Several games include large stakes, international military activities, and the balance of power in the world. However, if we swap out their military armor and automatic weapons for flying brooms and pointed hats, we are entering the realm of “things you do not see daily.” The inventive setting of Tactical Breach Wizards complements its sharp and humorous script nicely. Its quips tickled my funny bone more than the actual tactics in its main campaign did, but the little encounters kept up a fast-paced, captivating tempo that quickly made hours of my time disappear beneath a magic handkerchief.
All things considered, Tactical Breach Wizards is a fairly accurate name. One broken door at a time, your party—a motley crew of mercenaries from various backgrounds—takes the fight to the enemy. Although this is right up Zan’s alley as a former black operations agent turned fortune-teller, there is no real explanation for why his old pal Jen, a mediocre private investigator, finds explosive breaking such a natural fit. After a few missions, though, it stopped feeling out of place.
This universe, with its strong spellcasters who work as traffic policemen during the day, seems to be made up mostly of bits and pieces of real life mixed with witchcraft concepts. However, everything is handled so casually that, in the end, everything makes sense. Of course, there is a strong druidic mafia with a guy who, in that one music video, transforms into a dog just like Snoop. Why would not any exist?
The plot, which follows Zan and Jen as they pursue a formidable and dangerous operative who can travel faster than sound across the planet, is decent enough, but it is not very captivating in and of itself, particularly in the second half when things get complicated and escalate. Still, the dialogue is excellent throughout. It reminds me of TV series like Firefly and Buffy the Vampire Slayer since it is bold and exciting. Without undermining any of it, characters can be sincere, vulnerable, and humorous in the same discourse. Since there is no voice acting, there is a lot of reading to be done, yet it does not feel tedious because of how engaging the talks are.
Every word of the conversation is outstanding.
Every mission has cutscenes that tell most of the story. These turn-based battles are more akin to Chimera Squad than XCOM 2, featuring combatants with distinct skill sets that engage on more constrained terrain with a plethora of environmental variables to take into account. Every encounter begins with the breach of the same name, where you place your soldiers across one or more potential infiltration locations and plan out your initial strategy. A strong opening turn may set the tone for a mission, however I rarely found that the opposite was true.
Because I could undo everything I had done during a bad turn, I could nearly always recover from it. Since you always know where your opponent is aiming, you can respond quickly to minimize their damage by whatever means required. Nevertheless, you still need to be more aggressive to secure advantageous positions on the battlefield so that adversaries have to react to you because you never know where they will move the next turn.
When it comes to strong talents and the inventive ways you may combine them for significant effects, your team of (finally) five hits out of the park. There are no conventional fighters or mages among your cast of characters; instead, the majority of them play unique roles that do not readily fit into well-worn genre clichés. Jen is a disrupter who can move multiple opponents across the level at once.
When Zan incorporates clone or Overwatch-style abilities with his normal actions, he may do massive amounts of damage. Subsequently, you will be able to use a tank that can charge into individuals far away and trade places with anybody on the map. I kept coming up with inventive new tactics to stunt my opponents even after my 13-hour run was almost over.
You have to interact with your environment for a large portion of the action. In addition to being a fun pastime in and of itself, throwing opponents off of walls and other things is a sensible and essential strategy for taking down well-armed adversaries. This game has a healthy(?) fascination with hurling people out of windows, much like the other two in developer Tom Francis’ aptly named “Defenestration Trilogy.” If a window is not easily accessible, one character can even create one. In addition to eliminating every enemy, many goals need you to interact with locations on the map. Generally speaking, these tasks include dealing with a laptop, shutting doors to prevent reinforcements from entering, and disabling turrets.
You receive experience points (XP) from each task, which you may use to purchase perks to enhance your character’s powers. Not all of these upgrades are created equal, and in my quest for the ideal bonuses, I have made the most of perk point refunds. One of the few changes I made by trial and error that turned out to be major game changers for me was turning Zan’s clone hologram, which is normally only used to draw opponent fire, into a firing platform in and of itself. However, everything progresses quite linearly, and the only customization decisions you have to make are related to how few perk points you have available at any particular time. To unlock everything, you could very easily return to previous missions and grind experience points.
Verdict
The character-focused missions in Tactical Breach Wizards do not require you to possess lost magical tomes; instead, you can explore and experiment with a plethora of accessories in a limited amount of space. Despite being simple, this project is actually rather enjoyable because of the unique kits on each unit and the interesting ways in which they may be combined. It is difficult not to fall under its spell when you combine that with a vivid and strange universe and some very amazing writing.
