Steam Tactics

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Steam Tactics is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG originally released on PC in 2017 and ported to multiple platforms including the Nintendo Switch in 2020. This is a game that has you playing as anthropomorphic animals flying airships in skybound battles.

The visuals in this game are okay, with some nice-looking 2D skyscapes and a few interesting varieties of airships. If there’s one thing that’s visually striking about this game, it’s the lovely character art used in static conversations in between battles. Beyond that though, there’s not much to talk about here, and in fact, there’s kinda’ a downside to the visuals, as the ships often don’t look distinct enough to be able to easily tell them apart.

As for the sound, this game has a decent but forgettable soundtrack, but the sound in the game overall seems muffled, no doubt in part thanks to the lack of sound effects for making selections, movement, or pretty much anything other than gunfire.

The gameplay itself is at least in theory decent, a simplified entry in the genre where battlefields are relatively small, as are the number of combatants. Unfortunately this causes a few issues. Firstly, it severely cuts down on the variety you’ll be facing in battle. What’s more, this lack of variety really cuts down on the game’s strategy, making it feel like you’re going through the motions rather than making strategic decisions.

It’s worse than that too, because information is often displayed with tiny hard-to-read text, sometimes is poorly-explained, and you may very well find yourself picking a fight you have no hope of winning because it’s not clear how your forces compare to the enemies’. Likewise, the way information is displayed makes it harder to make basic decisions about things like leveling up skills or upgrading ship components. And of course, despite being a game that seems like it should be made with a touchscreen in mind, Steam Tactics doesn’t utilize the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen at all.

As a result, Steam Tactics is a pretty disappointing Strategy-RPG, one that feels at once both too simple (thanks to the scaled-down battles) and too complicated (thanks to how poorly the game conveys information). With this genre being so packed on the Nintendo Switch, I don’t know who I could recommend this game to, when there are plenty of other great games that genre fans would find a much better way to spend their time and money.

tl;dr – Steam Tactics is a Strategy-RPG about anthropomorphic animals fighting sky battles with airships. Unfortunately, the smaller scale of battles makes this game feel too simple, and the poor way information is conveyed makes it feel indiscernible. The result is a game that gets too much wrong for a genre that’s so packed on the Switch.

Grade: C-

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