Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

I started playing this game just a few days ago, not fully knowing what to expect.
I just finished my first play through and all I can say is that I loved the whole experience, that is apart from a few little things that I am going to mention later.
I've played turn based video games since 90's and this one goes straight to being one of my new favorites. I
Some reviewers compare Mutant Year Zero to X-COM. I can agree with them but only when it comes to the tactical part. There are a lot of differences to X-COM, like there is no base building or research in MYZ.
It's mostly the combat that feels very similar to those new X-COM games, but rest of this game is quite different actually. I can't think of any other game that I have played which was just like Mutant Year Zero. I would describe it being a combination of adventure and tactics with heavy emphasis on stealth-based gameplay.
To me the concept of this game was like a fresh breeze within this genre. I am not usually one to enjoy stealth in video games, but somehow the developers succeeded making it interesting this time around. What's next, games with enjoyable protection missions?
Games these days are often too complicated for my tired brains. In MYZ there is certain kind of simplicity that I enjoyed. It's not simple in means of being repetitive or anything like that, but it was very easy to learn and get into. I really enjoyed the whole post apocalyptic setting and dark atmosphere and the story felt like it rolled forward just the right pace without making me feel myself bored or being in a hurry. At first I thought that the main characters were a little bit silly, but then I realized that it was the whole point. This is not a game to be taken too seriously.
I actually found a lot of the humor and dialogue in this game to be pretty funny and well written. Most of the characters had a lot of personality to them and voice acting was good.
I pretty much enjoyed MYZ's storytelling from the beginning to the end, even though the ending was somewhat predictable. You guys gave too much hints during the game :D
Level design, game balance (items/enemies/difficulty/progression etc), sounds, arts & graphics and the UI were all very well made and polished. To me the soundtrack was just mediocre, but that how it is with many games and videos these days. I can't remeber when was the last time I actually enjoyed listening to videogame music.
I wish gamedevelopers would dare to have some more melodic music in their games. I find this whole "let's have everything slow/fx/ambient/ and keep it in the background" thing to be kind of boring. It's a matter of taste of course.
I really appreciate some of the design choices the developers made with this game.
For example, there was no point where I felt like I had to do endless hours of grinding in order to get new gear that was just a little bit better. A lot of games are like that these days and I don't like it one bit. If games make you feel like you are going to work, something is clearly wrong with them. Games should be fun and relaxing and this is exactly what MYZ is: fun and enjoyable old school video gaming.
Every single chest and item in MYZ had clearly been designed and placed in there by a real human being, instead of some kind of random generator. During my travels in road to Eden, every single chest that I opened, or an item that I picked had actually a lot of value for me. Some games give you so much loot that it soon becomes a problem because the player might end up spending a lot of his precious time micromanaging the inventory. Some people might like that kind of thing and it's ok, but I am not one of them. Fewer items is not a bad thing.
Mutant Year Zero is definitely not a long game by any means. This is because a lot of the annoying stuff that is plaguing modern games is missing. The content in this game is not some copy paste filler stuff.
I am sure the developers could design the game in a way to make the player look for materials for 100+ hours, in their quest to get their ultimate armor and weapon set, but how much fun would that be? In MYZ I actually managed to get some of my best gear by sneaking past enemies, who would sure had kicked my butt if I was to encounter them.
There is certain feeling of achieving something when you have to use your brains to get the gear instead of just blindly killing everyone. Turn based combat sure feels very good in every wayin MYZ, but you often have to do some scouting and careful planning beforehand. It's also important to save often because things can go terribly wrong very fast, which kind of keeps the player in his toes and adds a lot of excitement even to some of the smaller battles.
What I most appreciate about Mutant Year Zero is that it's basically a new kind of gaming experience for me, which is not something that happens often these days. It sure felt a bit difficult at first, but once I got a third team member, better gear, more health and skills, things suddenly started getting a lot easier. This said, no matter how good items you have or how many levels you have, MYZ pretty much forces the you to think about how to reach your goal the most effecient way. Often using stealth and multiple skills must be used in combination of silenced weapons with correct mods is a requirement if you want to beat the enemy without resorting to using too many items. You do not have infinite grenades or medikits in this game.
I found MYZ to be very well balanced difficulty wise. It's AI sure surprised me multiple times and more than once I really struggled to survive. I learned quickly not to underestimate my enemies. I don't usually like stealth based games so it was definitely a positive surprise for me find myself enjoying stalking my prey, patiently waiting and finding the weak spots of the enemy. Getting rid of the enemies one by one sure felt rewarding because I always knew that the main battles would be much easier then. If you manage to get rid of any units that call more enemies or heal/resurrect their buddies, it's going to be so much easier to clear each area.
The negative things I have to mention about Mutant Year Zero are the following:
- Game crashed a few times during my 22h playtime. It's nothing I couldn't get over though.
- I also had some problems using my gamepad and because of this I was basically forced to go with the KBD + Mouse combo.
- Like many others here, I was also missing a simple quick save/load feature. I've gotten so used to having it on similar games.
- Movement of the mouse cursor felt too slow and clumsy to me. More options for this is needed.
- The store in the HQ does not let you sell anything as you can only buy from there. It would have been nice if the player was able to scrap or sell any of his surplus gear. You can scrap your weapons but that's it.
I don't post reviews very often. When I do it's for the games that are mostly unknown and really deserve to have people's attention (IMO of course). I will definitely travel that road to Eden again, and it's for this that Mutant Year Zero deserves my warm recommendation.

Mutant Year Zero is a tactical RPG in the style of Wasteland 2 -- similar environments, similar developments, similar tactics. Yet the game has a unique flavor of its own. You control three out of five characters which are all a little weird. Each character has their own abilities, and has their uses in the game. The game is full of tactical fights, many of which take a lot of thinking and planning to live through. Some of these fights are incredibly challenging, and definitely worthwhile to beat. The graphics are pretty good, with fantastic atmospheric lighting.
While I thought the game was entertaining, it misses being excellent by a wide mark. The game has a great many flaws. The ones that struck me the most are the following:
- The game really requires you to invest into stealth. If you do not pick off enemies using silenced weapons, you most likely will alert all enemies on the whole map simultaneously, which means that you will have to face off against a dozen or so enemies who all are stronger than you and have more health than you. You will die.
- If you make the mistake of NOT investing into stealth (upgrading your silent weapons, selecting mutant abilities which support stealth, etcetera), then you are more than likely to bring the game to a state in which it is pretty much impossible to win. There are no "resets" in this game.
- Since you are so reliant on the use of stealth, it does not make sense that if you use a skill which, for instance, disables an enemy for a turn so that he cannot raise an alarm, that the skill fails 25% of the time by design, and there is no way that you can decrease that failure rate. With a single failure meaning that the entire map will attack you, this means that you will die 25% of the time that you try to execute a solid plan. The game has been compared to XCOM, but in XCOM you almost always can have backup plans and backup-backup plans -- with only three characters to control in this game, that means that backup plans are usually out of the question.
- There are many counter-intuitive mechanisms in the game. Enemies do not see you if you are officially "in hiding," even if you are in the middle of their path and they cannot get around you. Enemies do not see another enemy being killed, even if they are 5 meters away and staring at the spot in which the kill takes place. If you make a giant robot explode, enemies standing right next to it do not hear it as long as you started the explosion with a silent weapon. And I can go on.
- There are very few different types of enemies. Higher levels of enemies are the same as the lower-level ones, except with more health, more armor, and doing more damage.
- The characters in the game could be a lot more fun than they are. If you have a giant duck and a giant pig in your game, why is their banter limited to fairly mundane commenting on the environment? It seems like a missed chance.
- I am also missing some backstory and characterization for the characters. What makes the giant duck special? Well, that he is a giant duck. That's it.
- Since the game seems to be designed for use with a controller (the eternal console-dumb-down, even though there will be few console-players who this game will appeal to), you are constantly switching skills because the game only allows you to have three "active." Moreover, movement is controlled by cursor keys rather than clicking on the map, and in combat mode you have a different way of controlling the camera than outside combat mode. It just does not work well.
- You can save anywhere but there is no quicksave. Probably another remnant of the console-dumb-down.
- Since each character has their own uses, you are regularly switching characters (which fortunately you can do any time that you are not in combat). But since you will have only good items (guns, armor, helmet, grenades) for three characters, every time you switch characters you are juggling all the items that they are carrying. That's a tedious time-waster. In the end, I mainly used the guy, the pig, and the duck, switching the guy for the fox when I was facing robots. The gal I did not use at all (apart from the period of time that there were only three characters available), as she is the weakest character all around.
- Quality of voice acting varies. The giant pig has excellent voice acting, but the duck sounds like Beavis & Butthead, and the giant fox is voiced by someone who is trying out a lower-class English accent and fails miserably -- it's dripping with cringe.
- The story, such as it is, is bog-standard and does not have any surprises in store. It just takes you on a railroad with a few sidetracks to a conclusion which anyone who plays this game has seen coming from the other end of the map. That the game is open-ended is adding insult to injury.
Still, despite these flaws, I liked it a lot. Why? Because this type of game playing (being stealthy, setting up ambushes, considering tactical options) is the kind of playing that I love. That's the thing: if you like this specific stuff, you will like the game. If you do not like this stuff, then go somewhere else because it is the only way that you CAN enjoy this game. It may SEEM from the outset that you have more options, pragmatically speaking they are not there.
So I recommend this game to people who like stealthy turn-based tactical games. Everyone else should avoid it.

Essentially, M.Y.Z. is a turn based strategy game - and a very good one.
The player follows a storyline on a future world devastaded by a virus. There you investigate the rumours of an Eden, completing missions as you explore (and discover) the locations on a map.
The locations seem brilliantly designed and detailed, and sometimes I just regret the lack of being able to freely control the camera and zoom. Most of the locations are quite dark and the player has only a flashlight that gives you just a bit more sight.
Also, there's no map for the locations - you do have a compass, and pressing Q ingame can point you to the location's exits. Still, it can become a bit confusing at times.
Unlike XCOM, on M.Y.Z. you command a few mutants, and each has his own skills. Some skills are common to some of the mutants, but some are unique. Throughout the game you pickup some armour and weapons. Those weapons can be slightly improved, and sometimes that's just enough to make a big difference during a fight.The game holds its own on the strategy genre, and manages to keep itself away from XCOM, with a gameplay that benefits a lot from stealth and the well timed use of the mutants special skills. It takes just a bit to get started, but once you get the mechanics, it's quite good and rewarding.
The shot percentage system is very enjoyable. The percentages to hit scale on 25% intervals, so 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100.
Most of the times if you get a 75% chance to hit, you do hit the shot. It's also assuring to get a 100% chance to hit, because unlike XCOM, I didn't find one single time where my mutans stood next to and enemy and missed the shot.
Overall, I think the game is quite well balanced and lots of fun. It lacks the replayability of XCOM, because the levels are not randomly generated. This makes the game's life dependant of future DLCs. That said, the already released Seed of Evil DLC was also quite fun to play and I eagerly away for the future adventures that may come.
Mutant Year Zero is great game, and it's an easy recommendation to any player that likes strategy games.

I'd recommend buying this game on sale. The world is relatively small and you can find everything fairly easily. Combat is simple and somewhat rewarding but there isn't too much variation in enemies and the world lacked a satisfying amount of depth.

Welll, I like it. I´m an old guy and I must say that I´m not used to this kind of games, but in order to be fare I enjoyed pretty much. At the begining everything is a little confuse, but as soon as you understand how the game works it becomes a jewel. For those who have never tried this type of game I belive this is a MUST. Not to hard, not to easy either, just give it a chance, it will be worthy. Sorry about my english as it is not my native language. I wish you all the same good times that I spent playing this beauty.

My only complaint about this game is that if you die, you have to start over. When you start over, literally everything is the same. This game would benefit HUGELY from even a tiny amount of randomness on missions, spawns, etc.

Mutant Year Zero:Road to Eden tells the story of a few handful mutants and humans who survived in a post-apocalyptic world and found a haven of peace in the Ark.
+ Pros
- Cons
Atmosphere
Character design
Exploration
Few bugs
Progression feels rough

7.5/10

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Gameplay, Design, Atmosphere
The plot, while simple and slightly predictable should keep you busy for a dozen hours. The atmosphere and ambiance are well made. You can tell the artistic direction made a game they cared about.
You will be exploring the Zone, scavenge and collect materials to make equipment (read buy), find artefacts and piece together some more lore through exploration. While not entirely necessary, doing so will make your characters stronger and better equipped for what is to come.
Something that was welcomed and refreshing for most of the early phase of the game (to me at least) was the possibility to sneak-in, use stealth tactics and attack isolated enemies with silent weapons. This was interesting, but I found that the silent weapons had a hard time scaling into the late game and made that specific aspect of the game less useful. Though, you will want to try to use this tactic as much as you can. Word of advice: never underestimate your opponents. They trade heavily with you and I had a particularly hard time healing my squad.
Inspired by XCOM, your positioning will be key, your strategies will be even more. Use covers to mitigate damage, destroy part of the maps, walls, floors to make people fall and inflict more damage, you will be able to use your environment to your liking. Unlike XCOM, I felt that the % indicator to hit your target feels like a 90% 😉. I did die quite a few times due to bugs or wrong key input. For instance, you can press space to skip enemies turn, space will also make your character walk. Expect some moments like this.
Overall, the game is good. I had a lot of fun playing it and really enjoyed the atmosphere. I recommend buying it if all the above fits in well with you and if you are looking for a little game that will keep you busy for a few dozen hours. While there is some replay ability to it, I didn’t find the motivation to immediately do a second run.
I would recommend getting the game during a sale.