thealexmott SteamWorld Heist II Review

I had been wanting this sequel for a WHILE. The first SteamWorld Heist is one of my all-time favorites, so I was more than ready for another round of Donald Duck Billiards Geometry Tactical Shootouts. It didn't end up reaching the heights of the first game for me, but it's still solid! Heist II does quite a bit to expand on the first game, and a lot of it works. The Like a Dragon-esque job system is a fun way to kit out your crew with different abilities and weapons, the overworld works well for the most part, and some of the new abilities and upgrades are really intriguing. In the late game, you'll be able to leverage your upgrades and skills to wipe out massive rooms of enemies in a single turn, which satisfies this very specific "Puzzle Mode in Tetris Attack" itch in my brain. As the game goes on, it does suffer a bit from its length. Traversing the overworld in your sub isn't the most fun, and there'll be a lot of monotonous backtracking if you're trying to complete everything. Beyond that, the difficulty is a bit wonky. I may played on the "Experienced" difficulty and never had my crew wiped out in a single battle, but I definitely got my sub blown up on the overworld! It's genuinely more dangerous out there than in the tactics gameplay, especially once you start diving and run out of air in an underwater passage. I think I preferred the more intense difficulty of the first game, with its focus on getting levels done in a set number of turns. Heist II is a much more forgiving game across the board, regardless of what difficulty you're on. There are regular checkpoints in levels to go back a couple turns, losing a fight doesn't seem to have real consequences, and leveling up your crew in various abilities will get them incredibly OP by the end. The game has three main regions of its overworld, and by the time I was entering the third, I felt like it was time for the game to be over. That certainly could be my fault for cramming nearly 30 hours of it into a week and a half, but I felt burnt out by the end, with the last chapter not really doing much to keep things interesting. Definitely still recommended if you enjoyed the first game, but it doesn't dethrone it in my eyes.