Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
A tactical adventure game combining the turn-based combat of XCOM with story, exploration, stealth, and strategy. Take control of a team of Mutants navigating a post-human Earth. Created by a team including former HITMAN leads and the designer of PAYDAY. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is the ultimate fix for your tactical strategy addiction. Dive into a deep, turn-based, tactical combat system inspired by the XCOM games Journey through a post-human world of abandoned cities, crumbling highways, and overgrown countryside. Check back at the Ark, a neon-bathed oasis of ill repute and questionable characters, to restock your supplies and plan out your next adventure. A duck with an attitude problem and a boar with anger issues; these aren’t your typical heroes. Get to know Dux, Bormin, Selma, and many other characters each with their own unique personality and deranged perspective on the world and their situation.
Steam User 14
Mutant is a tactics RPG I thoroughly enjoyed, but has some caveats that you should be aware of before buying.
Before that however, what you can expect from the 15-or-so hour romp through the game:
Incredibly beautiful, lush visuals with a good variety of environments.
Entertaining and likeable writing. There's a tinge of humour in there, but it's kept light and steers clear of the sardonic nihilistic pitfall that's easy for post-apocalyptic games to fall into.
Great sound direction. Weapons have a meaty thunk to them which makes every hit and kill feel satisfying.
Engaging and well thought-out turn based tactical combat with a unique real-time stealth component to it.
Now, onto the caveats:
1. This game leans more towards the "tactics" side of tactical RPG.
Just about every aspect of combat is finite across the entirety of the playthrough except for ammo. Limited money, limited shop refreshes, etc. You need to plan and ration stuff because you cannot just grind your way through difficult encounters.
2. The stealth part of the game is not "optional".
A key part of the game is the stealth system. With this, you can wander around the battlefield and pick off unsuspecting enemies with silent weapons, before "going loud" on the rest of their companions. Almost EVERY encounter will be significantly harder, if not outright unwinnable, unless you fully utilise this system; turning the game into some kind of psuedo-puzzle RPG rather than a tactics RPG. As long as you follow the formula (stealth kill absolutely everything you can) you will (probably) not lose.
Some criticisms:
Party balance isn't the greatest. There's very little reason to ever use anything but the first three party members for 80% of the game. The remaining 20% you can substitute the third for the fifth, while the fourth just isn't really useful at all.
A lack of minimap is mildly irritating when you're trying to systematically comb maps for resources and encounters.
Inter-party interaction just kinda disappears after you get the fourth member. Couple that with the fact that everyone has unique exposition for set-piece locations (and only the person you're controlling at the time of encountering them will say anything), you kinda feel like you're always "missing" a bit in terms of dialogue.
But all-in-all. A great game and worth a look if you're into the dudes-on-a-chessboard genre.
Steam User 9
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden might be right up your alley if you're a fan of X-Com-inspired turn-based strategy games. The game has a solid, if not slightly underwhelming, the story with great potential in the world and setting in which the game takes place. The primary campaign isn't quite as strange as you would expect, considering you are playing in a party with a talking, no-nonsense pig, a wisecracking cynical duck who'll remind you of a particular other duck-themed character from Marvel, and a third-party member of your choosing each of whom has their unique dialog and quips that can give deeper insight into the story. A key highlight of the game is the encounters with the characters because they offer a greater understanding of the world and provide a much-needed sense of friendship and camaraderie between the party members. The characters and world design are two of the game's greatest strengths, which will keep you going despite some shortcomings.
I found the approach and combat method of the game to be one of the most significant downsides, in which you had to sneak around an area and take out enemies one at a time without being seen, as alerting other enemies will result in you killing upwards of seven, eight, or more enemies all of whom will be difficult to defeat. The intent is to make stealth an integral part of the combat loop, which means once you've whittled down a group of enemies, you're encouraged to focus on the remaining enemies, usually heavy enemies like tanks or bosses. Still, this approach gets stale after a few hours. Towards the end of the game, I had essentially abandoned that gameplay style as I had already out-leveled many encounters by mid or late-game. At that point, you can be more aggressive. I was glad to have done so since combat was becoming tedious, and I was actively looking forward to skipping encounters altogether.
In addition to adding intrigue to the world, the DLC resolves the questions left by the end of the primary campaign. There's only a little to look forward to here apart from one helpful new party member, though I found myself switching him out for a previous member from the primary campaign who I thought was more helpful. Furthermore, while interesting, the new threat in the DLC could have been more memorable, and overall, it ended up being more of the same. While it was a fun experience, the game could have done more creatively with its premise while opening up the settings (and gameplay) with more varied, weird locations that set it apart from other post-apocalyptic video game tales. By the game's end, I wished there was more as the game's current adequate approach to combat and story-telling didn't impress me as much as I had hoped. I would love to visit more of this world in the future, though, as sequels have a lot of potential to dive deeper into this world's lore and create a far more interesting, unique experience.
Recommended. Be careful out there, Stalkers.
Steam User 14
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden had been on my wishlist for ages before I decided to pick it up because I wasn't convinced it'd hold up against how I thought it'd play like and I although I wanted to give it a go, I also didn't want to be disappointed.
I'm happy to say that I absolutely loved my playthrough.
Top 3 Positives
* The humour.
* Switching party members, gear and abilities on the fly to match each encounter as I seen fit.
* Hardest difficulty is both fair and rewarding.
Grey Area
* Replayability. There's no replayability for myself however it you enjoy collecting achievements and playing challenge style mini missions (with leaderboards) that is completely separate from the main story then there's something to do after completing the main game.
Top 3 Negatives
* As alluded above, I have no interest in collecting achievements or leaderboards so for myself there's no replayability.
* If you do not like stealth gameplay, the hardest difficultly will be an extreme challenge verging on being unfair throughout.
* Despite being one of my favourite characters in this game, repetitive spoken lines during combat from Farrow got old fast.
Last Thoughts
Playing Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden for the first time on the hardest difficulty was a great solo experience. I really enjoyed scouting out the maps and formulating a plan of attack and systematically clearing out each and every area with utter dominance.
Although the ending felt like a bit of a flop with a predictable twist at the end, the Seed of Evil story expansion DLC transitioned in really well and really cemented further enthusiasm.
Steam User 10
The XCOM genre has been mentioned a lot, although in general I'm not a huge fan of turn based games. However Mutant Year Zero has a pretty straight forward attitude and a "gimmicky" style when it comes to your characters.
The game itself is based around 3 team members, who you can equip with various gear and change between talents depending on what you need. There is a big emphasis on scouting each zone you enter and try to eliminate enemies one by one. You'll pay attention to patrols and how enemies behave, as some may have a nasty surprise despite you kill them silently.
The silent part is essentially one part of combat. You will find regular and silent weapons. Silent weapons deal less damage, but allow for stealth kills, if you manage to kill them before they alarm the others. Various talents can help with this, including some that allow for a 2nd shot. Should you enter regular combat, you'll be switching to the loud and more damaging weapons, but you'll also have to align your characters so they have cover or high ground. All of these positions have a bonus and you can get real hurt if you plan it poorly.
The story is actually decent and gives insight on your mutant characters. This takes it a bit further in the DLC, which can be highly recommended as well. The attitude on the characters are somewhat witty, but also grim as they question their existence. The whole apocalyptic enviroment in the zones has a great charm to it and it's often worth your while exploring it for hidden loot.
Definitely a thumbs up if you'd like a more "simplified" XCOM genre with less RNG attached to it.
The only downside to the game is that some of the story wasn't really specified regarding a certain character.
Steam User 9
short but fun game. if you liked x-com this is a must play.
Steam User 8
Mutant Year Zero is a magnificient turn-based strategy game. I find it very interesting that it combines turn-based combat and free roam exploration into one package. The exploration stuff isn't anything special, but it is all right. The combat is extremely fun, often very challenging, survival is very rewarding, unfortunately later on the game becomes a bit too easy, but it was still a very enjoyable experience. The game is also special in its concept, the story isn't very big, you get very few cutscenes and there aren't many dialogues or notes, but overall it brings us a cool mystery which did made it all pretty exciting to play.
9/10
Steam User 7
I love the setup to this game. You're playing a cast of mutant animals/creatures prowling the post-irradiated Swedish "zone," venturing forth from the "Ark," humanities' last stronghold. It's like a mix of Redwall and STALKER. If you asked me to put together a game concept when I was a teenager, and I naturally injected what I thought was cool at the time, it would have been this.
I'm no tactical genius, but I found a great deal to like in Mutant's XCOM-lite formula. It's simple enough to understand and calculate, and streamlined enough to pull off smart manoeuvres without thinking too deeply about them. Each area is notably different to the last, some offering interesting positional challenges. I also enjoy the stealth mechanics - you can reduce the challenge of each larger battle by picking off stragglers around the map.
All in all, Mutant Year Zero is a solid strategy title and would make a decent-enough option for someone's first tactics game.