SteamWorld Heist

2023-09-04
This is an odd game in that I started by really enjoying my time with it but ended up pretty bored by it. The pitch had me hooked: what if you played Worms but it was you versus enemies in almost XCOM-like levels and your team leveled up earning new abilities and could buy and equip new gear as they went along. Wow, sign me up!

Well it delivers on the dream at least initially. You have your small crew, people are leveling up, you're getting cool abilities, you're getting new weapons. Then after a couple of hours you realize the environments and enemies are kind of monotonous. The abilities and weapons aren't getting more interesting and the difficulty starts to get cranked up consistently to the point where the main bosses I could only defeat on Casual difficulty (2 or 3 levels below where I started) and even then only after multiple tries.

The music and art tie it nicely together but they only elevate it to fine once you tire of the combat and the story is really only barebones to tie it all together. So in the end it turned from game that I loved to a game that I only tolerated. If there was way to recommend playing a game for like 5 hours this game would be an easy 8/10 but if you actually play the whole thing I think it drops down to a 6/10 for my personal enjoyment.