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?
I think the max number of enemies is determined by the map, so you’d probably need to wipe a bunch of enemies in one turn.
If you block a spawn in turn 1 it will still be there in turn 2, along with the new spawns. Each map does have a max number of enemies, so you would need to kill about 2 enemies in turn 1 also. Then you will most likely have 4 or 5 spawn points in turn 2.
For the achievement, can’t you use the enemy to block? You don’t necessarily need the rock thrower, iirc.
Yeah, it doesn’t matter who does the blocking.
I felt pretty useless with the Steel Judokas … I set them aside, playing with the Flame Behemoths … they are pretty good. Going for 3 and 4 island victories before moving on (already have won a 2-island).
I was bitching about steel sudoka and managed to do a 2 island run with them and was 1 turn away from.final victory when I fluffed things up by throwing the renfield bomb into lava. I thought it’d be okay because my mechs had been ok in lava in earlier missions. It wasn’t.
New bomb needed 3 turns to prime and I was screwed.
Rusting hulks for me were pretty straight forward. I got the range upgrade on the jet and had fun creating no go zones. I put Harold into the science mech once. Worked well. I put Abe or Malabo into the jet. Also worked.
It helps a lot if you can put Camilia in there since she’s immune to smoke. Also, you can upgrade the attack so it jumps over 2 tiles.
Yeah, upgrading the jet’s jump has to be a super-high priority for Rust Hulks. Otherwise, as noted, you get blocked out of attacks way too often.
Yeah, Rusting Hulks were my second game, and probably the one I had the easiest time with (4 islands, finished with no grid damage). The emphasis on smoke to simultaneously cancel attacks and cause damage just worked really well. It also made the vek more predictable, since there were often cases where two or three viable targets were in range, but I could use smoke to force them into just one viable option (ideally the one next to a convenient hazard). I think one of the keys was starting with the desert island to have lots of extra smoke clouds around while I was getting up to speed and getting the first couple of upgrades (particularly the jet’s range upgrade, as mentioned). Also, having Archimedes as my first carryover pilot was a big help. His ability to get an extra move after attacking is probably my favorite pilot ability I’ve seen so far, and incredibly useful for blocking vek from surfacing.
Moved up to hard last night and tried the Steel Judoka, managing to barely squeak out a 2-island win. They’re a fun team, but really dependent on where the vek decide to attack since their skills are so dependent on precise positioning. I’d feel in control for several turns in a row, and then have several of them set up in a way where none of the tools I had could dislodge them all. The Judo mech always had something effective to do, but the gravity mech was sometimes at loose ends, and the siege mech often had to sit idle until I could get the upgrade to make buildings immune to his damage.