Into the Breach: A Masterpiece that Drags On 

Video games are a great source of entertainment: they’re fun, they’re absolutely art, and they can bring isolated people together. In this new series, Jayden Cammarata- Witherly Heights’ new game critic- reviews a few of his favorites, least favorites, or anywhere in between.

By: Jayden Cammarata

After Earth is destroyed by the Vek– skyscraper-sized alien bug monsters– humanity’s would-be defenders go back in time with their giant death robots to prevent the apocalypse in a different timeline. This is the premise of Into the Breach, an intensely tactical roguelite from the creators of FTL.

At the beginning of each game of Into the Breach, the player gets a squad of 3 mechs to command, dropped onto a grid randomly populated with forests, mountains, skyscrapers, and alien bug monsters. Each of these mechs and each of the Vek get one move and one action each turn. They each have a different way to attack: for example, firing a flaming rocket (the Meteor Mech from the Flame Behemoths squad), covering a target in binding webs before stabbing them (the Alpha Scorpion), or suplexing a Vek (the Judo Mech, from the Steel Judoka squad). 

Whenever a unit attacks another, the victim loses health. The mechs, and the Vek, can die this way. However, there are worse things that can happen than a robot being damaged: whenever a Vek hits a civilian building, the power grid will be damaged; if it drops to zero, the mechs all run out of power, the game is lost, the characters go back in time to save the world in a parallel universe, and the game restarts. 

If the grid is kept intact for 5 turns, the Vek will retreat. Between battles, each mech is fully repaired, but the power grid isn’t. These facts mean that there’s a strong incentive to play defensively, and prioritize defending citizens above slaying Vek. 

Knockback is Into the Breach’s main gimmick. Each Vek’s behavior is determined at the beginning of the turn, and will never change. Most mech’s abilities have some way to move enemies around, meaning they can change what the Vek end up doing; for example, pushing one enemy into another’s line of fire will cause them to shoot each other. Additionally, slamming Vek into one another deals bonus damage to both victims.

However, using knockback can be tricky. Each mech attacks and causes knockback in different ways, and since there are often only certain directions a Vek can be pushed to keep them from causing any damage, finding a way to make use of knockback can result in mind bending turns in which the environment, positioning, and even the Vek are all weaponized. 

Figuring out a clever sequence of moves to halt the Vek invasion can be challenging, but this is exactly what makes it rewarding. Every plan that falls into place makes the player feel like a genius. This is very much by design: Into the Breach is first and foremost designed to make its players feel smart. Every detail of the game works towards this goal in some way or another. For example, everything in the game does low damage and has low health, and this makes it very easy to see whether or not an enemy can survive an attack; this helps keep the game feeling like a series of victories earned through ingenuity rather than through luck.

Into the Breach’s soundtrack is also outstanding. The songs that play are futuristic, and fit the tone of each island. The best way I could describe them is “audibly smart”– another way the game makes its players feel like geniuses.  

Into the Breach’s multi-run progression is another place it shines. Each run, the player’s mechs’ pilots can be leveled up, improving their skills at driving giant death robots. At the end of each game, up to one pilot can be kept, along with all their acquired levels; this helps the game feel less punishing. However, no pilot can be leveled up above level 3; this keeps grinding out of the question. 

Another way the game gets easier over time and helps out stuck newcomers is through the unlocking of squads. Each squad has 3 associated achievements; earning one of them, or one of the 25 achievements available across all squads, rewards the player with a coin, which can be spent on a new mech squad. Squads which are harder to play effectively are more expensive, meaning more experienced players will have more ways to play, and more ways to challenge themselves.

Into the Breach is good, but not perfect. Its main flaw is that its runs take too long; a single attempt at the game can take up to two hours. Losing a game after such a long time investment is much more unpleasant than losing a near the end of a run in a faster paced roguelike such as, for example, Hades, in which a game is often won or lost in less than an hour.

This is also a problem because, as mentioned, the game keeps its damage numbers so low. While this trait makes the game less frustrating by making damage amounts and health bars easier to compare, it also means that the damage the power grid takes is rounded up much more coarsely– it’s impossible to take less than a seventh of the grid’s maximum life as damage. Because runs go on for so long and each point of damage is so significant, the only way to survive is by finishing most levels without taking any damage. Therefore, the line between the game being trivially easy with no risk of taking damage and so hard it’s impossible to win is very fine. Subset Games, the developers of Into the Breach, did a good job of finding this line– four times, for four different difficulty settings– but did not do perfectly.

The game’s protracted length is also a problem because it means that most, if not all, of the game’s content will appear in a single run. The game’s latest update, which added new enemies, mechs, songs, and more, helps greatly with this; however, the lack of variety is still very noticeable, and makes the game become repetitive unfortunately quickly. 

Making the player feel smart is Into the Breach’s first priority, and it succeeds at this. The game involves enough thought that figuring out a plan for a single turn feels like solving a Millenium Problem, yet the game never feels unapproachable. If each run ended sooner, the game would be nearly perfect. I would highly recommend Into the Breach for anyone searching for a good strategy game for their spare time. 

Final rating: 9/10

This Game ASAP: Become Ender Wiggins with a time machine

The Deicide Boolean: No.

Tips

• Civilian buildings are your second priority. Keeping your grid intact is vital, as it is the only thing that doesn’t get repaired between missions. The only higher priority (ignoring time pods, which are only encountered occasionally) is earning reputation, as that can be spent on utilities such as pilots as well as repairing your grid.