Welcome to Paradox Interactive’s attempt at a Xcom-like turn-based tactical game in the form of
The Lamplighters League. While it does not live up the legacy it was aiming for, I did find it enjoyable periodically, albeit a tad grindy. In this alternative 1930s world of earth, every kind of pulp fiction exoticism has been thrown in for good measure. Everything from the spirit world of ghosts and walking skeletons to monsters of the depth out to feast, Cthulhu style. Don’t worry, there are Nazi type regular human soldiers to shoot up too. In other words: there’s a whole damn smörgåsbord of critters and ancient horrors waiting to devour your soul!
The Lamplighters League
There has been a struggle between good and evil for many hundred years, with the Lamplighters League being at the front, protecting mankind against all kinds of horrors. It’s an organization that came to be in the 1500s, and have since then worked to keep a check on things, all done in and from the shadows. Yes, it’s one of those thankless
saving-of-the-world kind of jobs. Everything was fine and dandy in the world, but then suddenly in the 1930s, a sinister cult named
Banished Court decided world domination was the thing missing in their lives.
We might be cartoons, but we can still kill and maim
As you might suspect, you will control and maintain the Lamplighters League, with the goal of eventually defeating the Banished Court. However, you are not the boss. You are more of a battle commander and a recruiter, while the enigmatic leader Locke sets up the missions, and figures out what needs to be done. Now, I wouldn’t say that the story is that interesting, or great, but it has a nice sense of “pulp” writing from the 1930s, involving about everything from that action-adventure genre. It’s fun and cool, but at the same time, it gets a bit messy, by having no clear theme to the narrative. Everything goes, as they say. You see, the Banished Court have learned to control the occult, from exploding mummies to evil ghosts that love to electrify their victims. This can seem unfair, considering you will only have command over people of mere mortal flesh. To be fair, though, there is a mention that the league got betrayed at one point in the past, which probably set them back. It’s also likely the reason the Banished Court could grow so big and threaten the world without any interference.
Compared to the modern Xcom-like games, this is more of a
Chimera Squad than
Xcom 2. Seeing as all the agents you get to order around are already established characters that interject and talk to each between missions. This is a nice way to fill out the background lore of the world, and the people under your command, but it means you are pretty much limited to what is presented. And a defeat is more or less just a minor setback, then an actual death that will have you mourning if it was a classic Xcom title. The agents can die, but it seems you need to really mess up for that to happen. None of my agents permanently died under my watch, so I’m not exactly sure what happens if they do, narrative-wise.
Hey guys, welcome to the Ring of Fire fanclub
Move & shoot
While the story feels a bit underwhelming, both in its setup, and in its supposed escalation – I mean, you are supposed to be saving the world, yet it feels mundane throughout, without any real tension or increasing stakes. The gameplay fares much better. It uses the two-point move system that
Xcom: Enemy Unknown popularized. However, here you can fire twice, move once and fire, or fire and move, or just double move. So, there is more freedom for the player to make the tactics more engaging. This system can also be expanded greatly through items and skills. For example, my machine-gunner Isaac was given an amulet that gives him AP (moves) when healed. What made this so powerful, is that he got a self-heal that he can use fairly often. You can guess where I’m going with this. It turned him into an unstoppable beast with tons of attacks each turn. There are a ton of things that work like this, which makes it fun to find synergies within your group, and the items you create or loot.
Beyond that, the combat is pretty standard if you have played any of the modern Xcom games before. Yet, I would say it reminds me more of
Solasta: Crown of the Magister and
Divinity: Original Sin, than
Xcom 2, even if
The Lamplighters League involves firearms for the most part. The reason for this is that finding choke points to AOE (area of effect) quickly became the go-to tactic. Just like the two games mentioned above, it’s not uncommon to cover the complete battle arena with different environmental hazards, like fire, electricity, or poison to trap the enemy. For then to just watch the enemy turning themselves into a burning, agonizing sludge of toxic slime trying to approach your men. I like setting things on fire as much as the next guy, but it gets samey after a while. The cause for this singular combat style is that after a while, the game decides to spam you with enemies. Having 15 mooks gunning for your head is not rare, while you only have 3 or 4 men at most on most missions. This means this kind of gameplay is unavoidable, and mostly necessary to win.
You can always try to enter!
Time to sneak
The Lamplighters League tries to fix the spam issue by having a weird real-time stealth system. You only have a limited take-down skills per mission, that at least half of the enemies are immune to. It does not feel that engaging, with the mechanics coming off as undercooked. It’s not broken, since it does work, if you can time things right. But I constantly had the feeling that there was supposed to be more to it. Like I was playing the game wrong. It’s sort of implied that the missions are of clandestine nature, meaning you are supposed to go in and out fast, without engaging the whole horde of 25+ enemies. I don’t see how that is possible, though. There are just too many enemies, covering every inch of the objective location. Eventually, I ended up using the skills to thin out the herd if possible, not caring too much if I got busted or not, as fighting seemed to be inevitable regardless. I think I managed to do one daring escape in all my hours spent.
Another thing the game does to alleviate the suffering of continual massive battles, is the morale system. Certain characters in your group, with the addition of items, do morale damage instead of direct damage to health. And when that threshold is reached, the unit affected goes into a panic mode, which makes him or her a free kill despite the amount of health remaining (if you are in melee range, that is). This aspect of the combat works fine, but the only issue is that it takes time for the morale damage to inflict any serious harm. Often the battle is already over when the enemy starts to call for mommy. It makes the morale damaging skills feel pretty useless at times. Granted, occasionally when the stars align perfectly in the sky it works well, and is actually helpful. Mostly on high-hp enemies that take a while to whittle down the normal way, yet are vulnerable to getting mind-raped.
What is truly devastating, much more than getting knocked out normally in combat, is having your men suffer a morale break themselves. You can always soothe the pain of getting injured back in base, making the agent in question fit for duty again. But a morale break? Oh boy. It comes with serious penalties that last up to three weeks (basically 3 missions). These penalties are random, some worse than others. For example, I got the speed penalty on my melee brawler Ingrid, which made her totally useless in battle. You can get rid of these penalties much faster by taking them on a mission. The penalty gets removed if you avoid suffering another break. It’s a big risk, considering the consequences, and the penalty itself, which will make the mission harder. I enjoyed this mechanic, as it forced me to rotate out my main guys, for someone unproven to test out. There is no other real incentive to do so when you found a good group.
Sadly, for the soldiers, flame resistant suits were not on the agenda
The base
Back in base, you get to hear your people yapping about all manner of things, but the most important and fun thing here is to upgrade your men with new items and acquired talent points. The talent points are shared between all the agents, with you deciding if you want to focus on making one superhero, or make the whole team slightly better. Sadly, there isn’t too much base-building that the Xcom genre is known for. There are a couple of non-combat characters that expand the abilities of your group, making it an active choice to find these dudes. In that sense, you build up your base, but it comes with a price.
The thing is, there is a doom clock ticking down for everything you do, on a weekly basis, as missions move the time forward one week. So, you will have to decide if you should go for a new helpful character, an exotic item or a mission that sets the doom clock back a snap. Narrative-wise, it unfortunately does not do much. But in the form of gameplay, it adds some needed tension. As things go on, and the doom clock ticks closer to the final end, the enemy becomes tougher and gets more and better skills. Many players don’t like this kind of mechanic, but I appreciated it. The added pressure felt fine, in an otherwise not too difficult game (if you know what you are doing). The extra challenge was welcomed. And it made your choices on the campaign map come with consequences, since thanks to the clock, there is not enough time to tackle every mission.
Another day, another massacre
Deja vu
I have to add that the missions get very repetitive after a while, as there are just not enough objectives to complete to keep one interested. This means, you will run the same kind of missions over and over, in a very grindy fashion. Most of the time, you can’t even avoid it, as you are forced to do these cloned missions thanks to the doom clock reaching critical. Have fun destroying teleportation towers, is all I can say. The main missions also repeat, as you need to find 4 of something, or do 3 of these things. It feels like major padding, instead of creating something unique and exciting to look forward to. Much like the undercooked stealth gameplay, the design for the missions seem a little rushed.
It’s a shame too, because the combat works, and can be very enjoyable. It’s cool to see all the systems interact with each other in a satisfactory way. For instance, when you kick a bad guy into a fiery pit of pain that your other agent set up. The two major phases of the gameplay also interact well: the world conquest/base-management and the more direct turn-based skirmishing. Regretfully, everything has this sense of aimlessness to it. The mechanics are there, and it works, yet it’s lackluster. It’s missing the flair to make it stand out, and turn the
fun to grind quite fast.
My plan is to stare at this map until something happens
The cartoon look
The graphics are passable, but I can’t say I liked the overly cartoony look of the characters. I can see what they were going for here, but this style of artwork does not work for me at all. It reminds me of
Fortnite, a game I despise. Cartoon characters seems to be the rage nowadays. Which is fine, as these trends come and go, yet there is no denying that this style hampers the seriousness of any setting. It certainly does for
The Lamplighters League. A game that at times tries to maintain a serious tone, but that instantly undermines itself thanks to its goofy graphic style.
Music and voice is much better, since some serious effort went into the soundscape. The only thing that can and will drag it down is the script. It leans towards the “Marvel-tier” writing at intervals, which consists of a permanent state of sarcasm and quirkiness. It’s not too bad, though, but it’s there waiting for you when you finally decide to listen in.
Conclusion
The Lamplighters League is far from a great game. It feels lackluster in parts of its gameplay, and very grindy periodically. Despite that, I had fun thanks to its involved gameplay systems working in tandem to create amusing and creative situations. The story wasn’t very interesting, but the presentation did entice me enough to eventually finish it. All in all, it’s a mediocre game, somewhat enjoyable if you like turn-based combat. However, it could have been a lot better, which makes the whole thing bittersweet. A few more months of development would have made wonders for the game. But seeing as it’s a Paradox game, it was doomed the moment production started. Do I recommend it? Well, yes, but only if you like the modern Xcom games, and you can find it cheap. It’s definitely not worth the full price.
Thanks for reading.
