izigame.me

Don't get me wrong, here. Frozen Synapse is a really interesting game with an even more fascinating concept. The visuals are pretty neat, the game universe and storyline are cool, and the gameplay is nothing to scoff at (even with its flaws). In fact, you could even say that the reason this review is negative is entirely a matter of opinion; I'm sure many people will disagree with me on this.
The problem is, Frozen Synapse has one major flaw, which kept me from beating the game and made me never seriously pick it up again: the insane micromanagement.
You can say what you want about micromanagement. I believe there's a time and a place for it, like in real-time strategy games where you command massive armies, gather resources, and build bases, but occasionally need to give your units direct orders instead of attack-moving them to maximize their efficiency. In that case, you're temporarily diverting attention away from your base to manage your army, often to decisive (or disastrous) results.
However, Frozen Synapse lacks all of this. It forgoes large scale management in lieu of smaller tactical encounters (which is great!), but the tactics are so micro-intensive that at least for me, it ruins the fun of the game. More often than not, you will be adjusting every single action in a timeframe for each and every one of your soldiers... one at a time. This level of minutiae is so ridiculous that you spend a dozen minutes working out 5 seconds of actual action. That's because Frozen Synapse tries to combine real-time tactics and turn-based tactics, with rather clunky results.
For instance, let's take the classic game of chess and compare it to Frozen Synapse (apples to oranges, I know, but it works for the comparison). In chess, you have a board, with two opponents, and 16 pieces each. In Frozen Synapse, you have the equivalent of a laser tag arena, two opponents, and a small squad at your disposal. Chess is a turn-based strategy game; you take one turn, then your opponent takes one turn, and so on.
Frozen Synapse is like chess, if both players think out their turn at the same time, plan several different moves for a single piece (for ALL of their pieces), cannot see their opponent's pieces, and both players have to take their turn blind, also at the exact same time, and look at the results of 5 seconds worth of action.
The idea is that you can plan out all of these actions, execute them in real time, and then see the results every 5 seconds... and at the end of the "match", you get to see all of the 5-second turns stacked up and it all plays out in real time. The problem is that at the end of each 5-second turn, typically you end up moving your units around, changing directions, and giving them new orders... so when the whole thing plays out, every 5 seconds you see a sudden shift or stagger in movement that makes it feel less organic.
You can compare Frozen Synapse to other games, like XCOM. But XCOM works much better, because you're taking turns, rather than going into a planning phase and executing an attack along with the aliens at the same time. Everything happens so fast, there is no time to react, and you're often left overwhelmed, because there is such a level of granularity that even with only one unit left, you might feel that there are simply too many options to make.
I totally understand why people like Frozen Synapse. And, in the time that I played it, it was admittedly fun. The level of control that you have over each of your units is so great that you can tell them exactly what to do, down to every detail. But the attention to detail is so fine that it becomes closer to an aiming and walking simulator, to the point that it sucks all of the fun out of the game.
Also, for an obscure indie title from 2011, a price tag of $25 is just asking way too much, even if you do get two copies.
6/10 - Fascinating concept, poor execution.