Satellite Reign

Are you ancient enough to remember syndicate & syndicate wars?
good. welcome back.

Satellite Reign - a game about your own personal group of spies and infiltrators which celebrates the absolute best stealth device for the quiet, smooth undercover agent:
The humble frag grenade.
Forget all those fancy laser and plasma weapons, or the shiny augments for your agents. You don't need a gun or better legs and arms. All you need is a big bag of frag grenades and the job gets done:
- Guards blocking your way into the restricted compound? -> Use a nade.
- An assassination target is heavily guarded? -> Nade them and their entourage.
- A gate needs a terminal to be hacked in order to be opened? -> Send your hacker. With a nade.
- Need to know just how many guards there are? -> Throw a nade and find out.
- Surveillance cameras are preventing you from moving freely? -> Toss a nade on their power generator.
- Some awkwardly placed chest high walls block your attack route? -> Nade yourself an easier level design.
- A guard has spotted you and is calling reinforcements? -> Swap their cellphone with a nade.
- The target building is guarded by automated turrets? -> Nades.
- The target building is guarded by a huge, scary sci-fi tank? -> More nades.
- The target building is sending more and more reinforcements to investigate all the strange explosions happening? -> Even more nades.
There ain't a problem in the game the frag grenade can not solve. And once the smoke clears, you simply walk in, do your job, and walk out. Super quiet. Like a real stealth agent.
-> Absolutely smooth <-
The frag grenade is so good it even replaces all the other fun grenades and explosives in the game:
The EMP grenade should in theory do decent damage to robots and drones, while also stun anyone with electronic upgrades. In reality though, the damage it does is laughable, as it can barely hurt even the weakest
drones, and the stun effect is super short.
So why even bother with slightly inconveniencing your electronic targets when you could also truly inconvenience them with a big fireball and shrapnel?
The sound emitting grenade is a distraction device. It is basically an egg timer you can throw. And sure, it does its job: You can do your thing while the guards go investigate the strange ticking sound. But you know what makes for an even better distraction for the guards? A frag grenade that sends them twenty feet in the air and wakes up the whole neighborhood. Now THAT is a real nuisance, I can tell you. Guards hate it.
The sound preventing grenade creates a bubble that prevents any sound made from within the bubble to be heard outside the bubble. So it is a grenade that does... uhh.. nothing on its own. Nothing at all.
Now you would think that sound prevention and frag grenades make a pretty good combination, and you are right, they do - If you hate fun that is. Do you hate fun?
True frag grenade enthusiasts would never remove the glorious boom from the best stealth device in the game. If the enemy can not hear your quiet infiltration from twenty miles away, you are clearly doing it wrong.
The rocket launcher: In theory pretty good, it shoots explosions at people from far away. In practice, though, your agents simply can't use those things at all. They like to point them at their own feet and thus rather achieve orbit with them than actually hitting their target.
Also they do less damage than the frag grenade, so eeeh.
And finally, the satchel charges. You place them down, you run away, you activate the remote detonator, and then they explode. Pretty cool, pretty cool.
Now if only we could make an explosive device that does not need to be placed down on the target first and instead could simply be thrown from far away... - wouldn't that be much easier and much more convenient?
Why yes. Yes it would.
In conclusion:
My frag grenades bring all the guards to the yard and they're like "please make it stop" - I could sneak in, but I'm having a laugh.

Needs a sequel

This is the spiritual sequel to Syndicate and Syndicate Wars, two fantastic Bullfrog Productions games from the 90's. These games dove headfirst into the idea of controlling cyborg agents in a futuristic cyberpunk city, free to roam and pick off targets (both people and locations) as you wish while using fun and interesting weapons, gadgets and body augments. This was designed by some of the same people behind those games, so it feels true to that original vision and you can tell it was a passion project.
It's a game that takes some planning and thought, and will reward you for having the right equipment and a good way in and out of your target. That being said, there's plenty of fun to be had when your plans go awry and you're thrust into the middle of a firefight, scrambling to find cover and figure out a new escape route as you're steadily becoming overwhelmed by enemies.
The atmosphere in this game is amazing, and stays consistent throughout the 4 main city areas you steadily progress through. The music is great, with some lovely ambient tracks for when you're moving through the city's open areas, and also some solid synthwave tracks for when combat begins.
There are some rough edges here and there, mostly to do with AI pathfinding occasionally getting stuck on objects (which can usually be fixed by blowing up said objects). The UI is a bit clunky when it comes to selecting which ability you want to use. There are hotkeys for each one regardless of the agent using it, which does help once you've played for a while and get to know them.
I think a lot of the complaints about the game come from people not understanding just how important the different abilities are that you can unlock. True, there's no pause mode or speed control available from the start, but your support character gets an ability that slows time, and this works well as a panic button to give you a moment to figure out what you want to do next without being shredded to pieces by gunfire.
The Hacker's Hijack ability is also crucial to the game's progression, because it's not just how you're able to upgrade the clone bodies you use for each of your agents... it's also how you can accumulate your own little army of soldiers and units to roll on through the tougher areas (and get through locked doors quickly and easily).
There are also plenty of ways to tackle each objective/location, so you almost always have more than one option and won't ever run into a "this sucks because I'm not equipped for it" situation.
Unfortunately, the devs closed up shop sometime after the release, so we're unlikely to ever see anything more from them (a sequel to this could have been amazing), but nonetheless, I recommend anyone who enjoys somewhat slower-paced action to give it a try. It's even got co-op play where you each take control of one or more agents, which I haven't tried but seems like an intriguing way to play a game like this.

+
Absolutely awesome game.
Possibly the best hero-based RTS game ever.
Great cyberpunk world.
Every class is very special and every skill and weapon is great.
Great open-world with a lot of freedom.
-
Awful pathfinding that gets you killed/detected all the time.
Basically no story. (full sandbox until final boss fight)
Combat is chaotic without Team Stims (Slows down time)
Certain higher tier enemies are bullet sponges.
Characters are sometimes getting stuck in terrain.

Underated game

A heck of a trip, one of the BEST stealth games I've ever played. I've just finished it at the 73h mark (don't believe the site howlongtobeat, they lie). I usually do long reviews of the games I play, but not in the mood today. Suffice to say that this game is unique, there's no other like this, and even the original Syndicates never felt as good, as polished, as balanced, even. And with such gorgeous graphics... This game is comparable to Ascent but being a tactical game, it's much more challenging. You need to use your wits to progress, and it feels really satisfying to succeed or even recover from a minor mistake when you're spotted or something. The world is convincing and feels alive. I have to say that I didn't appreciate that much the sad ending, but I understand the developers -- however it makes a sequel much more difficult to justify.
Maybe I edit this review and add more later? But again, the important thing is that this game is very fun, challenging and graphically appeasing, and it's unique on its gameplay, there are no others like this one. If you like stealth games and isometric-3D action RPGs, this is for you!