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PaperclipPerfector
3d ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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If anyone plays turn-based strategy games, MENACE went into early access last Thursday. If that is your genre, I do recommend, but with caveats.
While social media types have characterized it as a new XCOM-like, since it is sci-fi with aliens, it's really more like a tabletop wargame. Specifically, it uses a points-buy list-building format, where your company-scale force is built with every model and equipment costing points to field, as opposed to capping you to a maximum of X characters of most squad-scale tactics game. It also has an alternating-activation system more akin to chess as opposed to you-go-I-go turn order of moving all your pieces at once ala XCOM. Add in some of its own systems, and it's proving to be more of a (de)buff meta, as opposed to the XCOM alpha-strike meta that most XCOM-likes fall into. Plus, no overwatch, so no glacial-but-optimal defensive turtle crawl across the map.
Instead, MENACE uses a suppression system of heavy debuffs to suppressed unit actions and accuracy that promote a find-fix-flank-finish combat loop. This combines with the point-buy system because every weapon, manpower body, and even promotions increases the cost to field a unit. Every point you spend on fielding or upgrading one asset is a point that can't buy another capability or upgrade. Specialization is the cost-efficient name of the game, but over-specialization can make you brittle. It's a combination of systems that can be rough to learn or pick up, but a very high skill ceiling means that when you do, battles can transition from brutal grinds to practically dancing.
There are rogue-like progression elements to the system, meaning no two campaigns will be quite the same in terms of character recruitment, gear progression, or mission format. The game breaks missions into operations of 3-5 missions each, with more rogue-like progression for selecting between different rewards or modifiers for the mission. There is no tech/R&D/manufacturing system, but instead a barter-economy market where you trade in (RNG) salvaged enemy gear towards a (RNG) selection of items, with a rotating selection of offers that means you can't just save for good things that may not come. Since the gear system under point-buy means sidegrades are often preferrable to upgrades, you get get different sorts of tensions as its rarely 'what's best' but 'what is best for what,' which in turn depends on character builds and promotions.
All the same, the game is very clearly in early access, and not complete. This is normal for the developer, who did the cult-hit Battle Brothers which was in early access for a year. Here it means the story and character writing is only at the introductory level, there are clearly unfinished assets, and various balance aspects will doubtless be revisited. There is also the inevitable jank that comes from RNG maps and, meaning sometimes RNJesus will bless you and sometimes you will feel abandoned. It is still an excellent tactical combat system, but you can be forgiven for holding off.
Price-wise, MENACE will probably maintain a $40 base price. However, Steam has a 25% discount for the next week and a half, so $30 thru 19 Feb.
I do recommend, and if it seems like I'll be posting less for a while, well, yeah.
Got it as soon as it hit the store, because Battle Brothers is an eternal favorite of mine.
I knew I was going to be disappointed by the lack of open sandbox and the similar lack of procedurally generated characters. IMO those two are central to what kept Battle Brothers replayable. Alas, Overhype Studios felt the need to fix what wasn't broken (or at least to try something new), and what we get now is a campaign with limited shelf-life and scripted characters that, by and large, don't really contribute to the game. I'm sure they have plans for them that will make the change worth it. Or at least I hope so. Right now they're pretty bland. Some are outright annoying. Some are OK. Rewa is fun, and I conclusively ended my first and last campaign when she died in the line of duty (unnecessarily, due to sheer carelessness on my part) because my little tank berserker was the centerpiece of my team, and neither Greek LARPer nor stereotypical american alcoholic could fill the void left by the passing of the only entertaining character.
The fixed characters are a real problem in my opinion. With BB's proc-gen brothers, there was always room for buildcrafting, and trying to make the misshapen mongrels you got as recruits work nicely with your company. But in MENACE, the characters are utterly fixed, so the room for buildcrafting collapses into one or two meta builds per character, and that's it. Very sad. I really hope the devs have plans to shake this up, or else it's stale before it even leaves Early Access.
Other than that, I like it. The point-buy system is right up my alley. Trade-offs, trade-offs everywhere. And the enemy plays by the same rules (though with a bigger budget to compensate for the mediocre AI). The tactical combat is also pretty good. Moment-to-moment, it's engaging and nicely punishes dumb mistakes. It gets a little samey, but that's probably down to this being the minimum viable product they were willing to go into EA with. More content will help.
Having to march to an extraction zone after trashing the enemy is annoying busywork, though. I wish you could skip that.
The environments are a little drab IMO.
FWIW, I got it for 20€ because of the discount combined with the fact that I am a good little Hooded Horse consoomer and thus got an additional bundle discount (I already owned Battle Brothers, Heart Of The Machine and Xenonauts 2).
I don't intend to disagree about pre-defined characters in a characterization sense, but I find MENACE's mechanical build-sets far more flexible than BB's. BB was pretty much as fixed in meta terms once you started building for specific roles, which any meta-optimizer did. Even if you try to fit MENACE leaders into two each- and I think it's pretty clear/consistent that there is a big-squad route and a smaller squad route for most characters- that's still 2x [size of cast] variations to play with. Even if you insist on always every character-unique perk, there are certainly ways to justify your spread of the remainder on repeat games. And that's if you even have the same characters, given how the recruit new leaders system works.
I particularly think part of MENACE's build-composition flexibility is because of how the point-buy, promotion cost-scaling systems, and weariness systems work together to encourage you to take different, and worse/cheaper, units into the field. This is such a contrast to the XCOM-like model of hyper-scaling your best members repeatedly, with only a backup team as necessary, and it invites all sorts of compromises and adjustments in the process.
Like, don't get me wrong. I like my attack dog Rewa. But I learned to love Bog in his battle bus, and then make up for his poor accuracy by taking the sort of weapons that don't need accuracy. Or Ivory, who has a floor of 1/3rd hits, and can get a massive increase to lethality if she has a partner to designate targets (or self-designates).
Tradeoffs is a big thing I'm loving. One of my favorite dynamics of a point-buy system versus a traditional progression system is that there is an incentive to take worse weapons, just because they are cheaper. Trying to make those work, and finding the synergies that can, has been fun.
For example- there's a specific enemy in the [spoiler] faction that is notoriously tanky. Absurdly so. It typically takes a whole lot of concentrated fire to grind it down, and a lot of discussion focuses on late/end-game weapons to brute force it.
Unless... you find out that 25% in damage modifiers from any source can make one of the 'worst' anti-tank weapons one-shot each model. And now it's a challenge of who in the crew can pull that off.
Figuring out who can make the cheap-o options work is such a treat, and even if it will be a 'solved problem' at some point it can allow for a fair bit more build diversity beyond 'get the next tier of weapon.'
But I digress. (And hope you have enough fun.)
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