Into The Breach

2025-10-11
I love being wrong. For the last 6 years I've been an Into the Breach hater. When I first played it in 2019 I went in wanting something like Advance Wars and bounced off promptly. My notes from then say "It's basically a puzzle game. Small levels with a correct strategy you have to figure out. I like creativity not solving your little level design puzzles. No thanks." And you know I don't even really disagree with that summary but something in the last 6 years changed to make it click. Maybe it was me continually pushing myself to enjoy puzzle games more--something traditionally anathema to me--or maybe I just learned to accept games for what they're doing rather than what I think they should be doing. Either way, I've seen the light. I was wrong. Into the Breach is great.

Into the Breach ain't Advance Wars. Even though the snackable levels and finger lickin' good sprite art sated that lingered hunger in my occipital lobe. But unlike Advance Wars we're not here to spend countless turns setting up choke points and Sami-spamming Mech Infantry to cheese our opponent. No, we got 3 units and around 3 or 4 turns to get our business done. That means precision, that means planning, that means playing as a cerebral surgeon instead of a lumbering jarhead. There's more complexity here too through mechanics like terrain deformation, pushing and pulling via attacks, smoke, acid, ice--you name it, they got it. Nevermind a whole array of different units you can use and/or fight against all which require different strategies to leverage or combat.

What this means is it is a puzzle box. Each level is a complex permutation of all of those variable shook up and it's your job to solve that bastard in a handful of turns. And--due to the way it's all been masterfully constructed and balanced--you can. Every level can be solved, can be beaten. If you're really good, with no losses. And if you're not really good, you'll still learn something about how all these systems come together that you can use on your next run. I went from frustrated the first time I played to feeling like a god damned time traveling tactical genius. "Greetings Vek, I am the mech who's about to fuck your day up. Now crawl your asses out of those holes so I can curb stomp you."

Into the Breach is great. But it's not Advance Wars. Some part of me wishes it was more of a carefully crafted single-player campaign instead of an infinitely spinning, n-dimensional roguelike spitting out level after level, unlock after unlock. I was happy to play it on its terms this time around and I was happy to be wrong. But man, I sure wish Nintendo would push for another Advance Wars.