I backed this and bought a gift copy for a friend today. Hope the release goes well for the team!
Here are some initial thoughts, after about 12 hours.
The writing is solid, and the noir influence unpretentious. The character introductions hammer it a little too hard, though. The minimal voicework is easily good enough. The character and other 2D art is quite nice, in my opinion. The combat maps aren't hugely detailed, but there are little flourishes here and there and the assets aren't bad. In combat itself the graphics communicate what is happening well enough, which is all we can ask from such a tiny team. Little touches like, when selecting targets, the shooter aiming at the last targetable object you moused over would be sorely missed if they weren't there. I had some minor framerate drops when scrolling, but overall this will stress no graphics card. I've had no crashes or showstopping bugs.
I like the bones of the character system. All the core stats do something mechanically distinct and useful, although "Utility" as a core stat is conceptually forced. (Better than muscle wizards, though!) The skills are a good mix of tactical and strategic, and some do a bit of both. There are enough interesting perks with acceptably stringent prereqs to make planning beneficial. What you do with your main character should affect how you develop your companions. The game says upfront to develop the melee and/or firearm skills, but the degree is still in the player's hands. If I play another campaign, I might try to see how few points I can put into direct combat skills, and rely on perks or party abilities to make up the difference.
I do have a gripe about how skills are utilized. For some, e.g. Bypass, only the highest score present on a mission matters. That could generate interesting choices when planning party skills and composition of individual missions, but I think it's mostly a let down because having two characters strong in one skill already exacts an opportunity cost. I can think of some interesting fixes beyond just introducing a composite score, but that's a different post.
The city strategy layer is conceptually straightforward, but (so far on normal) seems undemanding. I haven't felt like I really needed to focus surveillance or missions in one place or another. I'm actually hoping I'm missing some key mechanic that will cause me issues later.
The hideout strategy layer, where you upgrade the facilities it contains, is more interesting. I can see the substantial benefits I'm missing due to my previous choices. For example, I focused on building up the library (to learn skills faster) and the firing range (for significant boosts to firearm aim and damage plus free ammo). However, my crafting and melee upgrades are lagging behind, the former of which is starting to be very noticeable due to lack of body armor. There's also a trinket granting one free reload, the lack of which caused me to reload the game rather than the SMG a few missions ago.
In fact, I like the straightforward crafting and item upgrading, especially since managing components isn't fussy. It helps that I'm getting enough loot to make or buy some new stuff, while always feeling resource starved. Since the enemy factions are supposed to overwhelm the player if they dawdle, I actually harbor some hope for this video game economy. We'll see.
Thus far, the "normal" missions are a pleasing mix of pure combat, combat with associated vignette, and the occasional non-combat story with a very light skill component. I've also had one neat "random mission" found while surveilling territory. On the downside, the vignette missions clearly repeat. I did one three times in a row, probably because I kept choosing the same tile. Dude I saved was really bad about leaving town, it turns out.
The ultimate goal of the game is to take out the three faction bosses, which involves finding and interrogating their lieutenants. The couple lieutenants I've fought really brought the pain, and had good rewards. Party composition mattered. Speaking of which, allies have an attitude toward you that depends on your approach to combat, most notably on whether you kill or incapacitate enemies during the mission, or even the circumstances under which this occurs. Plan accordingly. Another consideration in party composition is the distinct distribution of melee vs. ranged weapon users among the three enemy factions. Presumably this is so fights against each faction feel different and to force the player to mix things up. To a certain extent this succeeds. However, so far I think the game plays it a little too safe and would benefit by adding a wildcard or two every encounter. Maybe I'll change my mind later.
Speaking of thoughts which aren't settled, here are some on the meat of the game: combat. It uses action points, which on the Codex is something you already know if you like or not. To give a sense of the numbers, I've seen attacks from 3-8 AP, but so far 4 or 5 is most typical. Most weapons have multiple attack modes, often with different AP costs. Currently my characters gain 5-6 AP per turn, and have a max up to 7 (banking AP from a previous turn). These numbers go up slowly if you invest in the appropriate core stats, and many perks interact with the action economy. However, beginning characters can move, attack, reload, and not much else. That often meant I didn't feel there was any meaningful decision to take. Investing in at least one small new way to spend AP for each character makes a big positive difference in game feel.
Another vital mechanic is cover, and unless I've missed something Vigilante's implementation is very odd. If you (or an enemy) are in a tile with cover, apparently the cover applies in every direction, even those with unobstructed line of sight to you. I have to believe this is either a bug or implementation issue (LOS is famously tricky to do well), rather than a design choice. The combat remains tactical, but its just so unintuitive.
One of Vigilante's nice quality of life features is setting a minimum to-hit chance when making overwatch shots. It astounds me this isn't ubiquitous in turn-based tactical games.
Combat encounters have three basic difficulties, based on faction strength in that location. The first and second tier fights have, overall, been pretty rote. Once you have a strategy that works, you can execute it unless the enemy gets in a surprise. It's the ability to respond to the suprises and tight spots that make the game, so here are a few I've seen: Incendiary grenade to the back line. Gunfighters that need to choose which guy with a bat they'd rather be hit by. Enemies that will heal themselves just before the next troop could have finish them off. Enemy leaders seemingly vulnerable to a risky multi-character maneuver, since upon being killed they debuff all other enemies in the combat. Whether to risk killing an enemy with purposely lethal force, which does more damage, even though this tends to negatively affect the strategy layer. (Movie lethality is in effect when crossing 0 hit points: if you chose lethal damage you reliably kill, if you chose non-lethal damage you reliably incapacitate.) Turning the difficulty up may be enough to create some of these more often, but for others I think tweaks to enemy composition and behavior are needed.
A quick observation about AI. Melee units mostly run at the party until they die, and seem to use cover less than they should. When melee enemies can't quite get close enough to attack they usually leave some space, so the player must choose between whether it would rather first strike or save AP. This strategy works less well, of course, against enemies with firearms. Ranged enemies usually run to cover, but like melee units they don't seem to move between cover very smartly. Given how cover works, flanking is much less effective than normal games of this type, so if the AI knows how to flank it doesn't have much incentive to do so.
The area where the game is least polished is probably the interface, which is full of little frustrations, though nothing that would make me rage quit. For example, the main character defaults to fists at the start of combat, no matter what weapons are equipped. To take another, the game is inconsistent about whether hovering over an item pops up its stats. More seriously, one needs to assign missions from both the cityscape screen and the team screen, and I ended up flipping back and forth a lot trying to decide who would do what. This is made worse by the cityscape screen being the only screen at the "hideout" where the menubar is along the vertical left edge instead of the top like every single other hideout screen. Finally, the "completed operations" window is completely broken for me. Moreover, it seems it isn't even intended to record the the actual result of operations, i.e. what intel was discovered or loot was procured. These are briefly flashed on screen when a mission ends, and are really easy to miss.
The combat interface has its frustrations too. The map scrolls at only one speed, so to make it go faster I've been using keyboard and screen edge scrolling at the same time, which is apparently additive. The aimed shot mechanic is not discoverable on the UI, so if you missed it in the tutorial good luck ever noticing its existence. The special aiming mode used for shotguns and grenades is not turned off after using one, and the most natural way to turn it on in the first place does not turn it off again.
Vigilantes is clearly a labor of love, and not all the rough edges have been filed off, but so far it's been fun. Some things it does very well, and none of the things it does poorly are offensively poor. Its systems have good bones, so I hope when all is said and done Timeslip sell enough to develop them further.