Into the Breach - Turn Based Strategy

It has been years since I bought a PC game since I don’t really have access to a regular personal computer. (Only one for work that isn’t gaming friendly since I can’t install stuff to it). Decided to buy it and run it off a usb stick and wow. Lost my first game horribly but then got to the end of the first island my second game and love it it even though I lost barely.

I look forward to many games of this and it is perfect for a lunch break!

After many tries, I finally pulled off my first 4 islands hard victory. I was trying various squads and, strangely, I managed it with Blietzkrieg, which is one of my least favourite teams (their main attack mean’s way of spreading damage extremely limits which mission I can or should pick).
The beginning was hard, very hard. But I was lucky to have my personal favourite upgrade for sell at the end of the second island: the peaceful 4-way jump pusher. It always synergize nicely, but with the chain lightning of the Blietzkrieg prime, it was pretty insane. Even with upgraded movements, I still had mobility issues until the end with this team, though.

It ended beautifully, with a clean-board win on the final mission — again, the star of the show with all those lava holes was my nimble jumping tank.

I am so good at this game that is so good.

Finally got this today, and it’s completely living up to the hype so far. Squeaked out a 2-island win on my first game thanks to some timely grid defense rolls, and then did a 4-island game with the Rust Buckets once I had a solid grasp of the basics. Can definitely see myself playing this for a long time, as they did an amazing job of creating a set of mechanics that interlock to present you with novel tactical problems on most turns, and the teams look to play very differently from one another.

I’m trying to finish all the achievements in as few missions as possible. For that I’ve been playing through all the factions one by one, try to get a win and as many faction achievements as possible on the first try, then move on. There were some rough spots, but I started getting some pretty good results toward the end (first try for all three faction achievements + a win for Zenith Guard, Flame Behemoths, and Hazardous Mechs).

So when it came time to wrap back to the beginning and start filling in the missing faction achievements + work toward some of the common achievements you can’t get by accident, I was feeling a bit too cocky. The plan for the first game was:

  • Untouchable (no mech damage on the first island)
  • Chronophobia (destroy all time pods on first three islands)
  • Trusted Equipment (no new equipment or pilots)
  • Ramming Speed (Rift Walkers, do a kill with a 5+ square dash)

The first one I wanted just because I had Bethany as the leveled up time traveler, and that achievement seemed pretty easy with a starting shield. The last three seemed like a reasonable combo: if I’m not picking up pods, there won’t be any equipment or pilots to upgrade. And it’d also mean having the excess reactor cores for the utterly craptacular dash upgrade.

It was a horrible idea. Turns out that destroying the pods doesn’t just lose you the goodies from the pod, it also counts against a perfect island. Also I had to take some grid damage on the first island that would have been avoidable normally, since there was an achievement riding on not damaging the mechs. So very little rep available for reactor cores, and no other source for them at all.

Then to add insult to the injury, both of my rookie pilots got +3 Grid Defense as the first skill and +1 movement as the second. No power from there either :(

The result was that I entered the third island with a total of 5 upgrades across all my mechs: the dash (that I wasn’t able to get the achievement with) for the Prime, +1 extra damage for the Cannon, and immune cities for the Artillery. That’s not a lot to work with for the third island: pretty limited damage, no disables at all, and not enough HP to reliably block spawns, just one ability that affects multiple squares. Lots of push, but not a ton of mobility to get the pushes in the right direction.

I could kind of scrape by the initial four missions of the island, but never without taking some grid hits. (Even when going for the easiest rather than the most rewarding missions). By the final battle of the island I had only two grid left. Only one lousy achievement to show for two hours of gameplay so far, everything riding on this battle, and the setup looks totally impossible: the boss hits for two damage for three squares in a straight line, and starts right behind a cluster of buildings. It’s totally impossible to avoid damage completely (especially since I need some mechs for other purposes as well), so the best I can do is direct the boss at a single-building square.

Round two, pull every trick to stay safe at one grid point, but at the cost of killing just one enemy. Round three, stare at the map for ten minutes, and there’s just no way out. But, wait, what’s that! Resisted! The stupid pilots with their combined +9 Grid Defense come through for the first time in the game. Still alive for round four!

Stare at the board for five minutes; there’s just no way to avoid two grid damage. Stare for another five minutes… Well, at least there’s a way to take two damage on one square rather than one damage on two squares. That’s better in theory, so might as well roll the dice again. RESISTED! And at this point I’ve actually done enough incidental damage to the enemies while pushing them around that I manage to clear the board and get the two achievements.

Of course I was still at one grid, so had to pump all the reputation into the grid. The third island had provided literally no advancement. I decided that the final battle would be easier than the fourth island, and tried my luck. The first level was actually not too bad, and I even managed to spend a bit of time arranging for the Ramming Speed achievement. But the second level? It was just brutal, from full grid to dead in two rounds.

But as far as losses go, that was about as satisfying as it gets. But maybe the way to do the challenge achievements is with a custom squad… I think I’ll do that for Engineering Dropout.

(The real hurdle for the achievement hunt is going to be Lightning War; might need to drop to easy for that. I just don’t see how to play this twice as fast).

Lightning War, Lucky Start and Flight Specialist are the ones I remember lowering the difficulty specially to get them. Flight Specialist took me by surprise. I couldn’t manage, especially in the early game. Even 3xteleporting science vessel wouldn’t go very far until the upgrades kicked in.

Wait, did I know Chris Avellone was the writer behind Into The Breach? I don’t remember knowing that. E: Apparently I did know at one point, the me from the timeline where I created this post mentioned it in the OP.

In any case, he has been interviewed over at RPS and while I’m only a little ways into reading it myself, it’s pretty interesting so far.

Raises more questions than it answers!

Awesome!

Y’know the cool thing about this article is that it proves something I had been suspecting since I started playing it: that despite many reviews and outlets dismissing the story as minimal or just set dressing Into the Breach has a cool story, with fairly strongly-sketched characters and tantalizing lore implications. Not an overriding work of narrative genius, but I think it’s easy to forget among all the strong mechanics that there’s a strong story backing it up.

Agreed. There is a lot going on, and you start to pick up on it the more you play and with all the lines of dialog people have, even just civilians in their buildings. It’s very reactive. I love how much personality each mech pilot has as well. The game just keeps on giving.

First normal win! Whoo! 20 hours in, if that’s of any consolation to folks struggling on Normal or even Easy. And I play a lot of these kinds of games.

Steel Judoka is fan-freaking tastic. I feel like they’ll be super-strong on Hard, too, since their abilities scale somewhat with more enemies on the board. Had a damn-near perfect 3-island run going into the final battle, lost my Traveler and took 3 grid in round 1, but fun fact! Dead mechs resurrect with AI pilots for round 2, thank goodness. Took care of that with a couple more hits to the grid and another dead pilot, but – victory!

Yeah, Steel Judoka are awesome late in the game when they’re upgraded. You can get vek to hit each other for 5-6 points of damage.

Yeah, I’m going to try out Steel Judoka for my next game, and it’s probably time to try Hard too So far I’ve done Normal 2, 3, and 4 island wins with the first three teams, plus a 2-island speedrun with Blitzkrieg on Easy for the Lightning War achievement. No losses yet, but had some close calls in each of the games. Really loving the game so far.

Immediately followed that Judoka win with a newly unlocked Hazardous Mechs win on normal. Holy moly, that squad is good.

I hate those guys that throw up the rock walls.

Personally, I would not have taken that mission. One of the advantages the game gives you, is the preview of each mission before you start it. With the Lab so close to the enemy spawn point, and the Earth Mover to defend as well, it was a losing situation before it even began.

I must confess i have never seen a map with such a terrible layout. Didn’t even know a critical building could be placed that close to the vek spawn points!

I have 2 more squads to unlock. I had trouble getting the Blitzkrieg achievements for more coin. I’ve been playing on normal, but I may need to play some games on easy to try and get the rest of the unlocks. Some of the achievements to get more coins seem awfully difficult, like blocking 4 spawns on a single turn.

Blocking 4 spawns seems like it would be rather easy. You just need a rock thrower or do it on a map with controllable tanks or something.

It seem rare that I actually get 4 spawn points in a turn. Isn’t it usually 3?

I knew I’d need to use the rock for the 4th spot, it’s just in my game I don’t think I ever had the opportunity. I never really paid attention, but do some islands spawn more enemies in a turn than others? Or does hard spawn more per turn than normal?