-tl;dr Review: 4/10 DO NOT BUY-
Overpriced even on sale, you'll get maybe 8 hours of gaming out of it. It's shallow, so when you do enjoy it, just know you won't get much more of it.

A steal at a dollar, fairly priced at $5, neutral at $10, what are you gonna do/maybe if I'm rich at $15. At $25, go ahead and buy yourself two premium AAA titles that are a year old and do yourself a favor.

(Also note -the forums are kinda hidden, (link http://steamcommunity.com/app/267220/discussions/ ) note that developer Derek Smart WILL ban you if you disagree (http://i.imgur.com/e1SZkWG.png), /posts against the game will be deleted. He hasn't changed from the Battlecruiser "THIS IS THE GREATEST GAME EVER AND YOU'RE ALL PLEBES!" Usenet days. :/ http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3553620/the-redemption-of-derek-smart

-Full Review-

Graphics

They're fine -maybe even cool - but space marines are pretty ubiquitus now. I get that this is art he's been using for years (though WH40k, Heinlein, Doom etc etc really made these settings so nobody gets credit) but I couldn't help thinking "blue mass effect." This game has a lot of blue and red, and if you play it on a mobile device at a mobile price that would be fine but on a PC the graphics just look... well, ported.

Also $25 bucks feels high because he's basically just reusing assets from the MMO -
(Not this game - just the same stuff. The MMO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALg8Nzccbnw ) to make a game. They're fine, and probably the best part of the game, but if you've played Halo, Mass Effect, or anything else you've seen these designs, ships, locations, armors. It looks kinda like the aliens from the movie Battleship, honestly.

Gameplay

I'm going to seperate this from controls, so I'll say this is the best part. You can move dudes around, trick the ai to rush you, put down ♥♥♥♥, use nades. The 16 levels you get are pretty fun (though if you're good at it they go by very quickly - especially if you don't fully explore them.) Ugrading equipment and leveling are satisfying - though this is part of the shallowness - not many levels, not many upgrades, etc. Just enough to wet your whistle.

The big things are neat and genuinely scary, and the space combat is the most fun part (as would be expected of a D/S game.) And that's how the game-play would be if the next section of the review doesn't exist.

Controls

Here there be dragons... These might work on a tablet - I do not know. But the mouse and keyboard is radial menus and brokenness and confusion. There's no screen pause to catch your breath - instead it's the freemium mobile style right to menu (so you can't tactically advance ahead of the pay-to-play mechanic on tablet by stopping to think) BS that drives me nuts. Can I just get a moment to think in a clear screen, please? I paid 25 dollars. (And don't worry there's no Freemium pay to play nonsense in this, but at that price there had better not be - it's just the mechanic still exists in the game.)

(Combat http://youtu.be/sU37J3JjXUA?t=6m43s)

Everything moves faster than you can get the controls to work (unless you're really good at counter-intuitive controls - I moved through the game very quickly but I understood where the levels were trying to take me and I did that/moved VERY slowly.) I almost died a lot (but based on some other reviews I'm apparently very good - I got through many levels with 0 revives and one dude barely alive - so if you're all wiping a lot I'm not surprised. I may have gotten supernaturally lucky.)

(You'll note that in their videos they use a ton of cuts - that's probably because doing a tutorial without screwing up has got to be difficult with the control scheme.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TvRQYc6oUM

Basically the controls are broken, and if you tell the dev that he'll accuse you of being bad at games, but I'd like to see a lets play of someone really rocking this control scheme when the ♥♥♥♥ goes down if it's as easy as the dev says, along with a shot of their hands moving on the mouse/keyboard. Pressing 1-4 to select dudes is helpful, but it's the menus and the inability to "clean pause" that ruins it.

On top of that, there's no volume control (because it's a PORT and tablets have switches for that.)

Replayability

There is a horde map. You can replay it. It's got nowhere to hide, no choke points, and a lot of fences. Did you die? Play it again. There is a campaign. It's actually pretty fun. When you're done with it a few hours later, play it again. (not out of order though, you don't get to replay missions without replaying the whole shebang.) Play it more if you want equipment you don't need, or weaker versions of equipment you have. Done all that? Write a review and get banned from the forums forever.

It's been about 5 hours and you're done. Happy 25$

Price

I get that games cost money. But the constantly being taken down video of the game that this is based on uses all the same assets as this (a game that I believe is tardy, but don't quote me on that.) And on android it's much, much less {$4.99.} It's why I say this game would be a steal at a dollar and fair at five - when this is a five dollar game with the Dev not attacking players, it will be a solid effort and 6 out of 10, but when you charge a premium price you review against that.

Try to point this out and this happens: http://i.imgur.com/K8dn30P.png

Total: 4/10 DO NOT BUY.

I can't recommend this - some of the additions below will show why, but it's mostly the game/price. The rest is just... very, very odd behavior.

SCREENIES, LINKS
* How the review WAS shaping up, and the nonsense that ended up tanking it http://steamcommunity.com/app/267220/discussions/0/558747921885310403/
and proof of my banning for "rude". http://i.imgur.com/sy2DLJS.png)
* Yet more banning going on, and now he's editing other people's comments. http://i.imgur.com/QrbFxDY.png http://imgur.com/1qHnDoQ
* "Derek Smart on why Line of Defense Tactics costs more on PC than on mobile devices"
http://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/derek-smart-why-line-defense-tactics-costs-more-pc-mobile-devices
* A hilariously fake review and the accompanying censurous legal threat: http://www.somethingawful.com/game-reviews/completely-libelous-review/1/
* More context. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic/E7q27JJGvJ4
* Metacritic score http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/line-of-defense-tactics---tactical-advantage
* How Derek felt about deving for mobile (Before deving for mobile) http://youtu.be/ibCpjQRSSTs?t=4m21s
* Derek accuses me of having multiple accounts and "teases" the word lawsuit while tl;dring
http://steamcommunity.com/app/267220/discussions/0/558747922093449025/ EDIT: More veiled threats http://i.imgur.com/4aoy4ks.png

My response:

Derek,
I don't have a mob, YOU have a mob. You have spent the better part of 30 years alienating and pissing people off with your behavior, aparently (see above.) As for multiple accounts, I am willing to work with Valve to prove you're lying again (PHD) (Coke Machine) (Neural Net) and as for the veiled lawsuit BS do what you must, but my father always said "don't threaten to sue, sue. Legal threats are toilet paper if they're not carried out" so feel free to friend me and I'll give you the address to serve your censurous legal threat at and I'll see if Popehat or Public Citizen will stick up for me.

But again, I don't know these people, they're here because of *your* behavior here, or over the years. Please do not give me credit for people disliking you, you've worked so hard to make it so that I don't deseve the credit.

This is a fair review of the game YOU created - if you dislike the reviews, change the price or fix the game (or both), don't try to run the messenger over with a steamroller.

W. R.
"Mob Troll" or whatever.

P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tIn1_9YvGds

I want to love this game, there is so much potential. Its let down by an appaling interface. You cant pause without giving an order... Whats wrong with the spacebar to pause??? it works for every other game like this. Also why use radial menus? they are for console games. PC games use the mouse and keyboard. List the squad members across the bottom of the screen and place the order buttons for each one above their picture, that way you can see their status and what they have avaibable easily. Every time i play this my squad gets whiped out because i deliver an order to charge forward out of cover by accident. Anything more complex than move and shoot is too complex in the heat of battle... which defeats the point of this game.

To put this game in to one word, I'd say it's obnoxious.
The control scheme is novel, but appauling and awquward. There are all ready better control schemes designed for this kind of thing, and they work. If you hold the "order bar" in one spot for one second, literally one second, I get some rotory options wheel that i can't back out of without having to start over my order.
Also, theres no restarting a checkpoint, or even restarting the entire mission. If you mess up something, the only option is to back out of the mission entirely, and go through 5 menus to start up again, and half of them are basically a "are you sure you want to start this level?" kind of selection.
Theres no real cover in this game either. There are little areas marked by dots that provide a half damage factor, but that's all you get. The "cover" works in all angles around it too, so there's no real purpose for tactical moving in order to flank, or prevent flanking. Theres no suppressive fire, no smoke grenade to mask movements, no higher ground advantage, Nothing that really even incorporates tactics besides not making your squad run too far into the map and getting overwhelmed by guys that you couldnt see because of the lame ass fog of war. Theres no real tactic necessity when playing. Which hardly makes sense, seeing that "tactics" is the biggest part of the title.
This game blows. I'm incredibly dissapointed because it looked like it'd be super fun

Boring, uninspired, not too functional. Dev that instead of taking feedback to make better games insults and threatens them.

Do not buy. Do not support.

Clunky. Difficult to understand why the controls weren't mapped for the PC. Short, lacks a good story.

Most of all... the Dev has a track record for hating on his customers, and this time around is not any different.

Walls are simply suggestions. Line of sight is a fluid concept. GoTY 2014.

Nice try. But it's trash.

Line of Defense Tactics is a real-time strategy game that provides the player access to four characters in a squad, giving access to various items and upgrades, like flash grenades, to assist them in eliminating the opposition. The interface is relatively easy to navigate at first, with scrolling occurring by clicking and dragging (or using WASD) and actions by your soldiers are handled by either click-and-dragging from the units to where you want them to move or attack, or by just clicking on the ground or enemy and choosing an action from a radial context menu. The average level will have players moving their units from cover point to cover point, attacking various enemy units that are between your force and the objective.

A real time strategy game somewhat lives and dies by its control scheme, and point and click, click and drag is really all you'll need in order to play, and complete, Line of Defense Tactics. Unfortunately, the controls are also incredibly clunky despite their simple appearance, much of it being due to not transitioning all that well from mobile implementation. There are various spots where the UI and radial menus could be a bit streamlined by utilizing the keyboard to higher degrees than it currently is implemented- at least giving a consistent keyboard shortcut to exit the radial menu, rather than requiring the player mouse over to close on the radial and select it, would be nice. If this feature is already in the game, then it's not in the Tutorial Videos or anywhere else on the UI therefore I don't feel bad for having missed it- it's the game's job to tell the player what the controls are, so it's best to leave trial-and-error to adventure games like Myst, not the controls of a strategy game.

A lot of information about how to actually take advantage of the controls isn't even shared with the players in-game, which is a grievous mistake as it's apparently caused a lot of confusion among, well, most of the people who have played the game. An example of this would be that most players think that they can only either select one unit or all of them, as that is all that's communicated to players by the tutorial videos and in-game tooltips, but something completely undisclosed to players in-game is that you can use the ctrl key plus the click-and-drag to select two or three of the characters, rather than having to select one or all units with no in between. Players can also utilize the 1, 2, 3 and 4 keys to select individuals or groups of your characters as well, but this, too, is never properly conveyed to the player in-game, which is likewise odd as it saves a significant amount of trouble in cramped areas early, which is from where a lot of the control frustrations stem. These keys/actions aren't even mentioned in the input tab of the Configuration menu and I had to go to the game's website in order to find a manual with the hotkeys, as one wasn't even installed with the game in its directory (which is a relatively common practice on Steam, but it can just as easily be included in-game for polish and a cohesive package).

Of course, beyond even that, there's still more to discuss on matters of the controls: They're horribly imprecise. This is meant literally, not ambiguously, as this inaccuracy in accepting inputs seems to stem from the nature of Line of Defense Tactics mobile heritage: Thumbs are not as precise as mouse pointers, so on a 4 or 5 inch screen, being a small amount off from selecting and directing a specific unit is fine. However, on a 23 inch monitor and a 1920x1080 resolution, I was driven mad a couple of times early on because while trying to navigate all four units among cover points down a cramped hallway, I would find myself clicking almost two inches away from a unit on the space I wished them all to move only for the game to select the character closest to that spot instead of opening the radial menu, as what should have happened since I was clearly clicking on open ground.

There's really no excuse for panning the camera being done by both WASD and click and drag, but punishing you should you choose to use the latter by causing you to occasionally and erroneously direct units to locations away from cover to get shot at by foes when you just wanted to pan the camera north a bit, and it makes it just insulting when your click was well over an inch away from the soldier and shouldn't have caused this scenario at all.

Speaking of, it does need to be noted that there are a couple video tutorials that players can access from the main menu of the game, but there's a couple of problems with how this is currently implemented. For example, clicking the Tutorial Video option doesn't begin showing you anything in-game, it actually just minimizes the game, opens your default browser and goes to Youtube (which, I am unsure if it's an issue with my machine but the music from the game's main menu doesn't cease when minimized, which is a bit of a problem since the Youtube videos are voiced). Something more integrated with the actual software would have been much more appreciated.

Putting the controls behind us for a time, we can now focus more on the mechanics featured in Line of Defense Tactics. Players will find that they are able to customize their units, from different primary and secondary weapons to things like choosing between additional, disparate gear such as grenades, med packs or stealth units to sneak past foes. Individual squadmates can level up while their gear can be improved from one weapon to another by spending the currency you collect in missions. These little persistent changes allow players to customize things a little bit to their liking, which is always a nice inclusion.

There are a grand total of 16 stages that you get the opportunity to shoot and explode your way through and a lot of the levels are pretty entertaining, especially those with space combat. The stages don't overstay their welcome, being just enough to sit down in between tasks during downtime, but this also leads to the game being pretty short if you just run through the levels without fully exploring them. Unfortunately, players are not able to replay levels until they complete the campaign (for some reason, I'd say to keep people from upgrading too much but the skirmish map gives you money to upgrade, so.... I can't actually think of a good reason), so if you like replaying a space combat level then you'll have to beat the game before being given the chance.

The graphics are extremely poor. The character models are obviously upscaled variants from mobile devices, but the complexity of the models and textures leave a lot to be desired. The environments are about the same quality as the character models as they are littered about with objects apparent to be geometric shapes with smudgy textured overlaid, such as barrels topped with obvious octagons.

To summarize the most pressing matter: Is the game fun? It can be and is throughout solid portions of the playthrough. Moving units from cover to cover, firing grenades or even tricking the AI into rushing towards you away from their cover can be extremely entertaining once you get the hang of what you have to click in order to achieve a specific result, no matter how archaic it may be. The largest issue would be: Is it worth purchasing Line of Defense Tactics over something like XCOM, which only costs $5 more, or Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II which is $5 less but older? No, not as it currently stands. There may very be improvements to Line of Defense Tactics- Tactical Advantage in the future, but right now there are just better games with more features, more replayability and, well, controls that aren't crazily unintuitive and force you to select units that are two inches away from where you clicked.

As the only person who has played this game in all of 2021 may I just say I am honored to be likely the last of the people who will ever purchase and play this game. I purchased this game with the intent of playing it as an April Fools day prank for my own social media channels, but outside of that I decided to give this thing a fair shake to see if this might've been a diamond in the rough.

It's not. At all.

Ignoring the context of "outside influences" I am 100% confident that this game fails entirely on its own merits.

- The controls are simultaneously over-complicated and over-simplified to the point where getting your troops to the other side of the map is difficult. The only way to move around without wanting to blow your brains out is to use Move All, which causes the enemy to spot you out in the open so they can blow my brains out for me. For a game that seems to prioritize touch controls they work horribly in that context. Don't see why this game has controller support either - it is the worst approach to play.

- Progression is horribly unsatisfying and only adds a large element of grind to what likely is a 2 hour game at most, sans grind. While I wasn't able to stomach more than 3 levels I had manage to die quite a few times. This is due to issues above as well as enemies just being able to stomp ya without a fair bit of prep. The fact that you gain a pittance of XP/Creds from completing a level as well as the levels being overall a chore to go through makes wanting to grind out a few levels to move on a non-option.

-Presentation-wise, graphically the game is fine. Most stuff meshes together artistic wise even though it's heavily dated. The main issue are animations and sounds. The animations are absolutely stiff and unsatisfying. I get more life out of a rock-em sock-em robot match than these lifeless things trying to melee. I also can get better gun sounds from shaking a single TicTac in its case. If I can't get decent visuals, at least have a sound design that allows me to fill in the gaps in my head.

-Story is as engaging as the review you're reading, which in my opinion is best summarized as drawn out, disorganized, and full of fluff that you barely read in order to get to the point.

Yeah so game pretty bad. Can't wait for Line of Defense!

Line of Defense Tactics was originally designed and released as a mobile game for iOS and Android. I had a horrible experience playing this game due to the fact that I was laboring under the delusion that this was meant for the PC.

This game reeks of mobile game design; simplistic models, poor 3D rendering, stock sound effects, over sized buttons and options, even the writing and voice acting lacked originality and character. Some lines were read almost monotone. And the characters moving through the hallway were so badly animated that they seem to run in place.

Normally, I don’t judge a game too harsly on graphics and presentation when the developer is independent or obviously unskilled. But in this case, I feel compelled to due to the fact that the game they released for FREE on mobile devices is the same game that is for sale at $25 in Steam. The EXACT SAME game. No interface updates, no graphical improvements, no effort whatsoever was made to adapt this mobile game for inclusion in the Steam community.

Read our official review at SteamFirst.com.