SteamWorld Heist 2 Review — Full steam ahead

SteamWorld Heist 2 sets sail as a sequel to the beloved turn-based tactics shooter, replacing the sport’s spacefaring setting with a swashbuckling open-sea adventure. In a world inhabited by steam-powered robots, clean water is briefly supply, and it’s all the way down to Captain Leeway (that’s you!) and his crew to heist the Great Sea in quest of answers, loot, and hats. A lot of hats.

The sport’s fundamental missions are turn-based, with players commanding their crew as they sneak into enemy bases to plunder loot and complete objectives. During every turn, you have to rigorously plan where to position your steambots for the perfect strategic advantage based on enemy positions, hazards, objectives, and the aimline on your weapons. While you’re ready to fireplace and “scrap” enemies, you then line up shots and watch as bullets and projectiles fly across the stage and send metallic body parts in various directions.

SteamWorld Heist II’s gunplay is essentially the most satisfying I’ve ever experienced in a 2D title. There’s a singular thrill in lining up a sniper shot and watching the bullet ricochet off the partitions and into the metallic dome of an enemy behind and above you. While any weapon that isn’t a sniper is way tougher to land extravagant shots with, every successful hit feels incredible, especially paired with the sport’s excellent sound design.

Speaking of sound, the dulcet tones of Steam Powered Giraffe grace your ears as you come to a bar at the tip of an in-game day to spend your hard-earned currencies on latest weapons or crewmates and rest up your existing team for tomorrow’s adventure. Between the comfy feeling of unwinding after a mission, the hilarious tavern shanties hyping me up for the following, and conversations with various wacky steamboats, this technique works brilliantly through the campaign — but somewhat of an inconvenience when grinding XP to progress.

After a restful break and strategic spending of Gallons, the sport’s fundamental currency, it’s time to embark in your next adventure across the open sea. Here, you engage in real-time battles with other ships as you navigate your submarine to the following mission to uncover hidden treasures, because of newly acquired upgrades. Treasures resembling secret hat store accompanied by a catchy Steam Powered Giraffe song about how sensible hats are.

While the map to progress from one mission to the opposite evokes a way of discovery and makes SteamWorld Heist’s campaign feel like a real adventure, the “real-time” naval combat leaves much to be desired in comparison with the incredible gunplay of the missions themselves. Guns and torpedos robotically fire from different areas of the submarine as you pass by enemy ships, amounting the combat to awkwardly scuffling your sub around with the WASD keys to hit enemies as you pass by to get to the following mission. Returning to missions to grind XP or collect more hats can also be an enormous pain within the neck.

Before starting a mission, you select your crew members and tweak their loadouts. The brand new job system in SteamWorfld Heist II is a game-changer, granting steambots access to different skills based on their equipped weapon. As you level up these jobs by completing missions, you possibly can mix and match skills to craft the right crewmate on your playstyle or a selected mission. Need a healer but don’t want to scrimp on AoE damage? Level up the Boomer and Engineer trees, and you’ve got one explosive medic.

Overall, the job system is a wonderful feature that keeps things fresh and gameplay more engaging. Nevertheless, it’s not with no glaring issue that affected my enjoyment of the sport as a complete. That issue is XP, or reasonably, how little XP (and currency) you gain from completing missions. Creating the construct you would like takes a number of grinding the identical missions, breaking the flow of the fundamental story. On anything above “Story” (easy) difficulty, grinding to maintain up with the steep difficulty curve and experiment with jobs and weapons is a necessity. The further you progress, the longer the missions are, and the more monotonous the entire ordeal becomes — especially when traveling back to previous areas and stopping at a bar between each level.

Thankfully, the issue is tweakable beyond “easy” and “hard” modes, with sliders to tweak elements like enemy damage, accuracy, and the time it takes for alarms to sound and reinforcements to flood in. That is an incredibly impressive feature and one I’m thankful for, though balancing between too easy, too hard, and too long is a science in itself.

Pacing issues aside, SteamWorld Heist 2’s campaign is enjoyable when it isn’t being interrupted. Stages are hand-crafted and feel distinct enough from one another to stop them from feeling repetitious. While I didn’t particularly find myself strongly attached to any characters or ultra-enthralled with the narrative, I adored the world itself and the hilarious lines of dialogue spouted from wacky tavern guests or egomaniacal bosses. The sport’s visuals and character designs are vibrant, daring, and colourful, and I can’t wait to go to the previous SteamWorld titles to explore this universe much more.

Conclusion

SteamWorld Heist II is a charming mix of strategy and motion that delivers a very amusing adventure in every sense of the word. The sport’s turn-based combat is a highlight, offering a satisfying (and I can’t use that word enough) mixture of planning and execution. The job system adds depth to character progression, allowing players to customize their crew to suit their playstyle perfectly. Eventually.

The sport’s vibrant world, full of quirky characters and top-notch dialogue, creates a captivating and comfortable atmosphere. Gear and XP gain, pacing, and travel are undeniable issues that detract from the general enjoyment of the sport, but when the gameplay is nice, it’s rattling good. Land a trickshot with a rocket launcher across an underwater bunker, ping the stripy hat off an enemy, watch your steambot plow it on their metallic head, and tell me you’re not having a great time. There are some things that hats and good music do fix.