izigame.me

SteamWorld Heist II is a loyal follow-up to the first game, but following a different story within the SteamWorld universe. Whereas the first game had us flying in outer space to battle space gangs and galactic royalists, this time the game is centred around the theme of traversing the oceans in a submarine, captained by Quincy Leeway, a steambot whose mother was a great hero, and trying to live up to her name is hard, but a chance appears to assemble a crew and save the planet, not only from the corrupt navy, but a threat much bigger.

The story and setting might be different to the first game, but the gameplay and the vibes are the same. Expect the same degree of quirkiness and lighthearted banter from the characters. Every character here is a robot, but their society is not too different to ours - oppressive government regimes, criminal gangs, and of course, the ordinary underdogs who try to get by and deal with the unfairness around them. It manages to straddle a fine line between high stakes danger and comedic silliness.

The gameplay has two key components that you'll be spending most time doing. Firstly there are turn-based battles during missions. Just like in the 1st game, these battles happen on 2D maps as viewed from the side. Some people would compare it to XCOM battle system, except in 2D, but I'd say it's probably closer to battles in the older Worms games, because we can manually aim our shots. Many weapons even allow us to bounce our shots off walls, which creates interesting opportunities to hit enemies beyond our direct line of sight.

What's different to the 1st game is that each of the characters in our crew is not limited to their starting class. The class now depends on what weapon we equip them with. However, any skills they unlocked previously in other class trees, stay unlocked, but to enable them we have to use cogs. I have somewhat mixed (but mostly positive) feelings about this system. On one hand, this system provides a lot more flexibility in how we can develop our characters, allowing them to pick up and use skills in other class trees, for optimum effectiveness. E.g, I found it useful to get every crew member to try the Boomer class (explosive experts) at least for one mission so to unlock the first ability that allows the character to have 3 item slots rather than 2. This system also lets us have multiple characters of same class in a mission. Like if you want to bring all Boomers to a mission, then just equip them all with rocket and grenade launchers and you're set.

On the other hand, I found the levelling to be a bit messy with this approach, because if I wanted to obtain skills from other class trees on a certain character, I had to make them use weapons they don't normally use. It's not bad for crew you recruit later, but those I had from the start, already had their defined roles within the team, and I was reluctant to change them when they were already built around a certain playstyle.

The other major aspect of gameplay is the free roaming around the world map on a submarine and the real-time naval combat. Of course we don't have access to all locations from the get go. We begin in just one sea, then as the story progresses and our submarine gains new capabilities, we gain access to more locations, including the frozen Arctic seas, and the underwater world. The submarine combat is decent enough. I wasn't fond of it at first, but it grew on me over time. We don't need to do any manual shooting. We just equip our chosen weapons on the submarine and it would fire them at enemies when those are in range. All we have to do is manoeuvre our submarine so that enemies fall within its line of sight and also dodge any incoming enemy fire. It does get tricky in some parts later, but nothing that can't be overcome by applying good upgrades to submarine.

The two aspects of gameplay complement each other nicely, because they are quite different, so you don't get tired of one or the other. The pacing swaps between the two very dynamically and neither overstays its welcome. I do think that the game starts off a bit too slowly. Perhaps that is because it starts by teaching us the basics of combat, and as someone who came into the game after having played the first game, I was already familiar with the basics and wanted to get to the good stuff quicker. Afterwards it gets much better as we recruit more team members, acquire lots of new gear, and face interesting new challenges during missions.

The progression is executed really nicely. This game is about twice as long as its predecessor, but it always stays interesting. In each major area, new challenges are introduced to the missions, both new enemies and new terrain hazards, like icy floor areas in the Arctic missions that can freeze your characters if they stand on them. Even each mission has its own interesting and unique challenges. Some missions are linear in their design, others are highly branched, some require us to hurry, others to stay and defend, some require the team to stick together, others to split up, some require a big team, others only 1 or 2 crew members. Each challenge feels unique. Even the endgame area adds entirely new mechanics whilst still maintaining the core of the gameplay that we've mastered by that point. I'd say that the final area was my favourite because it encourages you to use everything you've learnt up to that point.

One aspect I've seen criticised by most players is that in majority of missions enemy reinforcements start to arrive. At first it was a tad annoying, but as the game went on, I found that it's not bad because it encourages you to make progress in each mission and not linger too long in one place. Most times the reinforcements aren't even overwhelming, because they spawn in different parts of the map, some of which are far from you, and you DON'T have to kill everyone. You just have to do the main mission objective and then scram out of there to the evacuation point. So if it's e.g to scrap (kill) just one enemy bot, then focus on them, and then leave and stop wasting time on fighting ever-spawning minions. You'd be surprised how many simpler solutions each mission has that are not immediately obvious.

The presentation is stellar on all fronts. Art style of characters and areas is colourful and crisp, just like in the first game. The UI is clear and informative, and the map is easy to use. There's no voice acting, and when characters talk, we just hear funny robotic gibberish noises as their dialogue box pops up. Music is excellent. In addition to the nice instrumental tunes, there are once again vocal tracks by Steam Powered Giraffe that play mainly in the bar areas. I even enjoyed SPG tracks in this instalment better than in the first. The band has clearly been refining and improving their style, and their newer band member Zer0 (who joined after 1st game) has a pretty amazing voice. I really think SPG music enhances the game in many ways and fits the game's world and vibe like a glove. I even went ahead and bought the soundtrack.

Despite a bit of a slow-ish start, SteamWorld Heist II really manages to hit all the right areas for a game of this type and delivers everything that it sets out to do. Both gameplay and story with its characters bond well together into a nice, complete wholesome package that leaves you feeling positive and uplifted by the end as you look back on your journey and all the victories you've had. And with its flexible approach to difficulty levels, anyone can enjoy the game, whether they're seeking a casual experience or a major challenge. It is a 30+ hour game though, so may seem too long for some people, but I've found it getting more and more interesting and engaging the further I delved into it, and the last half of the game whizzed by. The dev team should be proud of both SteamWorld Heist games and I highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys turn-based combat.