Tactical Indie RPGs - The sucessors of X-COM, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics and Heroes of Might and Magic.

So, managed to get the playtest of that WILD squad game. Overall, its not bad, theres your basic 2 action system, each PC have their own special powers you can use. What does make it stick out, is like Midnight Suns you can only take 3 characters on a mission, but they each have a love/hate thing. So, say the wolf girl and the fennec arent exactly fans of each other, each time the wolf girl misses a shot the Fennec can give her a 10 debuff on calling her out. But, when you have characters that like each other, they do give bonuses to one another. Roaster wise, you have scout, tank, healer and fighter. I havent played much at the moment, but will say that the Hawk characted (whos a sniper FYI), cant hit stuff for shit, he literally only nailed one critical hit during the entire combat, when both the bat and wolf had higher body counts.
 
It's Xcom but each unit is a squad. I don't mind some of the ideas. I don't know why so many have a hard time grasping that no one cares about their named OCs, and part of the fun of Xcom is making a bunch of "your dudes".
Never understood why this wasn't the mentality. In Xcom my literal game plan especially for terror missions with sectoids was to strap my recruits with live C4, and carry enough grenades to level the neighborhood. Unless a unit was really good save scumming wasn't worth it usually.
 
Never understood why this wasn't the mentality. In Xcom my literal game plan especially for terror missions with sectoids was to strap my recruits with live C4, and carry enough grenades to level the neighborhood. Unless a unit was really good save scumming wasn't worth it usually.
Doesn't that risk rookies panicking due to mind control and flying cyberdisks sniping them?
 
Menace is now in early access.
I'm having a lot of fun with it, it needs some polish and there's almost nothing in story wise so if you're looking for a narrative keep this on your list until it's more developed, but the gameplay is rock solid. Even on babby difficulty, it's thrown down some intense situations, though some of that difficultly may be down to my inability to get good armor-penetrating weapons to drop in the store or from missions.
 
I'm glad I asked around here about Menace, because I do actually quite like it, especially the visuals and setting. It's been a long time since I played something that "get's" Military Sci Fi and Marine/Infantry shit well, Menace does it really really well, and I like that they don't try to sugarcoat the setting as well and do gay ops about it, you are in Space Africa and you gotta take in militia or even terrorrists to the state to get by, my only critique right now is that the Black Market costs too much for what you can sell, which is always like 10-15 credits even with the pirate leader suit which, if sold to me, costs 150, otherwise, a few more variations on missions would also go a long way.
 
is it not? If so I should check it out.
It's scaled out, you command squads not individuals. I like it.
the Black Market costs too much for what you can sell,
True, get the salvage module on your ship so you'll get 20c per destroyed vehicle.
You can name the generic squad guys, but that makes about as much sense as naming the HP pips in Xcom.
You can also see how many missions a squadie has survived. Just to make a grenade going off just that more of a gutpunch
Phoenix Point was fun but too punishing and turns into a tedious grind
It's fun with the 'Terror from the void' mod
I loved Mechanicus
Have you tried Daemonhunters? It's a bit more cartoonish, but with higher production values. They somehow got Andy Serkis as a VA.
 
Last edited:
I figure the XCOM comparison is due to nu-xcom being so stripped down that retards who have never played another tactics game get boss baby vibes from on the fact that you can unlock stuff on the ship.

But the barter system just fucking sucks.
How so? It's exactly the same as a normal (rotating) store in any other game except you don't convert your dogshit scrap grenades to ten dollars in space cash first.

Edit:
Is Battletech any good?
Kinda late but with the BTA mod it's fucking excellent.
And the single best battletech video game thing imo, if you care about that. It makes a couple elegant changes to things like how evasion works, which cascades to making everything in the setting actually useful and functional, including stuff like electronic warfare/combat networks which every other game ignores or half-asses. Every weapon has a purpose from anti-personnel to artillery, so there's a reason to mix up your builds for once to cover different situations; tanks and APCs are viable; light mechs are important and never become obsolete.
I hate the lore but I dig how expansive it is in terms of evolving tech, and they've added goddamn everything short of protomechs (which is good because protomechs are retarded) while somehow maintaining balance.
 
Last edited:
The truth (nuke) on why Xcom is so loved is because of one simple thing, it isn't because of the gameplay or strat side of things. Its because the reboot games are Barbie dreamhouse games. Games like JA are good and all, but the characters are really just memes on old school action heroes. People remember their Xcom squaddies more so because they made their characters, either random guys or people from their IRL.
 
Kinda late but with the BTA mod it's fucking excellent.
And the single best battletech video game thing imo, if you care about that. It makes a couple elegant changes to things like how evasion works, which cascades to making everything in the setting actually useful and functional, including stuff like electronic warfare/combat networks which every other game ignores or half-asses. Every weapon has a purpose from anti-personnel to artillery, so there's a reason to mix up your builds for once to cover different situations; tanks and APCs are viable; light mechs are important and never become obsolete.
I hate the lore but I dig how expansive it is in terms of evolving tech, and they've added goddamn everything short of protomechs (which is good because protomechs are retarded) while somehow maintaining balance.
Battletech has playable non-mech units?
Since when? Where can I find this mod?
 
Battletech has playable non-mech units?
Since when? Where can I find this mod?
A shitload. Every tank and tank variant in the universe (with their own pilot skill additions), hovercraft, APCs, various artillery platforms, mobile command bases, mobile repair bases, regular infantry (who can occupy buildings, something I have never done) and various elementals/battle armour (who can ride on your mechs and jump off when you need them, something I do all the time because they are true motherfuckers to deal with), even land-air mechs with exclusive bomb bay weapons and shit. Oh and I guess regular aerospace fighters since you can buy contracts to call in airstrikes/strafing runs but I've never done that either; I'm not sure whether they stick around or if it's basically an animation.
Also there's quad mechs. They're good.
It's at https://www.bta3062.com/ since for some reason Google hates this mod.
 
How so? It's exactly the same as a normal (rotating) store in any other game except you don't convert your dogshit scrap grenades to ten dollars in space cash first.
No other way to gain equipment besides random drops and the amount you get is fucking pitiful. There is probably ways to get more but I haven't gotten to far because i had to restart my game because apparently they also want to use exhaustion mechanics as well which I'm not fond of in general.

Onto Battletech related goodiness.
HBS Battletech is good, no qualms if you haven't played it yet you should. I quiet enjoyed the story. I did rage at the convoy part though.


Mods are great, my only issue with two of them in partically BTA and Roguetech is that there massive system hogs. Every time I play them they bog the game down because they just add so much stuff.

If you don't want a massive overhaul Battletech Extended is a nice balance and feels like a mini expansion if HBS had continued to work on that if you don't want a huge overhaul of the game.
 
There is probably ways to get more but I haven't gotten to far
Menace is pretty RNG heavy, not only drops but also items that come onto the black market and mercs you can hire, if I recall there is some OCI shit that makes scrap and items drop more frequently, and Jean a merc helps a bit with that, but to get her, you gotta get lucky on the roll.
 
1770733815877.png
Kinda annoyed the Steam page seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning shit just ends like three ops after the MENACE shot up. I'm sure everyone else knew this but I like to play shit blind, and the first 20 hours really fooled me with how polished and not-EA-bullshit it seems.
It's fine for some games but this is specifically the kind I'd rather have waited for, fuck!!!

Does it work with the story/campaign?
Yeah. Story mode is disabled but the vanilla campaign is preserved as a series of flashpoints (highlighted stars that tell you what special mission is available from the map) complete with cutscenes and a couple minor mission tweaks so the gameplay changes work. Just make sure you start in the south of the map, because the galaxy is a lot bigger than in vanilla.
Or don't, but it'll take you like a year to fly there if you start in space germany like I did and you'll be pretty overpowered by the time you arrive.
 
Back
Top Bottom