Satellite Reign

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

Short: This is a good game, especially after the last/final update. If you like the cyberpunk aesthetic and a mix of RTS and puzzle/strategy games like Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, then chances are you'll enjoy this game. I've played this game through twice and I enjoyed it even more on my second run! I will certainly keep it in my library to play again.
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Long: I understand why many people were angry at the developers and the end result of this game. It is most certainly NOT a spiritual successor to Syndicate & Syndicate Wars. Only barely is it like those legendary games at all. There's no global map, no corp vs corp world domination stuff, no cities/populations to manage, and the tone/feel of Satellite Reign is not at all like the Syndicate games. It's a different experience entirely, and if you're wanting a game that plays like Syndicate & Syndicate Wars, then sadly this not what you hoped for.
That being said, I think this is a great game on its own merit. I like games that require me to use a party of mixed capabilities to overcome obstacles, outwit enemies, and solve puzzles with a mix of timing, equipment, and chaining together the abilities of different party members. This game is basically nothing but that kind of game play in an endless loop, with very little else.
For me, that's excellent. I'm able to hop in and immediately get into stuff, where ever I want in the city. I don't have to follow a set path, I can build my agents almost however I want since other than a few skills each agent can equip/do basically everything, and best of all outside of a few things from the story missions, I can replay all the sites/missions as much as I want. I don't like playing RTS/strat/puzzle games that bog down the experience with dialogue, story, and unskippable stuff. This game is light on that kind of thing, and I believe that works in its favor.
This game has good sound design, above average music, a decent UI/input with some customization options (at least for mouse and keyboard on Windows), and a nicely paced progression of upgrades, equipment, and skills. Could it be better? yes of course, and I would like to see more zones, some fixes to AI, and some tweaks to the numbers, but overall it's still a B or B+ in it's current (and probably final) condition.

Juicy Tips:
Purchase the Soldier's grenade skill ASAP. They're expensive early on but anyone can use grenades, ammunition is plentiful, and they destroy cover.
Focus on maxing out hacking and hardwiring early. It can be done before leaving downtown and lets you access every area.
First thing you should do in a new area is unlock the relay stations. They're your fast travel and respawn points.
Send everyone to infiltrate buildings, you'll get extra money or unique items depending on the mission. The description for banks makes it seem you have to choose but no, you can get the soldier bonus and hacker bonus.
Banks replenish money. I don't know what kind of timer it's on, probably less than 30 minutes real time, but revisit them every so often.
Finding researchers is a matter of chilling in a populated area with the world scanner turned on. Eventually you'll bump into a yellow NPC who can be bribed.
Perfect stealth is really difficult. There's no effective way to instantly kill enemies from afar. The key is to keep moving and not get cornered. Don't get into prolonged firefights. Kill enemies with "!" above their head before they raise the alarm. Try to divert enemy attention so they don't all flank your team. One trick is to have someone snipe cameras and retreat before the patrol comes. You can also hijack people or drones and send them running through a compound luring guards away.
The infiltrator's sword skill is amazing for stealth. Enemies usually patrol in groups and this ability instantly closes the distance with your target, putting you in range to kill nearby enemies.
Don't waste time building up a clone army from civilians. At level 2 hijack you can take over the simplest guards and they're basically three times better than civilians.
If you see an enemy calling for reinforcements, you can move one of your operatives close to him and then attack. The operative will kick the enemy before shooting, cancelling the reinforcement call.
You can also instantly interrupt a call for reinforcements with the hijack ability.
Team Stims on your Support is your "Pause and give orders" button. Upgrade it fast.
Hardwire is barely used and can be worked around with either explosives (or just lots of shooting), taking an alternate path, or forcing the skill with low probability and running away when someone comes to investigate if you fail. Remote explosives can be great for this if you have them.
Similarly, hacking is nowhere near as important as you might think. It's more commonly needed than hardwire and explosives don't often work as a replacement, but you can still brute-force with low skill. Although there's like two level 5 terminals in the first district, neither offers anything worth rushing hacking 5 for and you can come back later. Settle for 2-3 points in hacking and go grab lower level banking terminals in another district instead.
It's MUCH more important to rush hijack than hacking. Higher levels of hijack give you more goons, and lets you pick up higher level ones for more points (e.g. the aforementioned light soldier worth two civilians). Interrupting the highest level enemies can be hugely beneficial, even if you don't manage to complete the hijack. Higher level hijacks also give you clones with massive stat boosts. +70 energy on your infiltrator can let them stealth through even the biggest plazas.
Silencers do work and it's absolutely worth everyone having at least one silenced weapon. They greatly reduce the sound radius of the shots, drawing less attention, but don't seem to do jack about the giant laser beam or plasma gout coming out of your gun. Giving your infiltrator a silenced ballistic rifle weapon will let you snipe people once they have enough of the damage skills. A 'silenced' plasma smg not so much.
Cameras DO respawn. I think it takes about 30-60 minutes. By all means have a hijacked soldier run through a base shooting out cameras before you make your real run, just don't dawdle excessively. This is mostly noticeable for compounds you revisit for several diffferent runs. If you zone or load the game they also instantly respawn.
Civilian armies are great for setting off firefights on the other side of a base and drawing off patrols that might be approaching your guys, especially early on. Just be aware that they probably don't have clearance to be there and will probably be shot at even if they're not doing anything suspicious. Once you've got higher levels of hijack guards do work better, but three 5 second distractions is usually better than a single 10 second distraction.
Hijacks who haven't made themselves obvious to the opposition can also open doors for you without you having to hack/hardwire/explode them. Just have them stand in the middle of the thing whilst your team files through.
Put cloaking generators on your three non-infiltrators, and a remote hacking tool on your infiltrator. They'll help out a lot once you have the spare slots and cash available and actually let you keep your team together for stealth runs. Mobilty and option cybernetics (vents/jumping/etc) are also really good. As you say, you can't really rely on stealth without full mobility options or cloaking generators, some areas are just too open.
thanks

+
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.
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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.

Love this. Reminds me of Syndicate that I played when I was a kid at the end of the 90's.

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.

great the closest you get to clasic syndicate bullfrog