Miasma Chronicles
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In the not-too-distant future. America has been torn apart by a savage force known only as the ‘Miasma’.Meet Elvis, a young man brought to the mining town of Sedentary as a baby. Left by his mother in the care of a robotic older ‘brother’ and given a mysterious glove with which he can control the Miasma.Join the brothers on a quest across a post-apocalyptic wasteland to find the answers they crave. Answers which may change the course of human history forever.
- Realtime exploration gameplay meets tactical, turn-based combat with RPG elements.
- Upgradable weapons and abilities give your heroes the edge in combat.
- An involving fantasy story through which you learn the truth behind the Miasma.
From the creators of Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, comes a beautifully crafted tactical adventure you won’t forget.
Steam User 214
ONE OF THE MOST UNFAIR REVIEWS I'VE EVER READ
I am a turn-based strategy RPG buff. I've played dozens of X-COM likes, and I believe I can tell if a game is good or not. Miasma Chronicles is a good game. I would give it a 4/5. Solid gameplay, beautiful graphics, great setting, interesting characters and even a compelling story (which is something very rare in the genre - probably the best one I have seen so far, if we don't count The Banner Saga). Sure, it lacks some polish, and the main guy is not the most memorable, but I had a blast playing through it.
So I was very surprised when I saw that Eurogamer gave Miasma Chronicles a baffling 1/5 rating. That's the rating you give to a completely broken game, with horrible gameplay and forgettable story - which Miasma Chronicles objectively is not.
As I went through the review, it did not take me long to realise that the reviewer was clearly blinded by some kind of extremist "D&I" ideology ("wokeness", some would call it).
The reviewer was particularly bothered by two things:
1 - She considered the sidekick character to be a racist trope. That's because he is a tanky sassy/brash robot, voiced by a black actor, who is very loyal to his white friend (to the point that they consider themselves brothers), but does not get much credit for their feats. First of all, just because a robot uses black vernacular, it doesn't make that character black - it's a damn robot! Second, how is having a black sidekick racist? Sidekicks are omnipresent in fiction; it's not a crime if one happens to be black, as long as not all black characters are sidekicks. Plus, the supposedly "bigoted stereotype" robot sidekick at hand is easily the coolest character in the game. The reviewer also mentions that this robot descends from a slave race, but this parallel does not hold. Robots (obviously) used to serve humans in the early days, when they were not fully sentient. Some of these non-fully sentient robots can be spoken with in the game, but they don't have "black" accents or anything like that. Sure, the game's story revolves around political tensions between humans and robots, but so what? That is a very common trope in sci-fi, and actually works as social commentary. Plus, the game has plenty of human NPCs of colour (literally more than half of the protagonist's home town). Some of them also have very noble roles, such as the protagonist's mother, or the town militia leader. As for robots, they are voiced by a great number of different actors, presumably from all ethnicities.
2 - Apparently there's a "throwaway transphobic line in a diary entry about the author not caring if drugs cause them to grow boobs". I haven't even read that line, as diaries are very secondary collectibles in a game that took me almost 40 hours to finish, with thousands of perfectly fine voice lines. codes entries and collectible diaries. Clearly, a single diary by a random NPC doesn't make the entire game or its message transphobic.
That's it. Those are the reasons. The reviewer does go through gameplay, which she curiously considers much worse than the previous game by the same developer (which she liked). That's curious, because the two games are in fact very similar in terms of gameplay, as noted in practically every other review out there.
It's so sad to see a game made with so much love fall victim to a reviewer (who describes herself as a "fat, disabled trans woman") fueled by some kind of rampaging self-righteous obsession with "inclusivity" that really had little to no role to play here.
Steam User 58
There seems to be quite a bit of drama about the balancing of this game. I'm writing this review to give a bit of a counter point to the negative voices that seem to be taking overhand from what I can see.
The art and the world they created are stunning, I don't think anyone can dispute that. Let's focus only on the difficulty here.
To put it into context, I'm playing on "Challenging" difficulty (that's difficulty 3 out of 4) in full tactical mode (RNG is fully in effect). The game is ball breakingly hard, at least in the beginning. You will have to restart encounters. You will have to get creative sometimes. But if you learn the game, everything can be overcome. And the feeling of accomplishment is all the greater for it when you do survive a battle. As you get more and more tools in the game, you will find it becoming more manageable. After 18 hours I'm reloading less and less. I can even do some encounters on the very first try. But it's still not a no-brain game. I'm getting better through the encounters because I'm making better decisions. Isn't that what a game should be about?
I hear that the game is almost as hard even on normal difficulty. I agree that this must be changed. But the devs already said they will issue a balance patch next week already. If you are reading this a few months from now - that's the week after release. So they are listening and are going to adjust things. Please don't dismiss a great game because someone said it's too frustrating. It's very rewarding. I'm hoping they'll keep that feeling of reward while taking off the edge of the biggest frustration sources. 5 hours in, I was with the chorus of people who thought that things *needed* to change. Now I'm happy to try to beat the game before the balance patch.
Steam User 44
7/10
This is not XCOM.
This is a tactical stealth game. You will spend most of your time sneaking around sniping enemies one by one until you feel confident enough to engage them into proper "XCOM" battles. Low/high covers, RNG miss/hit chance, hiding mechanics, destructible objects, multiple skills are all present in this game. But this is not the focus. It is first a stealth game. With that in mind, it is a great game.
I have beaten the game after 40h+ on the hardest difficulty, Alpha Editor (ironman). The most difficult part of the game is literally the first region. Only because you are low on resources like money, healing and distraction items. And this is one of the main complaints of many people. Not enough money and healing early on. In retrospective however, I believe it is correctly balanced because once you start the second region, you start swimming in money. I was able to buy all the best weapons and mods the game has to offer way before the end of the game.
The story is pretty decent. Elvis, who is a teenager, is looking for his mother that is gone beyond a wall called "miasma". The only way to go through that wall is to use a tech glove that he carries with him at all times. It is your job to understand what miasma is and what that glove is. Anyway, I'll be honest. The story kinda s*cks in the first region. And what makes it worst is that the characters are meh. This is another complain from some people. What makes the characters meh is the way their dialogue is written. Lets just say the dialogues wasnt written by a proper writer. Diggs is annoying. Anyway, the story really picks up in the second region.
Those are the two main complains that I have seen. The rest of the game is great in my opinion. Combat is fun, choosing builds is fun, graphics are fantastic, quests/side quests are well done and the stealth is great. So in my opinion, it is a solid 7/10. Just remember, this is not XCOM. This is a tactical stealth game.
Steam User 26
Miasma Chronicles is an underrated gem of Tactical RPG genre. It deserves much better reception than it initially got. Its very similiar to Mutant Year Zero, which was a previous game from these devs. It merges elements of stealth, tactics and RPG in interesting ways.
I actually think Miasma Chronicles is a better game than Mutant Year Zero, which makes the fact that its so underrated even more disappointing. Devs expanded all mechanics present in their previous game and managed to craft an interesting post-apocalyptic world. Characters and story are rather simple but likeable with enjoyably cheesy voice acting and fun twists along the way.
Graphically Miasma Chronicles is quite a looker, for a game using isometric perspective. Environments are richly detailed and well designed, with many tactical options available. Particle effects are especially stunning! Performance wise its quite demanding and requires a decent rig or lowering of graphical settings.
I was playing on Extreme difficulty and found gameplay to be pretty challenging. Every encounter required I "thin the herd" using stealth, before engaging in open combat. Fortunately, stealth has extra depth due to introduction of sound lures, used to separate enemies from groups. Stealth is well balanced as the number of silent weapons is very limited and you'll be only able to kill low tier enemies in stealth.
When detected by enemies, combat switches to regular XCOM-style affair. Fortunately, its has more depth as each character is highly customizable via itemization and skill trees. I quite liked the skills available and the fact you could freely respec each character at any time. It made me micro-manage my squad depending on the type of enemies I was fighting.
I had no expectations for Miasma Chronicles, but I'm happy to say that its a great tactical RPG and manages to stand out in the sea of XCOM clones. Its strange it was so under-marketed, considering the pedigree of the developers and high quality of the final product. I really hope it manages to find its audience and we get to see the sequel, as the story goes in interesting directions, but feels like just the beginning of a bigger saga.
Steam User 37
Good game. Gameplay is very much like Mutant Year Zero. Lots of action and a lot of planning (and reloading) required for me.
I don't like wearing earphones so I mostly just read the dialogue so cannot speak to the music.
There were a couple of real plot twists that were well done.
Will buy their next game when it comes out - which for me is the best recommendation of all.
Steam User 18
OK, but needed another 20 minutes in the oven. 3 out of 5 stars. If you liked Mutant Year Zero, you’ll like this. They obviously hit a budget wall and released before it was fully baked. Vote with your wallet and wait for a sale to buy. Show the executive that deciding to publish early without further play testing and improvements is ultimately not cost effective. I’m sure the developers told them it needed a few more weeks. Play Mutant Year Zero first if unsure if you like this type of game’s play-style as that game if fully baked.
It has quirks but haven’t had any game breaking bugs at about 75% of the game. Weak PC port of controls to KB+mouse. It’s like the mouse sensitivity is set at minimum with no way to change it. You can max your Windows desktop pointer speed to help. Keys mapped to gamepad buttons without much thought and minimal options to change them. Interacting with a game object could be “E” or “Space” or “R” or “Y”… Or choose to play with a gamepad if you have the option and can tolerate slow point and click with a joystick for pointer icon movement. Character movement is thankfully OK with WASD or joystick. Another gameplay jank example is your team can often be forced to move to the focus character unreasonably. The game has a huge stealth gameplay importance. You may enter “ambush” mode only to find out your team is positioned wrong. Gun accuracy is range dependent, but it varies inconsistently (+/- 2 or 3%) for the same weapon. Sniper rifle is only 100% at max range and that accuracy can vary by only a movement square or two. Exit ambush mode to reposition and sometimes your other team members will move to you, breaking stealth. Deal with the too early botched ambush fight or reload from a save. A few other similar irritations. Not game breaking. How much are you willing to pay for often irritating functionality that could have been fixed?
A great feature is the ability to change your skill point allocation and weapon modifications as needed when out of combat. You’re not locked into weapons attachment choices nor skills. You can change them before every battle. And you will need to as there is a good amount of enemy variety in weaknesses and capabilities. Go into most fights unprepared and you will suffer heavy losses.
Half price was my threshold and I am happy with the game at that value point.
Steam User 24
Its not Xcom, there's no shotgun armed duck, but I was pleasantly surprised by this. The ending felt rushed, but it's a solid 7/10. Get it on sale on a rainy day and enjoy.