Into the Breach
From the makers of FTL, Into the Breach delivers decent tactical play packaged with a system of unlocks intended to enhance replayability. For me, this was an obvious purchase. I loved FTL and generally like turn-based tactical combat.Tactical Combat
Combat is the focus of Into the Breach and other systems are secondary. The game has been designed to provide a fun tactical experience. While there are other fun decisions to make, they represent a vast minority of gameplay.
The tactical rules are fun. While they aren't especially innovative, they aren't stale either. Every turn is like a puzzle which you must solve by spending the fewest resources. One type of resource is ammo and health. These are replenished after each missions so can be used liberally. Another resource is pilots. If the health of a mech is reduced to zero, the pilot is lost. The mech will be available in future missions, but will not have any pilot bonus. The other resource is grid power. As the enemy destroys buildings, it reduced the amount of power you have available. This is a sort of campaign hit points. If you run out, your current campaign is lost.
Unlocks
Although combat is fairly simple, there are many different types of weapons, pilots, and mech loadouts which can be unlocked.
Different loadouts give each campaign a different feel. This keeps the game fresh after multiple playthroughs. They are unlocked by spending a currency you get from beating campaigns and getting achievements.
Pilots are unlocked through more obscure means. However, after reading a list of different pilot traits, I didn't feel like there was much differentiation. As such, I didn't care much about unlocking them.
Gain XP
In a mission, pilots can gain XP and level up. This is a pretty simple system. At the end, you can choose one pilot to use for next campaign. This basically means you always have one veteran and two rookies to start. In general, I didn't care very much about XP and I wouldn't have missed this system if it wasn't present. With a little more design, this could have been very fun. However, it's just an unobtrusive features that add little and costs little.
Grinding
Gaining currency and new pilots requires getting achievements. These are most easily gained from playing the game on Easy and completing missions perfectly. That sounds like a horrible grind to me. Instead I chose to mostly ignore achievements and I still had enough currency to unlock a new loadout for each scenario.
This is perhaps where the game falls flat the most. What makes FTL so much fun to replay is how different the starting ships are, and trying to unlock new ships. But in Into the Breach, I didn't feel like any loadout was that much different from any other loadout. Because you spend currency to unlock a loadout, it doesn't have the same personal touch that FTL has. Like, in FTL, if I want to play as the Mantis, I have to go rescue a Mantis ship (or something like that). In Into the Breach you do funky things to get currency, and then use that currency to buy whatever you feel like.
Conclusion
I reluctantly give Into the Breach a thumbs-up. Panzer General popularized tactical turn-based combat over a campaign. Since then, there has been a surprising lack of good innovation in that genre despite many attempts. Into the Breach is decently tactical with some replayability and nice short missions. There are better games out there, but Into the Breach deserves mention. Other similar games I would recommend are: XCom 2, Neuroshima Hex, and Battle for Wesnoth.
