Reviews: Ironclad Tactics
Available Platforms: Steam Games, Facebook? Other app stores?
Hello once again, fans and other, today we take a look back to 1860 and grow out our epic mustaches while strapping dynamite to robots and throwing them at people!
STEAMPUNK FANS REJOICE!
Thank gods, it's here!
A game that's taken seriously and steampunk and pretty good!
...Though it still has flaws.
Finally, almost a year since my Guns of Icarus review and I find a good steampunk game.
Well...
Maybe.
I shall continue!
Ironclad Tactics is a game set in an alternate history 1860's, following a version of the American civil war... Except where both sides had massive metal death machines.
...So yeah. Summarizing a bit here, but... AWESOME!
Let me start off with the big pluses. The ENTIRE GAME is drop in-drop out cooperative. It even has "Counteroperative" modes (To borrow a phrase from Perfect Dark) in every mission, where a friend or someone online can take over your opponents, even taking over the bosses with a special army setup.
I haven't played with a friend at press time, but just thinking about getting 3-4 buddies and talking alot of smack and bluffing about your game should exponentially increase the fun. If there's any significant problems with the multiplayer, I'll cover it in an update.
The actual "Tactics" of ironclad tactics are rather fun, with a good amount of customization out of a...
...
And we now get to both this game's big strength and it's biggest weakness.
Everything is a card.
Yes. Another card strategy game.
*Sigh*
Let me explain why you shouldn't walk away.
Card Strategy games basically work with units taking the form of cards in a deck, which you then play to attack other cards, as seems logical. The problem with these games is they add a LARGE amount of luck to each game, and can lead to heavy arbitrary difficulty spikes, where the important thing isn't having a deck that is varied with good cards, it's about exploiting the hell out of a single strategy and creating a deck just for ONE mission of the story campaign then never using it again.
OH! The story, I nearly forgot! It's told through pretty good comic book style cutscenes, which makes me wonder if this wasn't based off of a comic book franchise that I just haven't heard about as I don't know step one about comic books. It's decently funny, getting a few good laughs out of me while setting up the next mission.
But back to cards again, this DOES lead to some pretty big frustrations and can leech the money value right out of the game, requiring sometimes several restarts until you get a good hand, and even if your deck is balanced and well done, you still can get worked over by pure card luck.
But that doesn't mean that there's not alot of fun to be had, as it feels awesome to wipe the floor with an opponent... Though sometimes card abilities are weird, like Armor not reducing damage over 1... Which seems...Strange, and it could definitely use more. More... Everything, really. There's the jumping off point for something excellent here, and it comes much closer to being awesome than Guns of Icarus did with a similar theme.
All in all, I spent $15 on this game. Once I get around some of the difficulty spikes, I'll definitely feel like I got a good amount of money's worth. While the game's basis is solid, varied, and the art is excellent (Which I didn't mention, but it's highly stylized and very memorable and good looking), it just doesn't quite produce great money value at the $15 price tag. If this were a Xbox Arcade game in its present state, I'd be happy paying base price for it. Of course, it may be and I just don't know about it.
Anyways, Ironclad Tactics gets a Buy it Cheap verdict. I definitely say "Get it!", especially if you're a fan of steampunk OR the civil war, or even better, both!, but maybe wait for a sale or see if you can't find it somewhere in the neighborhood of $10.
This is Nev with IIWYM, twirling my mustache and riding my metal ironclad off into the sunset. See you next time.
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