Alright. Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is done and dusted. This is an incredibly systems dense and ambitious TRPG that, as mentioned copiously in other reviews, pays homage to such IPs as Shadowrun, XCOM, Cyberpunk 2077, and so on. But I would argue that this is very much its own unique take on Mercenary Sims set in a Cyberpunk style world with a splash of Payday 2. A thing this game does a great job of is creating a believable version of the future where people all live in a dystopian society where corporatism and gangs reign supreme and only 112 cities remain on Earth. Additionally, this game reminds me of the movie, The Warriors , only with better technology. And in other ways, it also feels like vintage 80's sci-fi. Obviously, the Trese Brothers have pulled from a lot of influences to craft this world in which we will be briefly living vicariously through our Cyber Knight and his crew. And they have done a great job in crafting a memorable world. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3504602227 Ultimately, your goal as the only Cyber Knight in the New Boston Zone is initially to build up your crew and your base, stack that sweet cash by taking contracts from your contacts, meet and develop relationships with said contacts, get sweet sweet weapons and armor, and generally shoot, slice, and explode your way through whoever gets in your way. Or sneak past them. It will usually be a combination of the two. There is a story here, and each member of your crew recruited via story missions has their own story as well. As do your contacts. Some are more impactful than others, but all of them lead to you taking on mission after mission. All that said, while the stories presented are well thought out, it's not really the focus of the game outside of the early game story missions and the endgame story missions. Everything in between is really just about building up loyalty with your crew and contacts. And as mentioned, getting all that sweet cash and gear. Missions take the form of active missions and legwork. Legwork are solo missions (outside of one that can have up to three mercenary participants) that are handled automatically. A contact asks you to lend them one of your mercenaries to take care of something specific. Each mercenary has a percentage chance of being successful based on their skillset. I mostly used the same three or four mercenaries almost exclusively for Legwork as most of those missions fell perfectly into the skillsets of those three or four mercs, and they also weren't ones I usually sent on actual missions (as they were my lowest level mercs generally). Normal missions find you selecting up to four of your crew (five with a certain leverage that can be used). You will head into an area and engage in some turn-based gameplay. There are no grids in this one. Instead, all movement is gauged by actual in-game distance. When you are planning a move, it will show you the cost associated with it as well as the stages along your path where each point is used. You have AP of course, and these points are shared between movement and other actions, such as attacks. There is also a slate of free actions based on the class your merc has. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3507364625 Speaking of classes, there are ten classes in the game. One is your Cyber Knight, One is your Face (the frontperson for your crew, who is also non-combatant), and eight others: Soldier, Sniper, Hacker, Vanguard, Cybersword, Gunslinger, Agent EX, and Scourge, The variety is pretty cool IMO, and their unique skill trees also feature a lot of useful abilities. There is some overlap, but not much, and they are all capable of working quite well together. Anyway, back to the missions. There is a decent variety of missions, from bodyguard (escort) missions to extraction and defections where you go in and get someone out. There are assault and siege missions (the most fun missions IMO, as they are strictly combat). There are hacking missions. Some require a team to sneak in and find a computer or two. Some are solo hacking missions where your hacker has already found the necessary computer and dives in. There are scav missions where you need to loot a place as much as possible. Missions where you need to find sets of files. Like I say, there is a decent variety. And there is also a fair amount of location variety. I believe this is mostly procedurally generated, using a handful of environs. Most missions also have secondary objectives such as killing "x" amount of people, not allowing the security rating to rise above a certain level, etc... Security level is basically the state of general awareness your opponents in any given area have. They communicate via an AI security system, and various security functions in each area, such as cameras and motion sensors also are wired into the system. As a result, the more you allow yourself to be detected by the various obstacles on a level and the more chaos you create, the higher the security level will be. And the higher that score is, the more security guards and additional security functions an area will bring in or activate. So, as a general rule, the less you can cause this score to increase, the better off you are. However, sometimes things are just inevitable, and I've had my security level crest 20 before, which is true insanity in game form, lol. Base building is as simple as cleaning up debris filled rooms (radioactive in this case) and repurposing them. You've seen this system before in XCOM and plenty of other games. In this game, you will also upgrade the rooms, which unlock a lot of different perks. Including faster healing, gear crafting, hacking perks, and so on. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3504794430 There are a few negatives to mention. As nice as the mission and location variety is, it can't hold up to the 125-150 mission grind necessary to complete the endgame. This game would definitely benefit from at least a couple more types of missions and different locations. Hacking isn't really intuitive at all. You get the hang of it, but I'm not sure I fully understand it even now after completing the game. Also, quite a few of the achievements are currently broken. Some aren't even possible at the moment. Such as the level 7-10 blueprints which don't exist at the time of this writing. So, all of the above is representative of a lot of gameplay systems. There are even more I don't have room to dive into here: Power Level, Hype, Stress, Heat, Leverages, etc.. And I also didn't really even dive into the specifics of combat or the super cool selection of weapons, for example. Like I say, this is a systems dense game. I would definitely note that this game has one of the steeper learning curves early on. But once you really start to understand how all the systems interact with each other, it truly starts to shine. Plus, it has a very real coolness factor throughout. I would consider this game to be a must play for TRPG fans and cyberpunk fans in general. It's actually a ton of fun, offers a lot of replayability, and is a great value for that $29.99 asking price. Absolutely worth a look. If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews , it would be appreciated. Cheers. Also follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]IndieGems for more reviews like this one.
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