Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance

This game is a mix of wargame, xcom and lemmings.
Only reason I purchased TDF was Slitherines track record of unique strategy games.
Superficially, it appears to be a pause/play tactical meta. 50 hours in, I was not wrong but it is certainly a unique one.


Its a wargame because tactical micromanagement is critical to success. Strategy depends on you refining your divisions equipment and staffing.
You need to manage manpower and logistics units to reinforce, resupply and travel between sites.
Angle your tanks to front face the enemy. Consider armor ratings of buildings and ensure your troops are facing the correct way to ensure you don't miss the first shot.
Despite the many reviews citing difficulty - I did not find the campaign difficult - but it does punish mistakes.
Infantry trying to creep past a blind corner? Be prepared for a plasma MG to microwave your troops. Attend to this with recon, stealth and a prudent mix of antivehicle capability.
Trying to roll around with a mechanised blob? Urban terrain will digest you whole, with arty to finish whats left.
Ran out of fuel? Unless you have a flank defensive position to protect your fuel/supply trucks, be prepared to walk home.

It's an xcom-esque game - because units matter.
If you want your rangers to have firepower, EMP or scouting capability? Make sure they survive and upgrade them. If they die, start again with a new squad.
If you want to survive against air units - invest in ATGM's, upgrade and protect them.
Want to drive tanks? Protect your driving units, and upgrade technicians to drive tanks and don't let them die.
Vehicle upgrades are at the core of this game. Whether its strapping pinetrees to your semi-trailers, or retrofitting terminator tech to your Humvee.
The meta is to protect your high value units, and use them decisively.
You can lose this game if you run out of appropriately upgraded units and vehicles.

It's a lemmings game, because the variety of enemy units come in waves - as do your re-inforcements. Locking down your supply and reinforcement routes are a key part of this game. The enemy just keeps on coming. Don't waste time.

If you don't like micro, dont bother with this game.
If you are keen for a wargame with X-com character dynamics and a deep vehicle mechanics unique to TDF - this game is a unique approach to a classic genre.

While this is one of my favorite RTSs of all time, I understand why people don’t like it.
This game is hard to the point where it is borderline unfair. You will be expected to achieve k/d ratios where you will kill between ten to thirty units for each loss you take. And this is not a game where you can micro your way to victory. Your infantry squads are comprised of soldiers with individual health bars, and if one of those bars drop to zero and that entire squads combat effectiveness is decreased until the end of the mission. Similarly, your vehicles have armor and each hit they take will strip some of that away, permanently decreasing their health pool.
There is no base building. Instead, your army consists of whatever you managed to keep/salvage from previous missions and whatever you can afford to buy with the rewards you get from completing missions. However each unit has an upkeep cost, so you are forced to keep your army fairly small. Do you want to keep your tank, or do you want 80 men with semi auto rifles?
This means that what units you will be able to field for any given mission is entirely up to what you managed to keep alive and what you decided to keep. Instead of devising some optimal strategy, this game forces you to think tactically, constantly changing your strategy to account for ever changing battlefield conditions.
And this is where the game in my opinion shines. There is a good chance you will need to replay a mission several times (or save scum), but few games have made me feel the way I do after I beat a mission while keeping (almost) everyone alive.
Now for the bad. The AI and pathfinding in this game are not great. You will frequently give your units orders to relocate only to get a notification that they got wiped out because they decided to run in front of a tank with a 30mm rotary cannon instead of going on the other side of the building like you thought they would. There is also a lot of randomness which can result in a vastly superior force getting wiped out because they whiffed all their shots. Feels amazing when it happens to the enemy, not so good when it happens to you. And then there is the aforementioned difficulty. You will always be on the backfoot, and the game will punish you if your troops are out of position.
And of course there is New Tortuga, which is perhaps the dumbest mission ever. For some reason the developers thought making your units fight without letting you control them was a good idea. This is one you will want to look up a guide and save scum for because after the initial ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this becomes a rather interesting fight.
Some additional notes, this game doesn’t let you just choose your units, but also customize them. There are a few flat upgrades like an ATGM launcher for the Bradley or an active protection system for the Abrams, but most of them are tradeoffs. You can put heavier armor on your vehicles, but they will be slower and handle worse off road. You can upgrade their engine making them faster, but that also increases the cost. Do you want your Humvee to have a 50 cal machine gun, a 7.62 minigun with decreased range but higher rate of fire, a plasma machine gun that does more damage but no penetration, a 40mm grenade launcher that can shoot over cover, a recoilless rifle that deals splash damage and can oneshot light armor, a plasma launcher that can kill medium armor but wont attack infantry, or a anti tank guided missile that can seriously hurt even the heaviest armor (and can even one shot from the rear) but is costly with limited ammo and has a decent chance of missing if the target is moving or if there is smoke. And those are just the options for the light vehicle weapon mount. There are still the medium and heavy vehicle weapon mounts as well as choices for rifles, lmgs, sniper rifles, and shotguns.
Oh, and yes, weapons have limited amounts of ammo that you will need to resupply. Artillery is powerful, but will quickly become useless if you don’t have an ammo truck to keep them topped up. Your vehicles also technically have fuel, but that is rarely an issue.
Your units also level up granting them better stats and letting you pick perks depending on their class.
The main campaign also features RPG like choices, both in and out of combat, which is something I have never seen in any other RTS. And these choices have consequences that you will feel throughout the entire game. A choice that you make in the very first mission can change the outcome of the last one.
The game is also fully (and rather well) voice acted.
Overall I would strongly recommend checking this game out, but understand what you are getting is a very different beast to your standard RTS fare.

i never thought id see a terminator game where time travel is actually a gameplay mechanic (save scumming)

Terminator Dark Fate Defiance is a surprisingly strong entry in the real-time tactics space. It rewards smart positioning, use of cover, and flanking, making each encounter feel meaningful and earned. The game doesn’t let you win with sheer numbers; you need to outthink the enemy. Terrain and line of sight actually matter here, which adds a welcome layer of depth to every engagement. Resource and unit management are handled well, keeping the pressure on without becoming frustrating. The suppression and morale systems are a great touch, shifting the tide of battle based on how effectively you control the battlefield. Enemy AI reacts intelligently, forcing you to stay sharp and adapt your tactics on the fly. Missions are well designed, often presenting multiple ways to approach an objective depending on your playstyle. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, which helps keep the focus on strategy rather than micromanagement. Overall, it’s a rewarding experience for anyone who enjoys thoughtful, grounded tactical combat.

As much as I enjoy the setting of killing clankers as military remnants and the post-apocalypse flavoured resistance stuff, the primary thing I enjoy about this game is the realism - it's not absolute realism, but I can't think of any other RTS where a sniper is anything more than anti infantry, whereas in DFD a .50 Barret can actually threaten light and medium armour, there is a notable difference between the standard 25mm and 20mm rotary for the Bradley and light turret in what they can actually damage, where other games would just be a dps difference at the cost of per hit damage.
Angle, armour, elevation, ammunition, it all matters.
Aside from Ceramic/Cage armour I think every 'upgrade' or better thought of as a side grade which is nice, no strict 'meta' loadouts so-to-speak - by the end of both the standard campaign and the new Uprising campaign, I don't think any two of my units were identical.

This game is so good, I bought it, decided to try tutorial, and then forgot to pee for 6 hours.
Updated: After completing the main game and playing the DLC, I would use the word "genius" to describe this game. There are so many things it does superbly.
One of my favorite things about COH: 1 was destructible environments. This game takes it to the next level - terrain blocks line of sight, blocks shots, but can be destroyed. Shots have a real trajectory and do not stop at some magical cutoff marker - they just keep flying and can hit things far behind the aiming distance. To give you an example: A 30mm heavy cannon is engaging an infantry squad in a building - it will shoot many rounds at that building, blow off the walls, but some shots will miss, pass through the buildings and may hit a logi truck that is way back and is considered "safe". Is your soft technical under artillery fire? Park it under a tall building and see arty hit the building.
The realistic trajectory makes controlling the line of sight important, but in dense environments you may just force fire to open up new lines of sight, by blowing up environmental objects.
Just like COH, this game is heavily focused on keeping your infantry in cover, and fighting to dislodge enemy infantry from cover. Here the "genius" parts come in - you can order your troop transports to assault a building with a Z shortcut - the transport will move up to an entrance, drop off infantry, that may engage enemy in hand to hand inside the building. Did I mention that all buildings actually have stairs? So to get to a roof, a unit inside a building walks up or down the stairs.
Every building has directional entrances, for example to enter a junk wall in one mission you have to be inside a compound it is protecting - you cant just get in from the outside. Some of the larger buildings complexes have these entrances connected - can move between buildings without going on the street.
The vehicle/crew combat is superb - reminds me of fighting over a panzer wreck in COH1, except here it's every vehicle can be decrewed, and then repaired and re-crewed. Sometimes by a different squad. The realistic damage model is satisfying. An ATGM kills most everything and sets other things on fire, making crew bail out. But then the damaged and beat up (enemy) crew can linger around, get back in their vehicle once "fire" burns out, repair it from scratch and get it back in a fight. So it's your choice whether to kill the wreck or try to save it to evac it at the end of the mission.
Vehicles have different components that can get critically hit, they can get out of fuel. There are abandoned vehicles in missions that need to be refueled to be used.
The list of things I like just keeps going on. The engagement distances are very long, in some cases like ATGM, longer than a screen can show, which reminds me of "Wargame: European Escalation" - spot with a camoflaged unit, shoot targets with ATGM or artillery from far back. Find high value targets and take them out in innovative ways. The Dark Fate game clearly borrowed heavily from Wargame. Managing ammo, running out of ammo, resupplying - these are interesting concepts that add up tactical layers.
The learning curve is there, and missions essentially act as an extended tutorial. For example there is a mission that teaches you how to use mines and C4. Units travel faster on roads, and use them for pathing - mine the roads and enjoy hearing "booms" in a fog of war. See that ATGM flying at you? Press F1 and pray the smoke will hit fast enough. This learning curve is not super complicated, but satisfying.
Units have upgrades, like smoke grenades, common and exotic armor and they persist between missions. Lose a vehicle and upgrades are gone - you can replace a humvee, but not the exotic armor you acquired in one of the missions. Same with infantry upgrades.
Reading game guides suggests they get more health and faster rate of fire and more damage, so losing a veteran level 5 unit is painful, and you will be trying to preserve the last remaining man in many squads. Managing somehing like 64 infantry squads in late game can get difficult, and it took me 20 minutes and multiple saves to figure out "who drives what" and in which sequence ( your early force that enters the map is super important).
The atmosphere of the game is superb - imagine driving a bulldozer, towing a combat trailer (bunker), with 3 independently firing guns, through a bombed out ruined city blocks. Every one of those 3 guns picks their own targets - this is not something I've never seen implemented so well, even in COH. The unit upgrades mean that I'm thinking of which 3 weapons to equip on this killdozer, and what targets it will be useful against. Then, in combat, this dozer will get shot at, some crew members will be killed, and it may lose say the ability to fire the hatch weapon. I can choose to close the hatch to preserve the remaining crew, or let it rip. Here picking between a 3 person squad with vehicle upgrade skills or a beefy 5 person squad that will stay in combat longer is a real choice.
Finally, the mission design - again, genius. These are not your typical RTS cookie cutter maps. Every map is unique, from grid-based US midwest to dense industrial areas to open farmlands, with many natural obstacles that split the map into smaller zones that can be controlled. For example vehicles cant cross foot bridges or hillside paths, and noticing some of them can win you a mission.
The way battles unfold in single player is satisfying, from a token avanguard, you deploy more units as you complete objectives and the battles evolve along the line of sight and those micro-map sectors. Sometimes game throws you curve balls, and this is where vision becomes important. Keeping snipers in "do not fire" mode, just to watch from some building to spot an enemy flanking.
Music is great, I cant even name the genre, but it's fitting as I'm struggling to give orders with tactical pause to "many more units that I ever controlled in COH. The units are voiced, the map events, such as rescuing a unit are voiced, and this is done well, in that "America strong", 1980s Abrams and Bradleys and A10s dominating vibe.
I enjoyed the game immensely, stayed up much later than usual, this is the RTS that I've been waiting for since COH 1.

Recommended (with caveats)
I have a serious love/hate relationship with Terminator: Dark Fate Defiance. You can tell the developers didn’t have the resources they needed, but honestly, with what they did have, they’ve made a really promising game. There’s a strong foundation here. The core systems work, the atmosphere is great, and the game has a ton of potential. Despite its issues, I do recommend it, especially if you enjoy tactical RTS or wargame-style experiences. Just be aware that it still needs polish.
Main Issues (What you should know before you buy)
Optimization needs work.
Expect to have your frames drop to the lower 30s during battles and while roaming on the maps. The final mission was a nightmare to play on.
Pathfinding & responsiveness.
Units can and will get stuck the most inconvenient piece of rubble it can find. If playing on a higher difficulty, expect to lose your lovely Bradleys and M1 Abrams due to pathfinding shenangians. In a game like this, this issue will require a lot of save scumming. Which can lead to long mission times, and this is not great for people with real world commitments.
Loading & stability.
There are still moments where the game hangs between missions or during loading screens. This is incredibly frustrating, please fix.
DLCs
We Are Legion:
The Legion DLC is awesome. Playing as the machines is a fantastic change of pace. Going from fragile humans to unstoppable chrome death machines is an incredible experience. The campaign introduces new mechanics that really sell the idea that the machines are everywhere and overwhelming. It’s a bit short, but overall, absolutely worth playing.
Uprising:
The Uprising DLC is a mixed bag. It introduces a Conquest-style mode that should have added a ton of longevity. It provides a sandbox experience where you take territory and manage your army. The idea is great, and there’s real potential here. However, there are some frustrating design choices. You’re locked to playing as the Founders/Movement, which is a huge missed opportunity. The Cartel, Integrators, and Legion are all really fun factions, and not being able to play with your toys is a big letdown. It also feels like this could have been a free update rather than paid DLC. Personally, I think the resources might have been better spent on a story-driven expansion that feeds into this kind of sandbox mode.
Final Thoughts
This game is so close to being something special. There are genuinely great systems, strong faction design, and a really compelling foundation here. When everything clicks, it’s a fantastic experience. If the developers can continue to improve optimization, pathfinding, and overall polish, this can easily become a great game.
For now, I recommend it with the understanding that you’re buying into a game with huge potential that isn’t fully realized yet. Also I highly recommend you play on normal for your first experience so you do not ALT F 4 your PC and wake up your poor family because you are screaming at your toaster.