Broken Lines Review (TRUE ELKLORD)
I really, really wanted to thumbs up this game. The base game is OK enough. Not great, but definitely satisfying at times, and different enough that I want to support developers trying new gameplay styles like this. It's about 10 hours long and is probably barely worth playing if you want some tactical WW2 action with some story choices and very light RPG elements.
The actual gameplay loop of issuing commands to your troops in 8-second intervals and then watching the battle play out is kind of janky and definitely can be weird and annoying at times, but is similarly satisfying when something executes perfectly for you.
One of the biggest problems of this game is that it's always in Iron Man mode (i.e., you cannot manually save, you cannot manually reload prior saves, it is perma 'rogue-like'). It's extremely frustrating when you do something like forget to equip a gun you just bought, or fail to realize that for some reason your squad isn't full, before starting the mission. Still, the base game is easy enough that I beat it pretty easily in about 10 hours on my first try on default/Normal settings despite these annoying and uncorrectable mistakes, and I think that is by design. The game seems to be designed around replayability, but really it's just not fun enough to warrant multiple playthroughs IMO.
Unfortunately I must also include The Dead and the Drunk campaign in this review since you have no choice but to pay for that too, and my experience here pushed me into 'Negative' territory. I apparently do not understand the 'Booze' mechanic (which is not well-explained at all in game), so a majority of my squad inexplicably abandonned me just before the last mission of the campaign, despite executing the prior mission perfectly. Thus my only way to finish would be to replay the campaign all over again and hope I can figure out what went wrong at some point, since I can't just reload a save like any sane and rational game would allow. Sorry, but I'm not replaying 6 hours of content all over again because I didn't understand a poorly worded mechanic. Otherwise I found the zombie mechanic to be neat, but kind of ruined by also forcing you to fight regular soldiers and zombies teaming up on you fairly frequently.
Lastly, I thought the 'wacky go lucky' squad mates with their ever so zany banter really does NOT fit a World War II setting. AT ALL.
I really wanted to like this game, and while it comes close, too many mistakes in the gameplay design means I can't recommend it as-is. Still, it does scratch a very specific itch so might be worth checking out if it's exactly what you're looking for.