Turn-Based Tactics The Lamplighters League - turn-based tactics in pulp 1930s setting from Harebrained Schemes

[gurugeorge]

30 million to produce a game that looks like dog vomit.

It does have a lot more detail than the much lower budget Shadowrun Returns https://fionabrunerart.artstation.com/projects/GXv9OV

Which likely contributes to the problem, cartoony works better when it's low-poly.

I was just thinking that looking at some of the screenshots. Why didn't they just go with a more quasi-realistic style if they had that much polygon budget for smoothness in the models and that much detail in the textures? I think it would have suited the game far better than the overly-detailed cartoonish style they went for, which just looks weird to me. It would have also made the tone darker, which could have suited the theme better (i.e. looking more like classic pulp covers, for example, where the charcters are painted as realistic, but you have strong colours - i.e. noir but in colour).

Alternatively, when I first got wind of the game, my first thought was, "Oh, I hope they make it like Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen." That had a tightly stylized look in the comics that could have been translated into something equally tightly-stylized, cartoonish low poly, which could also have worked.

Leaning more into either cartoony or quasi-realistic would have worked well, either way, but what they ended up with falls betweent the two stools too much, for my liking. I've never liked the Pixar look of highly detailed cartoony distortions, it's always looked off-putting to me. 3-d and cartoon facial distortion just don't gel well together.

 

[Grunker]

How does the game play? Is it one of those failures that is worth picking up at a massive sale, or is it a pure waste of time?

 

[ArchAngel]

How does the game play? Is it one of those failures that is worth picking up at a massive sale, or is it a pure waste of time?

I think it is fun if you can suffer nuXcom type of gameplay with small teams. Last big patch also made it much better.

 

[ArchAngel]

If you are guys interested I can go into more details. I played around 15 missions, I put it on pause when RT released so I can play that instead.

 

[Grunker]

yeah do a short write up habibi

 

[ArchAngel]

Ok let me split it into good and bad. Also let me note that game is nuXcom style so I will not put that under good or bad. If you didn't enjoy nuXcom system of combat, skip this game.
Good:
1. Mission maps are fairly large and you get to do some exploring. There are also hidden parts of the maps where you can get extra loot and refresh of limited abilities as well as something called Ink that is connected to something like cards from Hard West games.
2. Enemies are fairly different and they also got their set of skills that you need to account for when deciding what to do.
3. Each of your characters is fairly different from each other and you can naturally find different combos between different character skills.
4. There is not that much handholding, game describes the setting and basic rules and then leaves you to do things how you want them to do.
5. Characters have fairly interesting personalities, they are not heroes and it is reflected in their conversations, even if some of them are maybe woke.
6. Art style is cool, and so are sounds and effects.

Bad:
1. Only 3 guys per mission and only one team can be sent on one mission per cycle. Geoscape is similar to nuXcom1 where you get a bunch of missions per week but you can only do one. You can easily have 6 or more team members but you can always just do one mission per week. There are other types of missions that are passive where you can send one agent and at start of next week they give you something for it but those are not real missions.
Also to get new soldiers you need to do full missions which means you were not doing some others that week that actually forward the story and stop the Evil (tm) plan of your opposition.
2. Xp gain from missions is in form of global points that are then used to level up skills of agents you want. You can give those points to those that do not go on missions but why would you. This leads in combination with #1 to fast deciding who is your main team and just using those (unless you managed to get one of your soldiers injured during a missions which I suppose can happen on highest difficulty and if you play ironman).
3. Yea game has some woke stuff like a girl being a bruiser, at least with starting cast. Later agile assassin and healer are also girls which is more standard. Also some conversations are cringe but overall not that terrible. I put it under bad because I know some people here are extra irritated by stuff like these (if you never played BG:SoD because of "woke" stuff you will also not want to play this).

EDIT:
Middle: Combat is more like Xcom2 than Xcom1. It has stealth phase which is where you can use limited amount of abilities that disable enemies without breaking it. Some enemies are immune to this. This part is RTwP. But stealth phase does not stop like in Xcom 2 with first reveal. Once you take out a group of enemies in TB combat you can still use rest of your resources to take out more in RTwP. This RTwP needs some time to get to used to but considering I was able to successfully do it with a controller, it should not be hard with a mouse for rest of you.

 

[Grunker]

I hate it when games that encourage a diverse roster on paper end up incentivizing just spamming a main team

 

[ArchAngel]

I hate it when games that encourage a diverse roster on paper end up incentivizing just spamming a main team

They kind of fixed that by an option that you can turn on at start that randomizes your starting team. For my 1st play I didn't touch that, later I learned what it does when I was researching if there is an option to do more then one mission per week. I think optimal is to have 5 characters, 3 for real missions and 2 for passive missions. Maybe 6 if you plan to also do ironman and have extra character when one of the other ones is injured and not usable for a while. But game is fairly easy, I forgot if I am playing it on hardest or 2nd hardest but it is still fairly easy compared to nuXcom hardest difficulty.

EDIT: For storyfags you want to recruit all characters as they get unique conversations between each other between missions and especially after important story missions. These are often funny as they love to take jabs at each other. These are not a group of friends :D

 

[Mangoose]

How is this compared to

30 million to produce a game that looks like dog vomit.

It does have a lot more detail than the much lower budget Shadowrun Returns https://fionabrunerart.artstation.com/projects/GXv9OV

Which likely contributes to the problem, cartoony works better when it's low-poly.

I think it would have suited the game far better than the overly-detailed cartoonish style they went for, which just looks weird to me. It would have also made the tone darker, which could have suited the theme better (i.e. looking more like classic pulp covers, for example, where the charcters are painted as realistic, but you have strong colours - i.e. noir but in colour).

I agree completely.

(A) Corporate marketers have found out different.
(B) Every now again some game sets a visual standard and if successful everybody gets lazy and just does the same. Players end up preferring a specific standard standard due to.. popularity from success.

Innovation is not interesting unless it's VISCERAL.

This goes back to how... we communicate on an "old school" message board, which at this moment requires a lot more of the brain than just twitter arguments or memes or whatever. It's hard for me to distinguish "left" and "right" here because most everybody here is well tempered by reason. I mean, VATNIK here is nothing, nothing like a real one.

 

[Serus]

It's sad that the game turned out... average? mediocre? good for what it is? The idea behind it: Indiana Jones Tactics (ala xcom) was really cool.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I hate it when games that encourage a diverse roster on paper end up incentivizing just spamming a main team

Yep.
Which is why "Forced team rotation" (through willpower and the fatigue mechanic) is one of the best improvements War of the Chosen introduced to the XCOM 2 formula.
Well, that and also giving the player more chances to level up and diversify the alternate team members.

 

[Serus]

I hate it when games that encourage a diverse roster on paper end up incentivizing just spamming a main team

Yep.
Which is why "Forced team rotation" (through willpower and the fatigue mechanic) is one of the best improvements War of the Chosen introduced to the XCOM 2 formula.
Well, that and also giving the player more chances to level up and diversify the alternate team members.

The Long War mod for XCom1 also forced that, you really need several leveled teams there to proceed.

 

[J1M]

I hate it when games that encourage a diverse roster on paper end up incentivizing just spamming a main team

Yep.
Which is why "Forced team rotation" (through willpower and the fatigue mechanic) is one of the best improvements War of the Chosen introduced to the XCOM 2 formula.
Well, that and also giving the player more chances to level up and diversify the alternate team members.

I prefer missions where you are required to send, say, two of a certain class.

 

[Oropay]

Played approximately the first half of The Lamplighter's League. Probably not going back. The game is painfully uninspired, with a level of production polish that belies just how boring the game is (e.g., the home base has basically one room). As another example, the Sneak I got is named Lateef, like 'the thief,' which isn't clever at all. The game glitched out or crashed a few times as well. If I had to pick my least favorite part of the gameplay, it's the level design. Probably the best thing about the game is dropping a decoy and running, which fits with the heists thematically. It says a lot that the best part of the gameplay is skipping the bulk of the gameplay

 

[gurugeorge]

Played approximately the first half of The Lamplighter's League. Probably not going back. The game is painfully uninspired, with a level of production polish that belies just how boring the game is (e.g., the home base has basically one room). As another example, the Sneak I got is named Lateef, like 'the thief,' which isn't clever at all. The game glitched out or crashed a few times as well. If I had to pick my least favorite part of the gameplay, it's the level design. Probably the best thing about the game is dropping a decoy and running, which fits with the heists thematically. It says a lot that the best part of the gameplay is skipping the bulk of the gameplay

Sad this is the way it's turned out, because conceptually it was a decent idea that could have had something of the pulpy Victoriana/Steampunk flavour of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

 

[ropetight]

Played approximately the first half of The Lamplighter's League. Probably not going back. The game is painfully uninspired, with a level of production polish that belies just how boring the game is (e.g., the home base has basically one room). As another example, the Sneak I got is named Lateef, like 'the thief,' which isn't clever at all. The game glitched out or crashed a few times as well. If I had to pick my least favorite part of the gameplay, it's the level design. Probably the best thing about the game is dropping a decoy and running, which fits with the heists thematically. It says a lot that the best part of the gameplay is skipping the bulk of the gameplay

Sad this is the way it's turned out, because conceptually it was a decent idea that could have had something of the pulpy Victoriana/Steampunk flavour of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

It was suspicious from the design of the game characters and art style - you can judge video games by those two.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

you can judge video games by those two.

There are outliers but yeah.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I played a bit of this on a Game Pass trial recently and I thought it was enjoyable and had a lot of promise.

The main complaint I have is actually something I find inexplicable: before getting into combat, you control your agents in real time and move them around to sneak and either steal stuff and sneak by or to set up an ambush. You have to only move one guy at a time, you can't give one guy orders and switch to the next because the first guy stops moving as soon as you unselect him even if he's (almost certainly) standing out in the open like a doofus.

How do you fuck up your own game controls that badly? How do you not allow people to get into position simultaneously? It's been a staple even of RTS's since the beginning of time. It irks me just thinking about it.

 

[Lemming42]

This has come out on GoG now. You know what that means, time to Acquire and play it.

I'm liking it a little more now than I did when I played the demo, perhaps due to reduced expectations. The main gameplay gimmick - being able to switch between real-time and turn-based - still baffles me because the real-time mode is so underdeveloped. Limiting the number of takedowns you can do is genuinely insane; you're literally punished for succeeding because it leaves you unable to sneak later. When you force your brain to force through that though and you stop constantly wishing "if only this was Commandos mixed with XCOM rather than Ultra-Shit Commandos mixed with Mildly Shit XCOM", it's kind of fun.

I can see it overstaying its welcome though, I normally like these "go to the briefing room, ignore story missions, and just do endless randomly generated missions" games (Gears Tactics, nu-XCOM + Chimera Squad, Midnight Suns, etc) but the mechanics here just aren't strong enough to make you want to play it indefinitely in the way those other games can do.

The story and characters aren't amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who's an easy mark for anything set interwar. They're not bad though, I've recruited the fourth companion (went for the Medic) and I've not met anyone especially likeable but haven't met anyone outright annoying either. I'm looking over the companion roster and it seems like there may be some more interesting people down the line and they just chose start you out with boring assholes like Mysterious Grim Woman and Tough Man and Cheeky Thief for no reason.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Played approximately the first half of The Lamplighter's League. Probably not going back. The game is painfully uninspired, with a level of production polish that belies just how boring the game is (e.g., the home base has basically one room). As another example, the Sneak I got is named Lateef, like 'the thief,' which isn't clever at all. The game glitched out or crashed a few times as well. If I had to pick my least favorite part of the gameplay, it's the level design. Probably the best thing about the game is dropping a decoy and running, which fits with the heists thematically. It says a lot that the best part of the gameplay is skipping the bulk of the gameplay

Sad this is the way it's turned out, because conceptually it was a decent idea that could have had something of the pulpy Victoriana/Steampunk flavour of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Always a shame to see such squandered potential, but that's how it goes with any good idea that isn't in able hands (and/or sound minds).

 

[ArchAngel]

This has come out on GoG now. You know what that means, time to Acquire and play it.

I'm liking it a little more now than I did when I played the demo, perhaps due to reduced expectations. The main gameplay gimmick - being able to switch between real-time and turn-based - still baffles me because the real-time mode is so underdeveloped. Limiting the number of takedowns you can do is genuinely insane; you're literally punished for succeeding because it leaves you unable to sneak later. When you force your brain to force through that though and you stop constantly wishing "if only this was Commandos mixed with XCOM rather than Ultra-Shit Commandos mixed with Mildly Shit XCOM", it's kind of fun.

I can see it overstaying its welcome though, I normally like these "go to the briefing room, ignore story missions, and just do endless randomly generated missions" games (Gears Tactics, nu-XCOM + Chimera Squad, Midnight Suns, etc) but the mechanics here just aren't strong enough to make you want to play it indefinitely in the way those other games can do.

The story and characters aren't amazing, and I'm saying that as someone who's an easy mark for anything set interwar. They're not bad though, I've recruited the fourth companion (went for the Medic) and I've not met anyone especially likeable but haven't met anyone outright annoying either. I'm looking over the companion roster and it seems like there may be some more interesting people down the line and they just chose start you out with boring assholes like Mysterious Grim Woman and Tough Man and Cheeky Thief for no reason.

There is easy fix for this. There is an option when starting a new game to get random companions as your starting 3 instead of these specific 3.

 

[Lemming42]

Played more of this and it's actually pretty good when you settle into it; it hits the exact same satisfying gameplay loop as other games in the genre. The only thing that's really annoying me about it now is the damn world map. It's actually pretty harsh and any missed mission is a big deal, which some people will like but which I hate, especially since it means you have to delay doing things you want to do (like recruitment) to avoid all the threat meters going apeshit.

 

[ArchAngel]

Played more of this and it's actually pretty good when you settle into it; it hits the exact same satisfying gameplay loop as other games in the genre. The only thing that's really annoying me about it now is the damn world map. It's actually pretty harsh and any missed mission is a big deal, which some people will like but which I hate, especially since it means you have to delay doing things you want to do (like recruitment) to avoid all the threat meters going apeshit.

Threat meter thing reminded me of worst part of Xcom 2 where all my gameplay was around stopping the meter. All my plans were around how to reach next mission that will stop the meter.
I hated that shit and I do not like it in this game as well. Although here it might not be that irritating but I still spent most of the time doing those missions.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Threat meter thing reminded me of worst part of Xcom 2 where all my gameplay was around stopping the meter.

But you could let that meter go all the way to nearly the end without hassle.

 

[ArchAngel]

Threat meter thing reminded me of worst part of Xcom 2 where all my gameplay was around stopping the meter.

But you could let that meter go all the way to nearly the end without hassle.

Xcom 2 meter? That was game over if you let it get to the end. I lost my first Xcom 2 I/I run by not basing all my gameplay around stopping the meter.

As for one in this game if you do not manage it, missions become harder. Not sure if there is also automatic game over state, by what the game tells you, there might be as one of the 3 enemy faction kind of wins