Tactical Breach Wizards (2024)

This game feels great at some parts and mediocre at others, so I settled for 4 stars.

Strange thing is that it feels good and mediocre at same things:

• One moment the level puzzle is good and challenging, the next one or two is a boring chore.
• One dialogue feels well written, next one feels mediocre or even cringe, followed by a good one again.

Of course, the above is a subjective thing, but I felt like it's worth sharing.
Maybe it's because they tried to pad game length with filler levels and dialogue. (took me 12 hours, I'd be happier if it was 6-8 hours, less filler)

I hope that there will be TBW2, that improves on the formula, because this has potential.

Got to try a bit of this game, and this is what I expected (and didn't get) from "Fights in Tight Spaces".

It's a fun "positional tactics puzzle" (a genre I like) with ability to rewind your actions, which is a must-have in all games of this genre.
As a bonus, has a bit of small talk and banter between missions that's interesting to read and short enough to not get bored.

This game is tactics game where you control a small band of mercenaries; wizard mercenaries with PS1 graphics!! The game takes place in a different world where governments rely on magic essence to operate and your team gets caught in an international scandal that requires fighting on contained battlefields with various environmental features; you know, tactics game style. The unique feature here is that each mercenary (or wizard as the game calls them) has unique abilities that affect the game.

I played it on the default difficulty and I found some of the levels too easy. But there were a few levels that were far more difficult so I'm glad I didn't try a harder difficulty as I might have gotten stuck. And the easiness is really the fact that you can retry actions an infinite number of times, even previous actions within the same round, making endless experimentation a key part of the game. The final boss seemed quite difficult until I figured out a trick and just spammed it, killing her rather quickly.

The game's strength, obviously, is the combat but there are numerous dialogue scenes in between combat, as well, as the game tells an unfolding story. The overarching story is pretty interesting but the actual character interactions were quite a bit cringey. It feels way too much like Tik-Tok therapy talk for 'The Damaged Individuals' than anything really genuine. You can skip it but I didn't because I did want to know the characters. It's not like it was all bad, just enough of it was that I groaned a dozen times or so.

Works well on Steam Deck.

This game might just make it to a 5/5. I simply can't remember ever enjoying a strategy or tactics game as much as I do Tactical Breach Wizards. Of course the gameplay is incredible; shuffling around the squad (and reducing the number of controllable characters) for different challenges does wonders for the pacing issues I usually encounter in this genre of games. The story is surprisingly compelling and every character has unique, definable personalities. There's a wealth of side content that I am planning to tackle and 100% as soon as I finish the main campaign.

Side Note: I always thought there was a certain emptiness to Xcom. Those games have your squad members irreversibly dying and unable to be used in later missions. The bond you form with those "characters" is based around the role they serve in gameplay. Its an intentional design difference between the games and I just prefer well written characters to effective gameplay tools. Both are valid approaches but I just have a preference.

Tactical Breach Wizards was a game I remember seeing an article on here or there but didn’t really know anything about it until I played the demo during Next Fest. I was immediately taken with the game’s charm, and, with its cheap price, I decided it would be a game I’d buy at release.

The art style of TBW is going for that simplistic isometric style, similar to something like Hitman Go. The world pops with color, but things aren’t overly detailed, making the map easy to read as you plan moves. You get to fight through a variety of locations, like moving trains, militarized cathedrals, and Italian manors. There’s a decent selection of costumes for your wizards. Each one has two styles of outfits that come in 3 different colors, so 6 total to choose from. They add fun flair to the heroes and would be great cosplay potential. They also help distinguish your squad from the enemies, which was an issue for me when it came to my tank. The music is not a standout here, mostly the modern techno beats you’d expect from a military tactical style game. There is a noir theme for one of the characters that I did quite enjoy though.

So, a lot of articles refer to TBW as a tactical X-COM-like, but if you are going in expecting tactical combat, you’re going to be disappointed. I’d say it’s more a tactical puzzle game. While you position your team across the field and line up shots, TBW isn’t interested in types of cover or shot hit percentages. If you can see an enemy, you can hit them with your attack. Winning fights isn’t about laying down the most firepower, it’s about using clever maneuvering of your squad. Even more than X-COM-likes, teamwork is a major factor here. Each team member has skills that complement each other. Knocking enemies around the floor or out windows is often the effective way to dispatch them. You are encouraged to puzzle out the best solution as you can rewind time as much as you want during your turn. If the idea you had doesn’t play out, restart and try a different approach. It took a few levels for me to get out of XCOM mode, but once I embraced the puzzle gameplay, I really enjoyed each challenge presented, trying to do the most damage in the fewest turns. I felt confident in my skills, using my team’s powers effectively, but I could see this game spawning videos of people beating puzzles using 4D chess level logic.

As you progress through the game, you encounter deadlier enemies, like heavy gunners, stationary turrets, super soldiers that can move during your turn. You also gain new squad mates & unlock new upgrades for your wizards’ skills, giving their attacks new abilities or more effective at supporting other teammates’ abilities. You start off with Zan, who’s a Navy Seer (I love that wordplay). He’s built around setting traps and decoys. Next is Jen, the Storm Witch, she doesn’t have any directly damaging attacks but is instead built around using her powers to push around enemies, usually out windows, and being the most mobile. After them, you add in the team medic, Banks. She supports the other characters by using drugs to poison enemies and make them susceptible to knockback. Dall is the tank of the group. Her charge attack and swap ability are deadly if she has the run-up to build momentum. And the final wizard is Rion, a druid who chips away at armor and can berserk enemies.

The writing is full of charm that endeared me to these characters. Jen is your typical millennial who’s not real sure about her place in the world. Banks is a surgeon turned necromancer whose dead inside and abandoned her dreams. Rion is the cold, detached hitman who has a twist at the end I won’t spoil. Zan felt a bit under characterized. He’s an ex-spec ops guy whose memory is failing, he does have some regret from a botched job he’s processing through. Dall also suffers from bland characterization. She’s a rebel leader who is dedicated to the cause first after her lover was killed. Towards the start of the game, with just Zan & Jen, the focus on humor is evident. Jen is the sarcastic wisecracker, while Zan is the straight man. There were a lot of lines that got a good chuckle out of me. It goes for that sarcastic, Marvel style humor, but unlike those films, this game knows when to dial back the humor for the serious moments. I was expecting this story to be a Guardians of the Galaxy’s romp of a ragtag team, but the game becomes about joining a rebellion and overthrowing an evil PMC (is there any other kind?). As more wizards join your squad, Jen falls into the comic relief role while the others play it pretty straight, save for the occasional sardonic reply from Banks. The initial switch from two wizards taking the subway to get to their mission to joining a rebellion was a bit of a tonal shake, but once it settled out, the story stayed enjoyable.

The game does a good job dabbing in little bits of world building in the cutscenes and pre-breach conversations that help flesh out this world without overdetailing the world. I’ve always lobbied for taking fantasy out of the typical high medieval time period. Having spec-op wizards was a fun, novel idea. Early on you get a fun line of “There’s a Druid shrublord with an M4.” They could’ve capitalized on the setting I feel. After a while, the ‘spec-ops wizard’ thing does fade off and the magic feels a bit more sci-fi than fantasy. You learn about the state of the different countries you visit. There’s the authoritarian theocracy state and Scillian-esque country in the midst of a coupe. Very much realistic political struggles we’ve seen in media before juxtaposed against the fantasy of wizard magic.

The story, so spoilers, has you tracking down a rogue operative, Liv, who used to be Zan’s partner in his Navy Seer days. Where Zan can see the future, Liv can move faster than time. It’s a nice dichotomy. You chase Liv and her team of wizards, including Steve Clark, the Traffic Warlock, which is another fun modern wizard idea, as they seek to create an army of supersoldiers for the PMC she works for. During your chase, each teammate has an “anxiety dream” which serves as their character-building moment, giving your puzzle pieces more depth. This is where we learn about Jen lacking self-worth or Zan’s fear of decisive action. They break up the story with character work and unique puzzles. As mentioned, the story gets a bit heavy during the rebellion against the authoritarian theocracy, but the second rebellion you help involves a fun bank heist. The final battle with Liv is a fun fight that requires a lot of puzzling.

All in all, I really enjoyed Tactical Breach Wizards. While the charm of the first chapter isn’t consistent all the way through, the game never gets dull and the laughs never go away completely. Each puzzle fight is short enough to be engaging, but not feel like a slog. I can highly recommend this game, especially if you’re a puzzle fan, like the idea of spec ops wizards, or want a quick game with some good humor.

There was something about the aesthetics of Tactical Breach Wizards, this sort of Rainbow Six-ficiation of high fantasy, that really grabbed me the first moment I saw the game. Back when it was just an item on a wishlist. When I played the demo, I was happy to see how it was coming together, not into an XCOM-like but into a combat puzzle game more akin to Into the Breach. And it does deliver on both of those accounts, and it even manages to add some genuinely witty writing that goes past the Whedonist jokes that seem to dominate most modern games/movies/TV, into some genuinely charismatic writing.

The game manages to carry these strenghts through long stretches of the game, but ultimately when the game falters it falters pretty hard. There are huge swings in difficulty that the game seems to be acknowledging by allowing to to skip any level at any time. The writing becomes self-indulgent at times, to the point that I will start off excited for the next conversation between characters and then find myself hovering over the skip botton before its halfway done. When the levels become tedious instead of fun, I am also being prodded into extra button presses every single retry, just small little jabs that turn tedium into outright annoyance.

At the end of the game, I was fairly satisfied by the product on its own but ultimately let down by my own excitement. Fundamentally, this is a decent indie game that probably needed more time in the game design oven to really reach the heights of the games its inspired by.

Holy cow, this game has a lot of charm. As someone who always supports taking fantasy out of the medieval setting, seeing this game pull off "spec op wizards" is fun. It's a great mash up because you get lines like "There's a druid shrublord with an M4."

Next Fest demos starting off strong.