SteamWorld Heist

I hadn't realized how much I missed turn based combat driven games until I played this game.
+ Fun and enjoyable 2D turn based gameplay
+ Charismatic art style
+ Amazing soundtrack with the contribution of Steam Powered Giraffe
+ Lots of customization to suit your crew to your playstyle
+ Hats
- Alright plot that feels slighty rushed at the end

In the dry run between when the Nintendo 3DS came out and when the games started really rolling in, one neat indie game on their E-Shop took off: Steamworld Dig. It was a pretty simple Motherlode-style platformer, but it had charm and a satisfying gameplay loop. The only problem was its length, which was short enough to beat in just a few sessions. The game was successful, but rather than do a direct sequel, Image & Form decided to make one in a different genre altogether, a strategy RPG. That means you won't beat Steamworld Heist in just a few hours, and it also resulted in a fantastic game to me.
Heist is set a while after Dig, following the Earth exploding and its robot inhabitants moving into space on barges. You play as Captain Piper and her crew, who operate as space 'pirates', although you never steal from anyone who isn't also a pirate or evil in some other way, so they may as well just be bounty hunters or something. Pirate attacks in the outer regions of space have become more vicious later, and it's up to them to find out why, and make off with as much loot or hats as they can carry.
Combat is clearly inspired by X-COM: all the ladders, drops and cover are there as you might have seen them in Enemy Unknown/Within, but set in a 2D backdrop. Also like that game, you can move and shoot or use an item, or use your entire move dashing. The most unique wrinkle though, is that there is no RNG in Steamworld Heist, at least on your end. When you go to attack at range, you're allowed to freely aim your weapon, and spend as long as you want aiming the perfect shot. Your bots' don't have perfect stability, so the sights waver a bit, and there are things like ricochets to factor in, but if you hate when a 90 percent shot turns into a miss in X-COM or Fire Emblem, this might be the game for you.
That doesn't make the game easy, of course. Even your most bulky party members can't just tank fire, and it's safe to assume enemies will hit them if they're ever out in the open. Your team is made up of all unique party members, so they're not gone forever if they bite it, but that means they don't receive experience (which is doled out for fulfilling mission objectives rather than killing enemies), and your rating for the mission will drop. It's a good balance between encouraging you to be careful, but not punishing you horribly if something happens to go wrong. There are also multiple difficulties so you can fine-tune it however you like.
Despite being in just 2D Heist has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, such as enemies who only melee, ones with shields you have to flank, and ones who charge up piercing lasers. It's also able to replicate things from X-COM that work with it, like flanking (at least with two characters), and a running timer on some missions that will spawn extra reinforcements, keeping you from just turtling up. There are also some interesting boss battles, which X-COM doesn't really do.
Heist also has a DLC known as The Outsider, which adds another character and a couple more missions to each map (of which there are three, with different ships to invade and enemies to fight). It's not necessary by any means, but the extra crew member is interesting to use, and it has some useful, but not game-breaking items. I like that it's not cordoned off in its own little area, and it's only five dollars as well.
Overall, Steamworld Heist was a very pleasant surprise for me, and a huge step forward for the people behind it. Moving between genres can't be easy, but they produced something not just good, but a huge leap forward compared to their last game. If any of this sounds interesting to you I'd recommend picking it up now, and especially if it's on sale. Really looking forward to Image & Form's next game, whatever genre it happens to be.

A game of hats and heists.
The third game in the SteamWorld universe, SteamWorld Heist is a squad-based strategy game all about, you guessed it, heists. In SWH, you’re in command of a group of pirates who are in turn commanded by Captain Piper. After the Earth is almost completely destroyed, its robot inhabitants are forced to head into space. Despite being a crew of pirates, the objectives in the game are actually focused on helping the common folk rather than taking from them as you might expect. This involves boarding enemy ships and completing one of several possible main objectives.
Most of your time in SWH will be spent breaking into other ships and then dealing with the objectives for that given ship. Most of the ships are just levels you need to complete to get to levels which actually advance the story, for the most part the main objective on these kinds of levels is to collect a certain amount of SWAG (the name for loot in the game). Story levels have different objectives based on how the ship’s role in the story. For example, if the ship has some kind of special item it’ll probably be stored in a locked vault so you’ll have to take out the ship’s generators to open the vault.
For some ships, completing your objective is fairly straightforward, you’ll meet some stiff resistance but once they’re dead, they’re dead. However, a fair amount of the ships in the game have alarm systems. Depending on how big the ship is, you’ll have a certain number of turns before the first tier of the alarm goes off. Generally, the first tier deploys the ship’s turrets but if there aren’t any turret positions one or two enemies will be deployed every other turn. The alarm then resets and starts counting down to tier two and then after two it moves on to three. The higher tiers mean you’ll either get a group of three enemies or a ‘special’ enemy who’s more challenging than your average foot soldier. From my experience, it’s pretty much impossible to complete your objective on a ship with an alarm without reaching the first tier, I found this quite frustrating at first but the idea has grown on me. The game needs that extra layer of challenge for it to remain, for lack of a better word, challenging. If every ship has a static number of enemies then they’d all be far too easy and while the non-alarmed ships definitely have a place in the game, I found the alarmed ships to be more enjoyable because they made me think more carefully about what I was doing and ultimately I was better at the game when playing those levels.
SWH’s gameplay is focused around the aiming mechanic. Instead of an RNG-based system like you see in most squad-based strategy games (XCOM and the like) your ability to hit your opponents is based entirely on your own skill. Some weapons (scoped pistols and sniper rifles) have a laser sight which helps you plan your shot (though the aiming with this isn’t completely steady so there’s still some challenge with timing the shot) but all other weapons require you to ‘eye-ball’ it. Early on in the game you’ll probably be sticking to fairly safe shots but it is possible to use ricochet to hit enemies you can’t directly aim at and this becomes easier to pull off the more experienced you are with the aiming in the game. Hitting your target with a crazy shot that bounces several times is incredibly satisfying.
Speaking of weapons, there are quite a lot of them, ranging from basic revolvers all the way up to rocket launchers. All weapons have a damage stat and a critical hit stat (how much extra damage you do when you get a critical hit) and some weapons have other stats too, such as “can’t shoot after moving” (sniper rifle and “friendly fire” (grenade/rocket launchers).
Not all Steambots are created equally, they can’t use whatever weapon they want. Every Steambot has a class, for example there’s the ‘Brawler’ class which can only use Handguns (but deals higher melee damage) and there’s a ‘Vanguard’ class which can use handguns or assault weapons (SMGs and shotguns). As with all squad-based strategy games, finding a good combination of classes to use is key. Most missions allow a squad of three crew members (though I’ve also seen one, two and four crew missions) so it’s usually wise to have a close-range, mid-range and long-range fighter. Different classes also have different abilities which are unlocked when you gain enough experience to level up. Sometimes when you level up you’ll unlock something fairly basic like +1 health but the abilities you do get are incredibly useful (as is a health increase to be fair). Some of these abilities are passive, such as steadier aim for the Sentry class if you haven’t moved that turn, while others are active such as Double Shot for the Vanguard class which is self-explanatory.
As I mentioned earlier, every ship has ‘SWAG’ (loot) for you to find. Generally, loot is found in the form of loot bags but every level also has an Epic SWAG box. These boxes usually contain special loot and they also grant you a reputation point for that level (you get three in total, two for completing without any deaths and one for the Epic SWAG). Reputation points are used to unlock new areas of the map but some characters who can be hired as crew members require you to have a certain amount of reputation to prove to them that you’re worth fighting for. Most loot bags contain water (the game’s currency) but you’ll also find weapons and equipment and the occasional Earth relic which can be sold for a substantial amount of water. Equipment ranges from grenades to health kits and even armour (as well as other things) and each crew member has two equipment slots.
Your inventory space is fairly limited (though you can buy and occasionally find upgrades for your inventory space) so you’ll quite often have to sell off items to make space for new ones. The only items that don’t require inventory space are your hats. Hats are basically SWH’s version of collectibles and there are three ways to obtain them. First, all crew members have their own default hat so hiring a new crew member will get you one new hat. Secondly, you can shoot an enemy’s hat off (they can do the same to you) and then go and pick it up, adding it to your collection. Lastly, there are hat shops in the game where you can buy new hats from (there are also shops for equipment and weapons). While they don’t alter any of your stats, they are a nice little customisation option.
A couple more things to mention. SWH’s focus is definitely on gameplay rather than story but the story is pretty entertaining and there’s a good bit of humour in there. All of the game’s sound effects are great and the soundtrack is also very good. It does feel more natural playing with a controller and I enjoyed it more but it is definitely playable with KB&M.
Verdict
SWH is an excellent squad-based strategy game with challenging and engaging gameplay and plenty of content. Oh and cool hats! Lots of cool hats. Whether you’re here because you played the previous game or you’re just a fan of strategy games, this one is well worth picking up.
Lone Ranger Reviews.
El K.

To sum up SteamWorld Heist is not hard; worms style 2D turn based combat with a little bit of X-Com flair when moving. While at the same time staying its own game and taking only the steam punk esthetic from its predecessor, SteamWorld Dig.
So the game plays as follows: fly your ship between checkpoints in space - a map or hub area if you will. These may be space station bars where you get your drink on (what do robots drink anyway?), buy weapons and other equipment or hire other scrappy robots which can be used as units in battle. Other areas, enemy ships, is where you will be spending most of your time, battling it out and collecting loot to use or money to spend. Sometimes you may come across a lonesome space station selling hats at outrageously high prices...
So the bulk of the game is spent in battles and the combat system is well polished to make that time fly by. You enter a semi randomly generated map (station) with usually two or three teammates equipped with weapons and accessories of your choosing. Each round gives you a movement and attack phase in which you can either hide for cover or attack (sometimes both). Since step count is limited, it is important to find a location in which you will be hard to hit yet still easy to hit your enemy from. It is a simple design that may lack some depth. I would love to have the ability to have one of my teammates just defend a position and shoot whomever wanders into its line of sight but right now all a defending teammate does is cower behind a barrel and get hit if an enemy chooses show who has the biggest metal sack. Attacking is more engaging and rightfully more fun. An assortment of weapons is available all wealdable by its specific class of character. Your everyday pistols, scoped weapons offer bouncing bullets, high spread shotguns, high rate-of-fire multiple shot rifles, AOE line of sight RPG explosions, arching grenade launcher AOE explosion and metal to brass fists all offer different playstiles and entry points to each situation one may find oneself in. I particularly enjoyed scoped weapons which offere laser sights for their easy of use in bouncing bullets off walls to hit harder to hit enemies. Since headshots provide a higher damage output, these were particularly useful. A good combination of different characters with different weapon sets does the job fine while mixing it up just a little bit as to not get too monotonous while shooting only one tipe of weapon (as if it ever could). The reward for clearing out these outposts is usually more gear to use for the next mission or money to buy yet more gear OR a fancy hat or two. Hats are the money sink that makes the economy work as you will soon have enough money to have all equipment you need. It's an alright system that seems to work fine with most virtual macro economies, here being no different.
Each map sector ends with a boss fight in which all your skills will be tested against a fairly stronger enemy. The difficulty of these are nicely tuned and provide ample release of dopamine.
Esthetically SteamWorld Heist reminds me of Firefly (Tv Series, 2002) albeit with a cartoony overlay. Space ships looking like the scifi future movies promise swapped for coal powered furnaces and steam turbines. Ships held together by sheet metal and rivets. A world populated by robots wielding guns, wearing fancy hats and everything generally feeling like the wild west in space. The music consolidates this idea of steam punk wild west robots in space. Guitar, banjo, bass, fiddle and a strong vocal presence that tells stories of robots are exactly what one would expect from a world such as this. The Band Steam Powered Giraffe are personified as robots and can be found in any bar in the game playing their music. I sometimes visited just for the music.
SteamWorld Heist is a great game to relax with and not stress over too much. Core gameplay containing simple tactical turn based gameplay. It clearly defines goals and provides extra rewards for extra work / exploration. A pleasant to look at esthetic and guitar heavy soundtrack with some rather fine folksy vocals. It took me 17 hours to beat the game and I enjoyed every minute of it.

This game is a great 2D Turn-based shooter. The story is fun and continues from the Steamworld dig 1 and 2. The mechanics are fun and the actual story is long.
People complain that this game get repetitive fast. But those people are wrong. If you take the time to check, they only have 1-4 hours played. Of course it's easy if you are at the easiest difficulty and you just rush in one-shot headshot everyone and take barely any damage. But like most game, when you crank the difficulty up, it forces you to developpe a new playstyle. Take cover, retreat, ricochet bullets off walls, shoot enemies in the legs to cripple, ect.
Make no mistake that this game is excellent and definitly worth it, especially when it is so discounted as it is now.

When you think of turn based combat games (with movable units within a level), you don’t often think of them in a 2D format. This game is very unique in that aspect. There is no randomness like in other games, you actually aim your gun and accuracy is rewarded. You can even ricochet bullets of off walls which opens up some pretty creative plays. The combat is very vertical – you are moving around different platforms and are able to shoot through the floors. There is also some randomness to the levels so if you choose to replay them, you will be getting a different experience every time. There are different characters to recruit, each with a different set of abilities. Leveling them up improves their skills. You also improve their gear by buying better guns and armor. And you can collect many different hats by shooting them off of enemies’ heads. Hats serve a very important purpose… in just making you look cool.
The game just plays different than any other turn based combat game. It is a great addition to the genre and it was refreshing to experience something unique. You should definitely give it a try if you enjoy these types of games.

SUMMARY:
I couldn't put this down for about a week and really felt like I got my moneys worth. Considering I'm ADHD and have over 400 games in my library I feel like thats a rare thing for any game to accomplish these days. It held my attention and I'm writing a review which I never do, so ... give it a SHOT!
PROS:
Suprisingly fun and fulfilling gameplay.
Good progression curve.
Lots of fun weapons.
Characters with unique abilities.
Random map generation.
Hat collecting.
Charming graphics.
New game+ mode
CONS:
Could be a bit longer, with more weapons and chapters.
No oversized anime breasts on the female steambots.