Gears Tactics

This is out today on PC and free for anyone with Xbox Game Pass. Launches in 1 hour!

First review I read listed 3 Pros and 3 Cons at the end, top Con was "no base building" and I'm thinking yeah no, that's 4 Pros you got there.

ACG liked it too, though it sounds like it could use a patch or two to tighten up the gridless movement/targeting. No way I'd pay full price for it, but Gamepass solves that problem.

Interested to know how this compares to Phoenix Point. Anyone try both? They are both on my "on sale" list.

I wasn't a huge fan of GoW franchise but gotta admit it is a perfect setting for an X-com clone.

Shmoopy said:

Interested to know how this compares to Phoenix Point. Anyone try both? They are both on my "on sale" list.

I wasn't a huge fan of GoW franchise but gotta admit it is a perfect setting for an X-com clone.

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I only have around 10 hours in Phoenix Point, and about an hour in this.

Phoenix Point is decent, however it is missing several features that will be added as DLC. There are 4 planned DLCs that feature content that will be directly added to the base game. One is out now. I stopped playing because of that, as I would rather have a feature complete game when I start playing it.

1) Expand the power and versatility of Phoenix Point operatives with cybernetic augmentations. Unlock new abilities for your soldiers, new research projects, and new approaches to tactical combat. But beware: enemies will bring cybernetics to bear against your team, too.

2) Discover an ancient human civilization facing down its own mutant threat, and harness their knowledge and tools in service of the Phoenix Project. New units, new mission types, new research, new maps, new weapons and armor, and a brutal challenge.

3) The skies darken with alien vessels, and Phoenix Point must rise to the challenge. An all-new interception mode, inspired by the original X-COM, lets players build and upgrade their own aircraft, fight aliens in the skies, and harvest tech from downed alien vessels. Festering Skies boasts an entirely new play style, new mission types, new vehicles, and much more.

4) A floating fortress which can travel by sea and conduct air operations inland from coastal cities. Such bases will be exposed to danger from seaborn mutants generating some tense defensive missions, but the additional strategy flexibility of such a base will greatly help in mid to late game. It will also allow the player to discover some of the most well hidden secrets of the alien agenda, deep inside the mist.

The current DLC roadmap is expected to be complete by the end of 2020 (unless it is set back due to the pandemic).

Gears on the other hand is a fully feature complete game, and more AAA in that regards. It has full cut scenes and the likes. Difference is that it is more of a linear game with story characters that, from the streams I have watched, feature game over screens if units die. Pheonix Point is more Xcom in that regard as you have units that you recruit and level up, but they can die similar to Xcom. Pheonix Point is more "xcom" than Gears, but Gears is feature complete and looks quite good. Itmejp had early access of it, and he loves it.

Based on the games as they stand now, I'd probably say "wait" for Phoenix Point and get Gears now. However, I haven't played either of them enough to recommend or not. Gears looks like a fun game to do a full campaign of, but not sure of replay value. It is a story game. But Phoenix Point, once complete, is more of the Xcom type that you can do multiple times over, focusing on different factions, and get more playtime out of in the end.

Both are on gamepass though. I got gamepass for this game for $1. So get both now?

I'm enjoying this so far but I'm still on the early missions. I agonize over the skill tree which, to me, is a sign of quality in that I feel there are real decisions to be made in progression for squad members.

I did need to update my Nvidia drivers as there was a definite incompatibility issue that the game alerted me to on first launch and which I then 'noped' out at the first cutscene. Updated the driver and everything is grand since then.

I did three complete runs of PP (with the first 2 DLCs) and been playing this game for a few hours, and Gears is way better. Phoenix Point is a kickstarter game on the Unity engine with a few cool ideas, but overall pretty meh. And there's not really much replayability. This game is triple A and I'm enjoying it. As far as I can tell so far any "cons" are just nitpicks really. And as has been mentioned, you get both with Xbox gamepass which is $1 for the first month right now, it's a no brainer.

Got Gears and Chimera Squad this week for $10.29 total. Doesn't get much better than that.

I've reloaded the same checkpoint now 3 times because I keep fucking up and missing the bonus goal for an early mission. I quite like these extra goals because its just enough of a carrot to compel me to focus on efficiency and details.

Haha same....did 3 restarts because i'm a moron and misunderstood critera so spent like an hour on a mission to get that extra common chest derpa derpa.

Pretty early on but really enjoying it. Heavy's with anchor tear through some shit, definitely like them.

Ha, got you beat. Was just outside the circle before the first boss fight, taking advantage of no more enemies to end turn a bunch of times to heal my squad. I got them all healed except for Gabe, who wasn't healing for some reason. Ended turn 8 more times for 2 heal cooldowns before I remembered he had been downed once, lol.

I lost one of my soldiers in the first boss fight and I decided I was okay with that... some folk gotta be expendable.

Bump for no particular reason.

There's a newish game mode (came out in mid November) called Jacked, where you get Jack as free extra squad member (so on a full 4 man deployment, its 4+jack, on a 1 man deployment it's 1+jack, etc). While he's limited to supportive abilities (only has one directly offensive skill that you have to spec into), he generally makes the game easier because of his ability to safely pick up chests/open torture pods, leaving your soldiers free to concentrate on the enemy. They did add random deviant enemies in Jacked mode to counter the help you get from Jacked which have the potential to be scary but I've had no trouble handling so far. As an example, a Deviant Hammerburst Drone (the basic enemy grunt) has about double hps and an aura that gives lifesteal. There's also a new gear level above legendary in Veteran missions but I guess those are post game so I can't comment.

Game is a solid 8/10 imo, and god knows that turn-based games are such a thin genre that it was a surprise to get a big budget one.

I love this game, but I get a hard on for any kind of tactics games.