SteamWorld Heist 2 marks the seventh recreation within the SteamWorld franchise, which has constructed itself extra as an anthology than a collection. The title is a playground for various concepts, loosely related round a cartoon-robot aesthetic, relatively than a related universe of acquainted gameplay buildings and tales. Heist 2 marks solely the second direct sequel, after SteamWorld Dig 2. Since Dig was SteamWorld’s breakthrough, it appears important that the second true sequel goes to the more-modest cult-hit SteamWorld Heist. However the proof is within the pudding, as SteamWorld Heist 2 is an enormous leap over the primary recreation, increasing on just about all of its techniques with out overcomplicating them or compromising its appeal.
Like the primary recreation, SteamWorld Heist 2 defies straightforward categorization, because it actually solely performs like itself. You and your band of Steambots go on missions to tightly enclosed indoor areas, and participate in turn-based tactical fight. Whereas there’s cowl and skills with cooldowns such as you would possibly discover in a typical XCOM-like, the 2D perspective shifts extra than simply your point-of-view–in comparability to its style contemporaries, Heist 2 performs extraordinarily in another way. Slightly than flanking round enemies, there’s an enormous emphasis on verticality, in addition to lining up trick-shots utilizing laser sight-like aimlines to bounce your projectiles off the partitions or objects to hit an enemy ducking behind cowl. And like the primary recreation, you may choose up luggage of optionally available loot, usually together with one particularly well-hidden or well-guarded piece of epic loot, after which head for the evacuation level to finish the mission. How lengthy you keep to seize each final piece of loot is usually pressed by an escalating alarm system, creating a pleasant rigidity between danger and reward.
The place SteamWorld Heist 2 builds on the primary recreation’s construction is thru quite a lot of new techniques, every of which feels full-fledged in itself and enhances the prevailing loop. Main amongst these is a brand new job-class system, which is outlined by your weaponry. Any Steambot can equip any job by merely switching their major weapon throughout the mission loadout, and the requisite expertise factors they earn in that mission will go towards the geared up job. Every job has 5 ranges to unlock, with a sequence of highly effective skills changing into accessible all through.
The actual enjoyable is in mixing and matching the skills you have already mastered to unlock new mixtures that may really feel gloriously overpowered. The Reaper, for instance, is normally restricted to SMGs, which have a shorter aimline than most different jobs. However you may grasp its Harvest ability, which helps you to proceed to take pictures at enemies so long as you are delivering deadly injury, after which equip it onto a stronger class like Boomer or a long-range class like Sniper, permitting one unit to doubtlessly clear an entire room. Equally, you may take the Flanker, a shotgun-wielding class that is particularly cellular, and apply its skills to a Sniper to offer them entry to higher vantage factors. Or you may take a Sniper’s detailed aim-sight and provides it to a Boomer to see the place their rockets‘ splash injury will hit. Toying with these mixtures is an actual deal with, and important for mastering a number of the late-game challenges.
One level I particularly liked in regards to the job system is the way it handles extra expertise factors. Usually in a recreation with job lessons, mastering a job presents you with an annoying alternative: Stick together with your mastered job to provide the finest shot at finishing troublesome story missions however achieve no expertise, or change to a different job to realize expertise however turn into a lot weaker because of this. This softly pushes gamers towards going again and grinding with different jobs, which is not terribly enjoyable. In SteamWorld Heist 2, nevertheless, you may maintain your mastered jobs geared up, and extra expertise factors earned go into that character’s reserve pool. The pool is then mechanically utilized to the following job you equip and full a mission with. So you may maintain your elite-level Sniper for vital story missions, and financial institution the expertise you earn alongside the way in which, then change to a different job for an older and simpler mission to use all that banked expertise and meet up with a distinct job. It is a sensible answer to a standard design downside, and it sands off a serious tough fringe of most job-class techniques.
Your capability to equip further skills is set by your Cogs–slots for non-primary skills. You will have a specific amount of Cogs by default, however this additionally performs into different techniques. Sure gear provides you with extra Cog slots if you wish to cook dinner up some depraved mixtures, or they can be utilized for different utilities like enhanced armor, sidearms or grenades, or therapeutic packs. And even inside a single job, the weapon selection is expansive–one SMG would possibly provide extra burst-fire however will not ricochet off partitions, whereas one other could provide armor-piercing or therapeutic properties. It is extremely versatile and allows you to construct out your group to fit your playstyle.
Other than upgrading your particular person crew members with jobs and gear, you may additionally earn particular forex to spend in your house base, which is able to go towards advancing your celebration in different methods. You may select to spend it on particular person, distinctive skills for every of your celebration members, or job-class upgrades that shall be utilized to any bot geared up with that job. My MVP was Daisy, whose final distinctive capacity reduces the Cog value of all skills, making her the perfect tester for various job mixtures.
You can too use that forex to reinforce the submarine, your floating house base that can be your roving battle station. Versus the primary recreation, Heist 2 all takes place on a single planet nearly solely coated in water. Your submarine will transport you to missions, however it is going to additionally participate in thrilling real-time naval battles towards enemy ships, or can be utilized to discover and discover hidden nooks with their very own particular caches of apparatus. As you unlock extra submarine gear slots, it turns into nearly as customizable as your characters, letting you establish which forms of weapons to make use of, whether or not you need to prioritize pace or energy, and so forth. The submarine fight seems like a minigame but it surely’s properly fleshed out and an excellent change of tempo from the common mission fight.
The water-logged planet can be a serious component within the story. The water supply–the lifeblood of steam-powered robots–is getting corrupted and resulting in a situation generally known as the Rust. The dominant factions are the high-powered and glossy Dieselbot Navy, who satisfaction themselves on not needing steam energy, and the Rattlers, a grim robotic cult whose members have began systematically changing their metallic elements with bones, which do not rust.
The principle protagonist is Captain Quincy Leeway, a one-armed Steambot dwelling within the shadow of his mom, a legendary captain herself. A lot of the story revolves round Leeway studying methods to forge his personal path below the load of these expectations, however he is additionally not an lively participant in missions. As a substitute, he is the voice within the earpiece of your different mission-bound bots, giving directions and offering context for the missions. You do play as Leeway when exploring your ship or docking with a retailer, or fixing the occasional easy exploration puzzle. And whereas Leeway begins out merely in search of a rating, it is not lengthy earlier than the story turns towards uncovering the key of the Rust corruption, in addition to getting caught between the warring factions. That is in the end a story a few ragtag group of ne’er-do-well pirates who turn into a household, and whereas it may be somewhat dialogue-heavy in uncommon moments, it is in service of a candy story.
As you progress via the world and uncover the map–with an ever-so-satisfying cloud-clearing animation as you do–you’ll discover sure areas ability-locked to your submarine. That gating comes right down to one more system: your native status. To earn a particular new piece of submarine gear, you may usually have to accrue a sure degree of status by finishing missions within the space. Normally this implies both perfecting just a few missions, or merely finishing a number of of them. Your status will be cashed in for particular „bounty“ rewards while you relaxation at an inn. Resting is the one technique to regain entry to celebration members you have already used, so maximizing your status and bounty rewards means having a deep bench of robots to finish a number of missions between every keep on the inn. It is only one extra means Heist 2 well pushes you towards maximizing your effectivity with one other tactical wrinkle.
What’s most spectacular about all of those disparate techniques is how effectively they synergize with one another, and the way they continue to be simply comprehensible and never overwhelming. Like a well-crafted Steambot, every half and kit of SteamWorld Heist 2 attaches just-so to a different, with each piece of the gadget contributing and feeding into the operate of two or three different elements. The result’s a recreation that performs with clockwork precision from begin to end.