Which game of the new "batch" of tacticools is the best?

Yeah, it is a very smart game. The beginning of the game is a bit too puzzle and the enemies are only one type and melee so a bit boring, but from the moment the other side starts using guns it is REALLY cool, and sometimes you pull some beautiful Into The Breach move in the middle of an otherwise tactical combat (the game is WEGO so for instance you may do a « swap teleport » with an enemy that will suddenly on the receiving side of his buddy grenade AND put you in a position to hit several enemy at the next time with the laser weapon that go through anything.

It is a chain of scenarios along a (very cool) story, so no strategic decision, the only thing you carry over is your equipment.

Each character has 2 weapons 2 support items but then combination of weapons and support item creates « special action » for instance if you have a grenade launcher and a kinetic rifle as weapons, and a teleporter and healing kit as support items, you can have as special action :
- Healing grenade (grenade launcher + healing kit)
- Healing dart (rifle + healing kit)
- Explosive teleportation (you teleport leaving an explosion behind you, beware FF) : grenade launcher + teleport
- Swap teleport with another character enemy or not : Rifle + teleport

Since the game is WEGO, some turn resolutions can be really funny, especially those based on teleports (or even better swap teleport), mind control or blocking enemy movements.

They are a lot of weapons, quite a few support items too and thus a lot of special actions (though items of the same general category will create the same effect : both the kinetic pistols and the kinetic rifles will create the same effect with a medical kit, but not the submachine gun or the laser rifles).
You keep finding new equipments until almost literally the end of the game, though sadly it also means that part of the early equipment becomes fully obsolete (the pistols in particular have no advantage vs their rifle version, except the most powerful handgun). Some of the « special actions » are based on super rare combinations though and you will find new effects until almost the end of the game.

Except for obsolescence, the one problem I had was that weapons and items have an initiative order that is indicated nowhere and that you will have to learn as you play. For instance, EMP weapons shoot first, then teleports play, then shielding, then the rest of the weapons. Mind control and other psy powers are somewhere in between but not sure where.

In addition to the weapons, each character that you can play (you play from 1 to 6 characters in missions, plus sometimes AI allies) have special skills going from boring (like the only skill of the nurse is a bonus to her heal) to the gamechanging (double damage but half the range) or just really cool (ruthless => « does not lose morale when humans die »). Same for the unique items that go from « why do you waste a slot on that shit » to game changing (one of the character is an actress that has an item that allows her to change character... the character she chooses to act as determines her skills).

Combat is as I said WEGO : one shoot action one move action IN THAT ORDER (or two move actions). Everyone has 100 hp, all hit are deterministic (if you attack an enemy you will hit it and you will cause your weapon damage... except if the target teleports before you shoot that is). Cover means half damage, and other items/skills decrease or nullify damage even more. Lots of civilian casualties to avoid. You can sneak, and ambushing the enemy from ambush position is double damage. A PC that drops to 0 hp becomes unconscious but can be revived during the combat, a NPC at 0 HP is dead. Enemies, at least those who use weapons, are smart and will use cover, grenades, flanking and healers, but not teleport).

Finally, I should state that the campaign is really cool :
- Relatively well written, a parody of Star Trek and the pulp stories from the 50ies,
- All aboard a starship, some of the locations of that ships will be visited several times but will be more and more degraded as time passes. Human survivors will be rarer and rarer,
- You have a cast of PC characters, maybe 12 of them in total, with new characters appearing and other, well, dieing as per the scenario. They are real tropes of Pulp Action characters so fun (the brainless actress, the dashing spaceman, the corrupted mercenary, the pointy-ear warrior-race alien,...)

Mission design goes from the incredibly good (eg : heavy combat mission where you have a limited number of turns to reach the air purifier while under fire from all sides BUT not by an infinite number of enemies so you can really balance “killing as much as possible and reach the air purifier just in time “ vs “beeline or possibly sneak to the purifier then kill everyone”) to the really boring (bad puzzles where you must sneak around, or where you need to cross area where everything gets destroyed every three turns),

Missions can also go from the trivially easy (defend a position from attack when you have a machine gun, cover and NPC characters on your side) to the insanely hard (save humans before they all get killed AND bring them to the evacuation point where they still can get attacked). For super difficult missions like this, keep in mind that you can create turrets and order spider bots to guard a place with some of the fairly accessible « special actions »).

In short, I had a lot of fun in roughly 33% of the game, some good fun in another 33%, and the rest was either boring (for boring but easy missions) or dreadful (for boring but hard missions).

 

Nah but seriously. Fell Seal and I'm not playing a Gloomhaven campaign on Tabletop Simulator becauuse the digital version is taking forever to leave early access.

 

Played a bit of "I am not a monster". Really like it so far. Not as complex as Troubleshooter, or even Gears Tactics, but is really charming. No dark and grim aesthetic here, instead you get lovely US 50s style graphics with pin-up like women. I really wish more games took themselves less seriously like this one.

 

Actually, there is very little chance you will play more than 2 campaigns.
I burnt out halfway of the first one (with Chaos).
So, if one of the DLC factions has way more appeal to you than the base ones (Vampires or Witch hunters seem cool actually), getting it is reasonable, but otherwise, there is little reason to get it at all until you at least finish your first campaign.

 

Troubleshooter seems to be heavily geared towards online experience, how often there's server downtime or other disturbing stuff because of that?

I'm probably going to take The Feud for a spin when it gets released.

 

Am I even more of a retard than I thought, or is Chimera Squad's breach mechanic completely insane? I can't see how it passed the idea stage - you can't see who's in the room before you enter so it's literally just random chance whether you get fucked or not, and the area behind you becomes suddenly magically inaccessible after the breach, usually confining the whole team to a small balcony or behind a single wall where they instantly get clusterfucked by any enemy with an area of effect attack.

Plus there's no way to know the optimal order to send your team in - for example I take Godmother on every mission but half the time she ends up facing an enemy at the other side of the room where her shotgun does jack shit, while any dickhead with a long-range assault rifle inevitably breaches directly in front of an enemy.

It's also stupid that you're essentially forced to fire or just run for cover. No using psionic abilities which would obviously be best applied immediately as the encounter starts, such as Battle Rage. All the breach-exclusive abilities suck balls. Levitation and Poison Spit, wow, great.

 

There doesnt seem to be a lot of online functionality other than information about % of people chosing the answer during dialogues and jurisdiction bonuses? I am pretty sure there were server problems several times, but I didnt really notice them. Online interactions seems to be kinda superficial.

 

Troubleshooter servers have planned maintenance one per week.
Other than this downtime the online part does not affect the gameplay in the slightest. It's single player through and through, absolutely no need to socialize.

There are only 4 multiplayer features that I've seen:
- Already mentioned "players choices" ratio.
- District security status is calculated based on actions of all the troubleshooter companies, not just yours.
- Mail system. It's mainly used for receiving extra rewards (like occasional compliments from saved civilians).
But as you can also compose mails, I guess it could be used to send items to other troubleshooters.
- There's a quest/trade hub "Shooter Street" where you can see other players moving around.
And this area has a chat system. But in all my playtime I've seen someone using this chat once, and that is the only reason I even know of it's existence.

 

Oh, maintenance means that you cannot play your online save, right?
Offline save seems like a better option if so.

 

Battlebrothers count? Enjoyed that alot for awhile.

 

I've played Troubleshooter for 5 hours now.
It's good.