izigame.me

TL;DR stuff

Pros

+looks good, great cyberpunk atmosphere
+lengthy campaign
+gameplay mechanics are generally solid
+performance in current version is good (older early access release left a lot to be desired.)
+agents all have their own skills and usefulness, making them all important one way or another.
+big city split in basically 4 parts, pretty much feels like "open world"
each district has its own look.
+places have multiple entry points, offering different tactics to your objective

Cons

-stealth is overpowered to the point it basically becomes mandatory
-linked to that con; enemies are bullet sponges
-AI occasionally glitches out, especially using the "assassinate" action
-clone system with instant stat reduction seems unnecessary and punishing
-each city district basically has the same objectives making the game kind of repetitive
-even fully upgraded, your agents never seems truly powerful compared to most of the enemies
-not a big fan of the ending, but that's personal opinion

Another Syndicate?

I grew up with the original Syndicate and like many others I was horribly let down with EA's generic FPS reboot back in 2012.
When this game popped up, being branded as a "spiritual successor", of course I was interested.
While this game's inspiration from that series clearly shows, already right away in the menu when you first start the game, Syndicate this is not.
When I recently described this game to a few people I said the following;
If Syndicate had you controlling 4 cyborg terminators then Satellite Reign has you controlling 4 cyborg ninjas.
Let me explain.
If you have played the original Syndicate, you are no doubt aware how good the minigun is in that game.
You have 4 agents equipped with it and enable their IPA things, they would absolutely terminate everything. By themselves.
The minigun in Satellite Reign has a cool description (quote: "When you absolutely, positively, have to kill every motherf@#$er in the room."), but it's absolute trash.
It's incapable of even taking out generic guard units. And it's not just the minigun, in fact most of the weapons require tons of shots before even generic enemies go down.
Meanwhile, you can one-shot ANYbody (including the last "boss"!), completely ignoring their health, armor, shields and everything with even the most basic starter pistol if you use the stealth kill (assassinate).
You have the option to "hi-jack" enemies, similar to the persuadertron in Syndicate, but the game places somewhat of a limit on it by making the units weaker the more you have hi-jacked.
So, even if you get some extra people to back you up, you still can't really go in guns blazing because you always seem to be outgunned.
Much like in Syndicate, you can upgrade your agents with different kind of cybernetic enhancements. While they certainly help out with stuff like being able to sprint longer and take some more damage
(or some will allow you access to different entry points like vents), your agents never seem truly powerful. All the enemies seem to be enhanced as well.
Every agent has its own skill set, so each of them have their own purpose. With that, all of them also have their own limitations making it hard to really limit your "team" to say 1 or 2 for entering some enemy compound.
The soldier can hardwire certain objects in the world to open alternate routes or disable power to security systems. The soldier also has access to more powerful weapons without any penalties.
The Support class is there to buff and heal your team. The Hacker can disable security systems, open doors and "hi-jack" enemies.
Lastly, the Infiltrator is your default sneaky guy. Comes with default cloaking system and has the highest movement speed.
The game plays out in a fairly large city, split into 4 different districts. You can thankfully fast travel through multiple beacons in each district.
While each district has it's own look/feel to it, every district basically has the exact same few compounds in them, with the exact same objectives/rewards.
This makes it all pretty repetitive as all you do is infiltrate all of these compounds for the same goals..
And as mentioned previously, with stealth being almost mandatory, it adds to this repetition because you are using the same tactics.
Sure, there is the occasional bribe or assassination but most of it is infiltration.
If your agents are downed and you were unable to revive them in time, they will die and a clone is respawed at the nearest beacon to replace your fallen agent. This process degrades the agent's base stats.
When you hi-jack enemies, you have option to send them in for cloning, giving you the option to find potential agents with better base stats. However, for some strange reason, if you apply this new clone it instantly degrades the stats.
This makes their description already a lie and honestly I think this is an unnecessary feature that adds nothing more than frustration.
The game looks good and has a nice cyberpunk atmosphere. The music fits well to it and the sound effects are generally fine.
I would've maybe liked to see more effects for the agents themselves, similarly to Syndicate Wars like when you select weapons and such.
There is a bit of a story throughout with a "twist" at the end that I didn't much care for. Overall it's pretty generic but works well enough for what it is.
Overall I recommend the game, I had a good time with it. If you are looking for a game similar in setup to Syndicate, it's worth your time.