We need to talk about Into the Breach

Seeing hotseat and others post got me back into playing this. I'm back to trying to get 30k with all of the squads on Hard. Just the Flame Behemoths, Hazardous Mechs, and Secret Squad to go. It's not easy. I find that into island 3 and 4 you really need to have some of those 1-use "oh shit" buttons that can affect a large number of enemies, whether it's the smoke drop, missile barrage, or magical christmasland attack. That last one is my favorite, turning half of the effective map into ice.

I played some more of this recently too, and am still really enjoying it. Interestingly enough, I was offered the chance to download an early beta of Tactical Breach Wizards, from the developer behind the fantastic Gunpoint and Heat Signature. Anyway, Tactical Breach Wizards is great fun, and it was impossible to not see the influence that Into the Breach surely had on the devs. One nice thing in Tactical Breach Wizards is that you can rewind turns when you fuck up. Getting everything perfect is difficult. Keep an eye on it if you want more stuff in the vein of Into the Breach.

store.steampowered.com/app/1043810/Tactical_Breach_Wizards/

I waited about 3 hours after getting the email about Tactical Breach Wizards to sign up and the keys were already gone. Maybe I’ll get in on the second wave.

Avoid the scorpion boss. Just had a run where I started out on my first island getting perfect scores and then just lost entirely on the boss level because it was the scorpion, even with Camila (immune to web lady). Granted, it was the flame squad who naturally has trouble with bosses.

For me it's the spider-making boss that's the problem. The eggs webbing everything next to it is a real fucker.

The spider eggs in the spider boss don't web, but if you've got normal spiders on top of that, or any scorpions. I mean spiders and goos are both nasty, and it depends on the squad too. It's pretty funny to say F it to the perfect island bonus and just freeze the boss.

The hornet boss is the easiest, typically you can bait him into attacking the air by putting all three of your guys in a line. Beetle is really fun if you're already the flame squad. Firefly isn't so bad if you've got some pushing.

I was talking with a friend on the phone recently about how every tactical game whether electronic or a board game essentially needs to stand up to Into the Breach... so I decided to play it again this weekend with a fresh profile, playing only on Hard again. It's still great, and I was reminded of this video, (I forget if this has been linked here before), but I'm impressed by how much was scrapped to bring the game we have today.

I have it on PC but haven't played it yet. I was kind of waiting for an iPad version to start it so I don't have to unlock everything a second time like with FTL. Though FTL's iOS version came out a year and half after PC, it's now been 2.5 years since ItB came out, with no word on an iOS version.

How much of a grind is it to unlock new squads?

Disgustipater wrote: How much of a grind is it to unlock new squads?

Compared to FTL, it's not much of a grind at all. In your first play with the first squad which will take 30-45 minutes depending on whether you "win" or not, you'll probably get enough achievements to unlock a second squad. There's a final squad that is unlocked when you get all 55 achievements, but you can have all the others unlocked after about 25-30 of those are done (and most take 2-5 points). Random and Custom squads are also unlocked right away, so once you have a couple squads unlocked you can get some neat things from those too.

Into the Breach fixes a bunch of issues in the structure of the game that FTL had.

Maybe I'll give up on waiting then since it seems to be just regular progression unlocking.

It's not hard to unlock squads, you can skip any stars (challenges) that you find too hard and just move on to the next ones. The stars are interchangeable, there's nothing like the niche conditions you had to meet for FTL.

Looks like it's free in the Epic Store on September 3rd. I played it when it was on GamePass, but it was removed since then. Looks like I'll be starting over next week. Which isn't a big deal since the first team is fun enough.

I just got a new MacBook, and while going through the games in my Steam library that I can still play, I realized that I hadn't taken another crack at this game in a while. In the past it's been something that I've admired more than I've enjoyed, but I try it every now and then to see if I've come around on it.

Well, I think I've finally turned a corner on it. I completed my first game of it, and I think there were a few little things about the game that I didn't totally understand. For example, I don't think it was obvious to me that abandoning a timeline didn't have huge consequences beyond bringing back a pilot, and I definitely don't think I understood there were other mech teams to unlock. I've also gotten way better at gauging when to sacrifice grid power, a mech HP, or something else. It could just be as easy as me understanding the game better.

Anyway, I've been playing this more in the last couple weeks than in the past three years before. What a great game.

It's a masterpiece