If difficulty options get patched in though, grab it in a heartbeat. It’s so close to being fantastic it hurts.
My 2 cents is that it’s no walk in the park, specially for your first playthrough.
I would say neither good nor bad - just different.
Mechanicus’ missions are all hand crafted which can minimize replayability, but in fact there are so many different ways to customize characters, and you never have enough time to play all the side missions, so that’s mitigated somewhat.
Then again, every mission plays out the same - CYA-CYA-battle-CYA-CYA-battle etc.
Is the game about navigating through a set of scenarios and you win be winning some final battle? The side missions net you rewards but as time passes the enemy gets stronger?
The side missions unlock new units, techpriests, weapons, and earn blackstone (resource for upgrades). Every side mission advances the clock to the point where you have to fight the final battle.
While I got lucky with Gladius Relics of War working OK on my laptop, I wasn’t as fortunate here. I plowed forward through part of the tutorial mission just because I was excited to try this, but at 10-15 fps it was pretty sluggish. I’m going to have to wait until January, but seems like fun!
1.1 patch notes:
I picked this up in the steam sale and I’m about to complete my first playthrough. Fantastically tight little squad based tactical turn-based game. Really love the action point (sorry, cognition point) economy and the rich character development.
In many ways I feel this is a sci-fi grimdark (because 40k) riff on Darkest Dungeon. The core gameplay flow is the same. Go in dungeons, explore randomly generated map, meet random things that may be treasure or may be a trap, win turn based fights, then go back to base to spend the loot and level up guys. Where it’s superior to Darkest Dungeon is the much richer options for combat (full tile based isometric turn-based combat) and in variety of available skills/gear for character customization.
My only major beef with the game is that it’s built around the idea of short playthroughs as forced by Necron Awakening Timer. A single playthrough can have like 34 missions max before a player is forced into the final foozle fight. Most will be less because it requires perfectly optimized play to get all 34. The length of the game just feels wrong to me and I don’t want to restart just when I’ve got my characters built up into serious ass kickers. I want to explore all the missions and areas in a single playthrough, not be forced to start over multiple times to see the stuff I missed in previous runs. That sort of gameplay cycle works for something like Into The Breach where the whole game is pretty short and each playthrough feels very different based on the starting squad. I feel like it will be very repetitive to go through the tedious early-phase buildup of level 1 characters again and again in Mechanicus. I think that’s the only major misstep in an otherwise extremely polished and solid game.
I blame this thread for the War40K wiki hole that sucked me in for an embarrassing portion of my morning.
I am now an undergrad-level student of the Horus Heresy, AMA
That takes at least a four year program, doesn’t it?
I mean I don’t have my degree yet but the emperor defends us all from the terrible forces of the Warp even in death, so we should all be grateful
All for the cost of 10,000 souls per day. A bargain.
There may be some debate as to whether the Emperor is the reincarnated souls of all the primeval shaman psykers of humanity’s childhood or something else, but there can be no doubt that compared to Nurgle’s hunger or Slaanesh’s excesses, his sacrifice is the only spot of light in the grim darkness of the far future (in which there is only war).
There seems to be a lot of cool ways to customize the tech priests. The discipline seem varied.
I both like and am bothered by these little events that pop up when exploring the tombs. They ad a lot of flavor, but I get frustrated making choices without getting a bit more info as to the possibilities. \
I’m entering a room where I can study devices, go slow and steady, and shut down devices. I assume studying them can grant me some boon but is dangerous. I just don’t know how dangerous these events can be.
I’m 26% into the campaign now and canticles have been unlocking left and right.
I like the move away from move then attack. It feels much more natural to be able to move attack someone, then continue to move and attack someone else. Or to attack someone with ranged and then move in and attack with melee. I also like how cognition points add flexibility for extra movement.
I could use some UI improvements, like show what type of damage enemy attacks do by hovering over them (once it is known).
It’s funny because while I don’t really have any complaints and I like it, I generally only play a mission or two and I want to move on. It lacks something that makes me want to crank out mission after mission.
Has anyone played this till the end? I’m at the 40% mark. I have 1 priest with one full class tech tree unlocked. I like that you can still pick more abilities form other classes. I’ve been going for missions that increase my cognition point meter max or more tech priests when I can. I’ve only done easy and normal mission. I’ve lost a tech priest during a mission but so far haven’t lost an entire mission. I was worried because I didn’t know if he was going to be dead for good or if I’d get him back.
I still can’t do more than a mission or 2 in a day.
I’ve beaten it twice and am closing in rapidly on a third win. The game is fairly short and apparently intended to be replayed multiple times. Because of the limits on missions imposed by the awakening meter it’s impossible to see everything in one playthrough. Each officer in the mothership has a chain of missions and some of them are mutually exclusive at higher levels. For example pursuing high level Scalveola missions locks out the late Videx missions and vice versa.
The game is fun in the later stages, when Tech Priests starting getting level 18-24. Basically at that point in the game there are no more upgrade slot limitations on priests and they can load up with whatever equipment they fancy. The only limitation becomes Cognition Points as those heavy weapons are really CP hungry. I usually end up with multiple priests maxing out the advancement line for CP-gathering abilities. Multiple priests toting heavy area-effect weapons coupled with multiple priests having the “max out the CP meter” ability means late game a lot of fights can be won in one round.
I just beat the final baddie. I like the game quite a bit. I definitely prefer the freedom Mechanicus gives when moving and taking actions. While I liked the new XCOMs a lot too, I don’t really like the move + attack limitation.
The game was a bit too easy, especially towards the end. I entered the final battle as soon as it was available and had the two pre-bosses to fight. Some focused attacks brought the first one down in one round. The next one took a couple to get everyone positioned. Keeping your troops fed with CPs makes a huge difference. My guess is that the game would be much more difficult if the player doesn’t focus so much on keeping the CPs coming in, but why wouldn’t they?
Maybe I’ll reload the save just before the final battle to go deeper in Scaevola’s quest line, although I think I’m ready for something else. The environments could have been more interesting too.