Kriegsfront Tactics - Indonesian Love Letter to Front Mission - Free Prologue Available

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[FreshCorpse]

Played the demo. Understandably it's a bit under-tutorialised but my thoughts:

• No vsync option meant that I had to do it at driver level as the thing was tearing badly
• Perf overall not great. Forgivable in a demo. It's Unity. Battletech had dogshit perf on the same engine. Here's hoping lessons can be learned.
• PSX-style polygon wobble is cool, but a way to turn it off would be nice
• It's obviously fairly nuXom influenced. That's not altogether bad
• It's improved on nuXcom in that it's not "2AP" but you have real AP but I think it still seems a bit pod-based
  • You can be blowing the shit out of each other on one street and the mechs on the other street don't wake up until you go into their LOS
  • Early doors, it seems like in nuXcom most wipes are due to mistakenly waking multiple pods at a time. nuXcoms are balanced around you vs ~1.5 pods. Accidentally wake a 2nd pod and it gets hard. Wake a third and you are probably gonna wipe.
• It's a bit slow. There are a lot of pregnant pauses while the mechs are all just apprecating what has occurred. Hated this in nuXcom but it can be modded
• I saw a fair few weapon types, which was cool
• Game gave every indication that it would allow me to shoot through the terrain - but no, that does not work. That is good.
• VATs style sniping, me likey
• It would be cool if this game had a 90s style manual explaining shit.

Overall seems cool, I am moderately interested.

 

[FreshCorpse]

I take it back. There are no pods. It just appeared to be that way in the first half of the demo. It's classic XCom roving baddies.

I still think (would say this about classic xcom as well) that undiscovered enemies seem oblivious to the firefights going on all around them.

Overall though:

 

[FreshCorpse]

Some more quick notes:

There is a mod tool that comes with the diorama editor (which is itself quite sophisticated)

Anyway, in the diorama editor you can do all sorts of shit:

I had a quick look through the devlogs. They've apparantly been working on it since 2018, I would guess intermittantly. They also released a somewhat popular VN which is perhaps the thing paying the bills for these many years of development. The prologue itself is very delayed, it's original release date was January 2024 and it's now slated for the middle of next month.

My concern is having seen the good tools they have built for randomisation that the campaign might be roguelike slop instead of a proper SRPG-type campaign. But I never played a Front Mission game so have no idea what they're supposed to be. I would guess something like Tactics Ogre.

 

[lightbane]

Huh, I didn't expect that kind of VN from these devs. The demo looked good, although I hope the full game will have more meat, such as whether or not there will be speical abilities for your units (mandatory for melee specialists as these usually go after shooters in FM, no idea here), whether or not there will be linked attacks and so on.

Shame it will have procedural generation, FMs had handcrafted content, sometimes with multiple paths with missions exclusive to each, but the story was always fixed, with barely any C&C.

 

[FreshCorpse]

Seems like this is more XCOM-influenced than FM-influenced then. XCOM is all about procgen and, at least IMO, the nuXCOM's procgen was one of the bits of those games that worked well. It was the scripted missions (remember that rotting shark?) that sucked in the nuXCOMs.

The bits that don't work in nuXCOM:

1. pods
   1. KT doesn't have this
2. 2AP
   1. doesn't have this either
3. frankly, the whole the strategic layer
   1. who knows what it will be like in Kriegsfront. usually these function as crap minigames that have way too much effect on your campaign
4. the difficulty curve - too hard earlygame, too easy lategame
   1. common to many tactics games, they are unlikely to have this right i think
5. player having too many tactical options when each pod of xrays had only a couple
   1. easier to resolve this in a mech universe where mechs can have anything equipped whereas alien's abilities are generally racial

 

[FreshCorpse]

The demo/prologue has been released. I'll try to give it a go this eve

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2851820/view/4352249693737707828

Load Up, Pilots! Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue is Now Available!
Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue is now available to play for free. Play it now and leave us a feedback on the community!

Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue is now available to play for free!
Salute, Pilots!
Jump straight into your Krieger and defeat your enemies where factions collide for freedom and power in Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue.
Experience the opening story of Kriegsfront Tactics, where you can get 1-2 hours of gameplay. You are the commander of a squad of Kriegers in the ongoing conflict in the alternate 1970s Southeast Asia. On whose side you are fighting for? Survive the jungle battlefield with all you have while your morality is tested.

You will learn more about the ongoing conflict from the cutscenes.

Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue includes tutorials to help newcomers learn the basics, so there is no reason not to play it. It also serves as the opening story from a certain perspective of a faction in the conflict. Learn more about the characters involved and what they are fighting for. You also will encounter enemies that might be stronger than your squad, so be careful while exploring the depths of Nusanesia's jungle.

A sneak peek of the tutorial for newcomers to the genre.

Enjoy in-game cutscenes with a diverse cast voiced by talented voice actors.

Explore with caution. Any encounter might be the last for your squad.

In Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue, you can explore the depths of Nusanesia areas of mountains and forests by visiting different areas that can help your squad achieve your objectives. Fight the patrolling foes and visit places to be rewarded with supplies, upgrades, or information. No matter how big or small the importance is, keep your squad alive, even if their Krieg loses an arm or leg part. After all, Krieger mechs are expendable on the battlefield.

Visit points of interest and learn about how the conflict affects Nusanesia.

Fend off your foes and get the spoils to upgrade your Krieger.

As a commander, help your squad resupply, repair, and change their Krieger parts. Always be cautious on every corner where you don't know what lurks within might be stronger than you think. Proceed cautiously and make tactical decisions to keep your squad together. Their lives depend on your command, even when a simple operation goes awry.

Don't forget to change your loadout. In the end, Kriegers are expendable.

Play the prologue and leave us feedback on our socials!
The prologue is still just a slice of what we offer in the full game. We are still developing more game features that will be implemented soon. By leaving feedback to us, you help us greatly to improve the gameplay. We deeply appreciate your suggestions or feedback that you feel is important to point out.

Play Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue for free!
IN LIBRARYON WISHLIST

Kriegsfront Tactics - Prologue
Tactical RPGTurn-Based TacticsMechsCold WarRoguelite
Jul 17, 2024
Play Now
NEW
Free To Play

Join the Toge Productions Discord server here!
Feel the urge to discuss Kriegsfront Tactics with other enthusiastic fans in the genre?
Come and join our discord community! Toge Productions Discord

If you're curious about Kriegsfront Tactics, follow us!
Follow our social media to know more!

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Discord

See you soon, and godspeed, Pilots.
The Kriegsfront Team.

 

[FreshCorpse]

My sesh got cut short by the usual real life disruptions. Some first impressions:

• Performance still pretty shit
  • Need to use GPU driver to enforce vertical sync
  • Camera occasionally goes skinny dipping in the terrain
• Some UI improvements
  • Picking which direction to face post turn now more intuitive
  • I dunno if they were showing the to-hit % before. They are now.
  • They got keyboard shortcuts working
• Tactical gameplay fundamentally pretty good
  • Pregnant pauses after issuing a command will be quite annoying unless sorted
• CYOA-style events stitch together the campaign
  • Some random events and battles
  • Main story battles do not seem to be randomised, but I haven't done a lot of them
• JRPG-style NPC conversations pre and post battle
  • Sort of reminds me of Warcraft 3 a bit, if that makes any sense
  • Intro cinematic made no sense to me whatsoever
  • Script unfortunately has characters using British slang but VA largely have American accents, which sounds absurd and ridiculous

Some screenshots of stuff we haven't seen before:-

The CYOA screens look like this:

NPCs appear to have permadeath, except the first and last guy whose death is a game over:

NPCs have personality traits and a sanity meter (which mobs also have and can come into play during battle):

You can change your loadout at bases on the worldmap:

Which looks like this:

 

[FreshCorpse]

Well, I played a bit more and got my shit pushed in by the first boss.

I lost a guy (can confirm that your guys have permadeath) and the boss is pretty strong to the point where I'm not really sure I have much of a chance against him. I quit out for now and maybe will return to it another time.

It's cool how every weapon is projectile and so you can hit stuff behind your target. I don't think nuXCOM had that.

There is no manual load/save at this point and the checkpointing is a bit wonky.

There is something good here, but it's still very rough at this point. There's no release date for the full game set right now so I suppose that's to be expected.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

I played just briefly so far, but shit seems to be p. cash tbh fam. I like what I see so far.

What I especially appreciate is that the AI actively flank your mechs to prevent them from dodging, makes for more interesting fights. What I dont like that much are the nu-XCOM style pods that you can run into on the tactical maps, but it isnt a huge deal.

 

[Robber Baron]

I like it a lot
the variety of vaseline options in the graphics menu is also amusing

 

[Robber Baron]

Intro cinematic made no sense to me whatsoever

Not-USA nuked not-Japan and forced them to retreat from not-Indonesia, not-Indonesians demanded freedom or death so not-USA comes in to grant them that wish
A solid attempt at world-building desu

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Finished the prologue - the best way to deal with the boss is to break contact at the start (ie. do not fight him right away) and focus on the three other mechs that support him. I managed to take the three of them down at the cost of losing the heavy support dude and I am sure that it is doable with no losses too. Then take out the right arm of the boss (best done with the sniper girl), once he loses that insane shotgun, he becomes p. weak and it is a matter of few turns to whittle him down.

I like how you can sneak around on the overland travel map btw, you can avoid the trash mobs/patrols by simply staying out of their LoS - good shit.

Anyway, this is definitely a D1P for me.

 

[actor]

the vibe of this seems to have come directly from my childhood dreams. glad to hear its pretty kino.

 

[Elthosian]

Another day 1 purchase here, spent a good hour and a half on it. I didn't really fight all the mobs in the overland map, but I enjoyed myself quite a bit. The music is
and I love how they push you to think to try a variety of strategies to kill the prologue's boss. What worked for me after dying on the first attempt was to spam mortars right away and spread out my troops into sort of a U shape with each unit placed on forest tiles (these make you not visible depending on the distance to the nearest enemy). This lured the main baddie into the middle of my formation while his allies tried to mortar back, but their first attempt at it resulted in friendly fire so after promptly killing the boss it was just a matter of carefully picking each of the remaining enemies off. No losses on my side, either, although the heavy weapon dude almost died when the last remaining enemy with no arms decided to unleash his last mortar onto him

Also like the fact they seemingly got an actual projectile simulation engine going on, if you target an enemy and some of the bullets miss they can still hit the mechs behind, and if your units manage to dodge an attack some of the bullets can still hit the left/right arm and get registered properly with damage to these areas. Frankly impressed with this thing to the point I didn't even mind the slow animations nor the obligatory Unity jank.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[udm]

Finally got some time to try the demo. Loved it, will likely d1p it too.

This game, Project Haven, and Urban Strife make me really optimistic for turn-based tactics games over the next few years. I hope they rake in big bucks so that the industry can see there are people who want games that go beyond streamlined boardgame mechanics.

 

[TwoEdge]

I am very impressed by this, it lacks the animation quality of late Front Missions (FM5 was especially good in conveying the gigantism and mobility of its Wanzers), but it looks good, plays and controls very well (good AI to boot), has nice music (although sound effects could be crunchier), has grit in its world-building, and even copies some nice ideas from its peers, such as aimed shot using a cone based firing solution like in Phoenix Point. Barring unforeseen disasters I predict this will please its niche, which is a welcome relief for fans of mech tactics games.

 

[lightbane]

Finished the demo. First: Why is this in the rpg forum? This is a tactics game, and I dunno if it will have C&C. It has roguelite elements, unfortunately, as your characters can die, some battles are randomized (not the main ones I think), and you don't auto-repair anything after a battle, you're supposed to look for a base while dodging the patrols (as you barely get exp for shooting so fighting random encounter is not encouraged), then repair and resupply with limited supplies here. I like that if you have a limb destroyed, you can still go to these bases to add a new arm to replace the lost one (at worst using a shitty one if you have nothing else). Ammo is limited but I didn't fight enough for that to be a concern. Final Boss is hardcore, unless you destroy the arm as mentioned above. I like how the demo knows how the boss is OP and will kill your dudes, as suddenly, none of your guys are mandatory to survive, unlike previous battles.

Story-wise, chances are you'll be forced to betray not-America to join not-Indonesia, as the game telegraphs how terrible they are, and it's usually what happens. I would love if it had multiple routes, including an American one, but I don't expect that much for a first game, what's there is good enough.

There are pod systems from XCUM that automatically look for cover and engage into overwatch spam upon seeing you, but you can attack enemies if you see them before they spot you, set up kill zones with overwatch, or even hide in nearby forests so that enemies accidentally walk next to you.


Lastly, rocket weapons are OP, like in FM games. Melee weapons are powerful, but the rogue-lite system means I prefer to use guns to not endanger my guys.

 

[Elthosian]

Finished the demo. First: Why is this in the rpg forum? This is a tactics game, and I dunno if it will have C&C. It has roguelite elements, unfortunately, as your characters can die, some battles are randomized (not the main ones I think), and you don't auto-repair anything after a battle, you're supposed to look for a base while dodging the patrols (as you barely get exp for shooting so fighting random encounter is not encouraged), then repair and resupply with limited supplies here. I like that if you have a limb destroyed, you can still go to these bases to add a new arm to replace the lost one (at worst using a shitty one if you have nothing else). Ammo is limited but I didn't fight enough for that to be a concern. Final Boss is hardcore, unless you destroy the arm as mentioned above. I like how the demo knows how the boss is OP and will kill your dudes, as suddenly, none of your guys are mandatory to survive, unlike previous battles.

Story-wise, chances are you'll be forced to betray not-America to join not-Indonesia, as the game telegraphs how terrible they are, and it's usually what happens. I would love if it had multiple routes, including an American one, but I don't expect that much for a first game, what's there is good enough.

There are pod systems from XCUM that automatically look for cover and engage into overwatch spam upon seeing you, but you can attack enemies if you see them before they spot you, set up kill zones with overwatch, or even hide in nearby forests so that enemies accidentally walk next to you.


Lastly, rocket weapons are OP, like in FM games. Melee weapons are powerful, but the rogue-lite system means I prefer to use guns to not endanger my guys.

Not sure whether we will get multiple routes yet but the invading faction is supposed to be not-Netherlands, not not-US, although they did make a few weird decisions with the dubbing as it sounds like a weird mix of US and UK English.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Jacob]

Intro cinematic made no sense to me whatsoever

Not-USA nuked not-Japan and forced them to retreat from not-Indonesia, not-Indonesians demanded freedom or death so not-USA comes in to grant them that wish
A solid attempt at world-building desu

That's the most generic war story an Indonesian could ever wrote, because if they wrote anything based on any other part of Indonesian history the government would ban this game.
Sad, tbh.

But anyway, I'll support this game because if this flops they'll just move to another genre and we won't get a sequel with improved gameplay and a less generic plot.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[kyosuke]

No idea why but I kinda prefer the 2019 look.