Steamworld Heist: Ultimate Edition

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Included in SteamWorld Heist Complete Bundle, along with Steamworld Heist II.)

Steamworld Heist, set in the same universe as the Steamworld Dig games, plays absolutely nothing like those games. Where those games were exploration-heavy platformers with Metroidvania elements, Steamworld Heist is a Turn-Based Strategy RPG with some Platformer elements.

What has remained from those games is their overall theme and aesthetic of a post-apocalyptic society of robots that copies a lot of its look and feel and vernacular from classic Westerns. It makes for a cute presentation that’s endearing, although not necessarily impressive in any way.

As for the gameplay, players will be taking their team of robots into combat with other robots on a 2D platforming-style stage, with everything being turn-based. Every robot has a distance they can cover in a turn, and there are a few different kind of weapons they can fight with. Actually firing a weapon requires that players judge the trajectory and cover when making their shot, trying to determine if they have the angle needed to hit the target.

It’s a unique approach to the genre, but it’s not without its issues. Firstly, given the level layouts, the game kinda’ naturally falls into a pattern of “get into room, clear the room, repeat, which can get a bit, well, repetitive. In addition, the strategy is undermined somewhat by enemies’ ability to simply walk right past you and your cover to shoot you from behind. It kinda’ defeats the whole point of seeking cover when it’s so easily undermined. I should note that your characters don’t seem to have the same freedom to slip behind enemies.

There’s also not a whole lot of choices to make in terms of skill progression and loadout – every character automatically learns character-specific skills when they level up, with no options for the player, and your selection of weapons with which to equip them isn’t all that varied.

The Ultimate Edition of Steamworld Heist on Nintendo Switch includes all of the game’s DLC, most notably The Outsider campaign, along with its extra characters and items.

It’s frustrating that much of Steamworld Heist’s design is so limited when other parts of it are so delightfully inventive. It’s still worth playing, but it feels like this game had potential to be much more fun and interesting than it ended up being.

tl;dr – Steamworld Heist is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG with Platformer elements, where you position Wild West-themed robots in shootouts to try to ensure that they have the right trajectories to take out enemies. It’s a unique spin on the genre, but it’s undercut by a lack of character customization and game mechanics that limit the strategy of combat and make missions repetitive. It’s still good, but it should have been better than this.

Grade: B

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