izigame.me

This is the Battlestar Galactica experience the fans have deserved for over ten years. Let's get down to why that is.
Section One: Simultaneous turn combat.
This is a mechanic that players of the X-Wing miniatures or Armada may be familiar with. You have your planning and movement phase, you've got various options such as focusing fire and launching fighters- and once you issue all of your orders, you watch it all play out for ten seconds, and repeat the process. You can even watch the entire battle over in real time.
The genius of this is that despite not being Real Time, it demands that you know what you're up against and how best to utilize your units in a predictive, proactive manner. If you play reactively, you will lose. Consistently. You have to accurately predict the oncoming threats and do what you need to, to gather such information so you may act accordingly. This is the benchmark of success. Knowing your enemy. Not holding resource nodes because you rushed it with low cost units.
It is very, very much a real Strategy game. Proactive, not Reactive.
Section Two: Lore, Writing, Setting.
BSG fans know all too well how rich the characters, setting and story are. Regardless of how you feel about the ending of BSG 2004, those of you who are fans cannot deny that for a majority of the show's run, it had you enthralled with all of those aspects.
In perfect, unabashed honesty, no, the story is not of the precisely same quality. However, with the content one may observe in the DLC, Broken Alliance, one can see how the writers of the story matured- and in a very brief time, AS writers, from base game to DLC. Broken Alliance makes the story even more rich, well thought out. Not much DLC does that, since most DLC doesn't weave itself into the game from the word go, on a new playthrough. Even the new and sort of controversial Anabasis DLC implies quite a bit.
The characters' surnames are mostly familiar, which I feel to be fairly on the nose- too on the nose, at some points, but then I remember that yes, (the) god(s) have a plan, and it is no coincidence that these families are loosely bound by fate forty years before the events of BSG 2004.
Oh, yes. This takes place during the First Cylon War. Five years in, and some time before our beloved William Adama makes his way in as an ace Viper pilot. So don't worry, you're not going to run into anything from the not exactly lauded Blood and Chrome.
All in all, the story, implications, so on and so forth, are very good in the final package, and as time rolls on, leaves us asking more questions than answering them, in typical BSG fashion. Only this time, I'm confident that the writers will actually tell us things in the future, unlike the unforgivable "The Plan" film.
Section Three: Balance, Units, Campaign.
What can I even say here? I've played for over a year now, and I can safely say the units get rebalanced nicely, often, and that the game's developers are very keenly aware of any troubles the balance has, and are always- literally always, tweking it.
The design of the Cylon and Colonial units alike are exactly what you'd expect old predecessor units to look like. You can see the familiar Colonial lines in all of their units, yet they all remain perfectly distinct from one another. So too is this true for the Cylons, seeing harbingers of things to come in units such as the Argos and Cerberus, but of times past in the classic Basestar and Revenant Cruiser.
Fighters are essential but can be countered by non-fighters, nothing feels like it shouldn't, and more content is consistently added to flesh everything out properly.
Section Four: Visuals, Audio, Overall feel.
The game's visuals are interesting in that yes, the units are of a middling-low end of the polycount, but this means low end machines can max BSGD pretty well. Since there is as of yet (11/30/18) no modding support, no HD texture packs for us very unfortunately. What exists is very true to the show and everything feels right. No out of place tech or visuals.
The soundtrack however... I was certain Bear McCreary lent his beautiful artistic mind to it, but so far he's had nil to do with this game. This soundtrack is Battlestar Apotheosis. It is wonderful, it feels absolutely perfect. Especially the DLC tracks. (Seriously, buy Broken Alliance with this, you CANNOT go wrong at all- it is Lair of The Shadow Broker levels of game enriching / quality increase from the base package!)
I am STILL pushing for an official soundtrack release as of writing this review.
Section Five: Multiplayer.
Join the Discord.
Okay, now that you've done that, get ready to learn a whole new metagame. All that cheese you can do in campaign? No, that doesn't work in Multiplayer. This is a highly tactical game in Multiplayer. 25% of your victory is in listbuilding, but the rest of it? That's how you position, utilize, and take advantage of opportunities. This game also has a reigning champion, so you certainly have something to strive for. If you've read any of the guides... Well, those were written by him. He's an expert for sure.
But even if you aren't playing competitively, even if you're playing a fleet for laughs, this game is immensely fun. Play it online. Come and talk to us. We're a very open community and we all love this franchise together.
Section Six: Difficulty.
Campaign? Not that hard. Broken Alliance? A little harder. Anabasis..?
Let's get something straight.
Anabasis is Bane. It is going to break you. It is meant to be oppressive, hard to beat, you are not supposed to succeed on your first outing- and if you do, you're very good at this game. The playerbase asked for something like the show, and Anabasis succeeds in that. It is emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes physically draining to marathon.
But god is that final jump to Caprica worth it. No matter how much you've lost, surviving the onslought is amazing.
If you lose, try again. Practice. Learn from your mistakes. Victory is a reward, first and foremost. Not a right. You should never be simply granted victory, not in anything.
Anabasis is this game's ultimate challenge. Defeating it is the ultimate victory. Especially in a run where you bring only one Jupiter Class Battlestar (Galactica, particularly.)
Section Seven: Addendum, final thoughts.
I'm a star jockey. I wanted to fly a Viper MK II and shoot toasters. This isn't what I asked for or even wanted.
But when I saw the trailer, I knew it was special. When I followed the news, I had a good feeling. When I saw the gameplay, when I heard that soundtrack, my heart was swollen with blood from the rush of excitement I felt.
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is one of those "Damn long time coming" types of games. It gives you something you never knew you wanted. It is fantastic.
Play it. If you're on the fence, don't be. Don't even wait for a sale. This company is amazing to its customers, the fanbase- and are wonderfully dedicated fans themselves. Hell, they even use Caprica as source material to cite from.
This game deserves a permenant slot in your library.


So say we all.