armor because they liked my minecraft skin, thus explaining why i was "so good" at Blitz Survival for awhile. so i may just be superstitious :smalltongue:

[Studoku]

There's something very satisfying about punching the bugs around so they kill each other.