I've been playing this game since E.A. for over 2 years now, and a review of this game is something I've been looking forward to making for a while. At the time of this writing, I've pretty much milked everything this game has to offer in terms of gameplay (obtained every mastery/mastery set, obtained top-tier equipment for all characters+extra equipment for when new characters come out, made all the pets/robots/mastery boards I wanted, gotten all achievements, ect.), so this review is from the perspective of someone who has seen and experienced everything the game has to offer thus far.

There's way too much to do in this game. So much, in fact, that it's not easy to describe it all in a single review. Instead, it's easier to describe the type of person that would enjoy this sort of game. If you're a fan of RPG's - someone who gets peak enjoyment out of a game after its first 20 hours rather than within the first 20 - then you'll love this game. This will be your new favorite game!

For me, the most endearing aspect of Troubleshooter comes not from the gameplay, but from the people surrounding the game. The development team behind the game, Dandylion, is a small group of 6 people that created a passion project that they wished to share and grow with the community. A large number of features and systems that are within the game actually came to be due to community input; the developers constantly go out of their way to engage with the community, and that constant discourse between the players and the developers has fostered so much good-will that the players have taken it upon themselves to help improve the game through a community discord, an unofficial wiki, numerous community guides, an unofficial translation tool, and a host of threads explaining how Dandylion should open up a Patreon/create DLC so that players can support them financially because they genuinely feel that they're ripping off the developers due to the game offering so much at the cost of so little. The people surrounding the game are, without a doubt, the reason I've enjoyed Troubleshooter enough to put in over 1,400 hours (with more to come).

The only other thing I want to address in this review is the translation. If you're the type of person that can read a grammatically incorrect/oddly-structured sentence, but still grasp the ideas and sentiment of what was being conveyed through said sentence, then the translation isn't going to hinder your enjoyment of the game. Obviously this does not apply to everyone, and the developers have plans to hire a proper translation team down the line once they're able to afford it. Until then, in order to help fix the game's translation, the developers look to player feedback regarding translation issues, and act quickly to fix any that are brought to their attention. There is also a convenient in-game translation tool that allows you to edit all dialog within the game, while also allowing you to view other's suggestions and upvote the ones that you think are the best. There's also an unofficial translation tool made by a player that allows you to edit all in-game dialog with the ability to export the game's script afterwards if you wish to share your changes with the developers that way. Proper translation is something both the developers and the community care about deeply; the game's story is a great one, and everyone wants it to be told in as many languages as possible with the best translation possible.

To anyone that is a fan of RPG's, I highly recommend this game. To anyone that has grown jaded and disillusioned to an industry that's content with making products instead of passion projects, I HIGHLY recommend this game. If anyone reads this review and decides to give it a try, I'm sure you'll enjoy the game just as much as I have.

This game is insane. The sheer amount of ... stuff ... in this game puts fullprice games with 5 DLCs to shame. And the best part is that it's good stuff that actually enhances the game.

Basically, imagine that Firaxis-XCOM and a korean RPG had a baby. And that baby then got addicted to tradeable card games. That's Troubleshooter. A tactical squad game held together with RPG story and a bonkers amount of stuff to collect. And every piece you collect gives you more options on how to skill your characters.

To give you some points of reference, it took me 130 hours to play through the game (including the first DLC, which is free btw) on Hard. And i still have not seen 35 of the almost 290 enemies. I am still missing 90 of the 730 skills that you can equip onto your characters to customize them. I still didn't discover 120 of the 380 combinations of skills that unlock further bonuses. In the 150 hours i played the game, it constantly offered new stuff to me, it didn't get stale along the way even once. AND I COULD STILL PLAY FOR ANOTHER 50 HOURS AND STILL CONSTANTLY FIND NEW STUFF. How insane is that for a game that costs 20 bucks and is actually good?

I am a huge XCOM2 fan, i spent 4 years playing and modding that game fanatically (If you are aware of A Better ADVENT and the related mods... that's me). Troubleshooter has all that stuff in it that the modding community put into XCOM2 over time: Varied character classes, oodles of skills, varied enemies. Along the way it also solves the alpha-strike issue that XCOM2 has by making defenses equal to offenses. I genuinely enjoy the tactic layer here more than in XCOM.

Let me be fair and list three things that Troubleshooter doesn't do as well as XCOM: It doesn't have permadeath for your characters, so it's missing a good deal of that XCOM-style suspense. As a korean game translated on a shoe-string budget, its english translation is shaky. The missions are fixed and not randomized. There's some minor variation in some of the missions (like being able to choose one of 4 entry points) but the lack of randomization is certainly a negative. There you go, that's literally everything i have to note on the negative side.

Oh, and i didn't even talk yet about pets, constructable robot minions, the crafting system, random Diablo-style loot, buddy systems and some of the other extra mechanics this game has. You know, all that stuff we modded into XCOM2 after the fact. Frankly, this game has too much in it. Didn't think i would say that about a game, but here we are. It's the Gloomhaven of video games.

And this was put together by 6 people in Korea. Eat your heart out, 2K.

This game deserves awards. It's a 10/10 for me and i am eagerly awaiting the next DLC. Whatever Dandylion puts out next is going to be an instant day 1 buy for me on principle alone.

A great tactical turn-based RPG.

Gameplay: similar to XCOM on a fundamental level, but diverges once the build customization, crafting, taming and other mechanics come into play.

Here's a quick rundown of the features:
* 9 recruitable characters, each with their own personality, skills and play style
* 3 classes for each character (base class + 2 advanced classes). Each plays differently and comes with a unique set of abilities
* Beast taming / Drone building. Satisfying and can be leveled and customized just like characters.
* Mastery system is highly flexible and allows you to build a character for any play-style or role
* Crafting system is deeply integrated into the game, and pretty extensive
* AI doesn't cheat, and instead uses the same underlying systems as your own characters (skills, masteries, leveling etc). This makes them challenging, but fair.
Tactically, they will CC you, take cover, hide, overwatch, smoke, etc.
* Can replay any mission, and pick different choices

Story: the presentation is a bit like an anime, but it doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment. There is quite a bit of dialogue, and some missions offer choices, though consequences are usually restricted to that particular mission. Also, unlike XCOM, every mission, even side quests, is part of the greater story and tied more or less to the main plot line.

I should mention that the story is deeper than it might appear at first sight. Characters have their own motivations and reasons for helping you, and interestingly, they have their own views on each other. No character exists within their own bubble. Personally, I can't wait to see where the game takes it from here.

* Note: the English translation is not perfect. There will be awkward phrases, some weird descriptions and other inconsistencies which a native or educated speaker will notice.
Though they are getting better, with an ingame tool to suggest better translations and the forum suggestions being implemented quickly.

Length: with >70 missions and late game missions taking 1-2 hours, it's around 100 hours for an average player to finish the game. If you want to get into the crafting system, taming, getting rare masteries, epic/legendary gear and other end-game activities, then expect much more.

Multiplayer: rather barebones at this point (there's email, chat, trading), planned to be expanded on. You don't miss anything important if you play in offline mode, but switching from offline to online is not possible, just the reverse.

Another point worth mentioning is the dedication and community involvement of the developer team, monitoring feedback, replying to comments and fixing bugs quickly. Much appreciated.

I confess, I never knew what this game was before I bought it. My friend and I joked around the steam store when we stumbled upon this. At first, it’s title is weird. I mean, I thought it was probably your usual steam bloat. But then, when I look at the screenshots, I was like, “This is basically X-COM but with...anime-ish feature” Since it was priced lower before than Chimera Squad (Dandylion please don’t sue me) and I was in a X-COM maniac mode, I said, “Sure, why not”

Suffice to say that, after playing this from start to the end, this is literally the better X-COM Chimera Squad (XCCS) than X-COM Chimera Squad is.

There’s a lot of things that the developer put in this game with a lot of depth, and that is the greatest thing about Troubleshooter. The game is so, so deep. It’s not like X-COM where your strength starts from basic to laser to plasma or psionics (or advanced units like MECS or Templar/Skirmisher/Reaper, but let’s put that away). There’s buildcrafting. You see, in this game, the character strengths are defined by masteries that you can put. Think of it like mods or traits. The best part? There’s a lot of masteries, and I mean, over 200-ish masteries. But not just that. Combining certain masteries will give you a mastery set, which means even more possibilities! You want your tank to be a fireball slinger instead of punchy punchy? Sure. Want your healer to be a debuffer? Why not. Or you want to make your own templar from WOTC, complete with the OP of the Reaper and Parry trait? Why the hell not. The game lives and breathes through its depth, and I can see how meticulous the devs are in this game.

Another thing that it has is its story. XCCS is the first entry from X-COM that tries to focus its narrative and its results are...okay, I guess? Troubleshooter, on the other hand, is different. I always love a story in which its whole cast is interconnected, and boy, there’s a lot of twists in the game. The story really surprises you sometimes that you don’t expect that one particular thing can cause an impact. I like how the story connects as time goes on, and it shows how some plot holes are patched as the game progresses.

But are there bad things about this game? Hmm, I wouldn’t say bad, but more of a “depends” stuff. First, I did say the game has depth. But, reaching that depth would take a long time. It really takes time for things to start gearing up, not just from gameplay but from the plot. I’d say about...25 to 30-ish. It’s okay for some, but some people will be put off by this, especially nowadays when there are a lot of AAA open-world huge stuff yada yada yada. Like I said, it’s not bad, but it’s not good either. It depends.

Another mixed thing is that the start of the game is a bit overwhelming, at least for me. You can be anything in this game, yes, but freedom and effectiveness are two different things. I wouldn’t know how to exactly make my build stronger without some guide. This is a mixed bag, I know, but I would’ve preferred if the game does hand me at least a template for builds or advanced tutorials.

...wow, this is a long review. I think that’s because Troubleshooter has a lot of things to say. It doesn’t copy. It takes notes from XCOM and Fire Emblem in some way. But, it manages to combine all that note and it becomes a thing of its own, and a fantastic game it is. All fans of XCOM, Fire Emblem, SRPG or strategies should really look into this, as this is an underrated gem.

Oh, and I can’t wait for episode 2. I really can’t.

...maybe I can if you put some kind of psi-blades for Irene or Albus or Leton. Pretty please?

So the legend I heard about Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children is that its origin is that a dev-team used to making mobile games decided to make a game that you just bought. Every tool of unbelievably super-maximalist throw-everything-in long-running mobile RPG design has been thrown in here, except instead of being done with an eye on monetization, it's just... for fun. Because it's cool.

But oh wow there's so much. There's so many systems in this game. Build robots. Catch monsters. Craft gear. Dismantle gear. Farm super hard missions for rare gear. Upgrade your characters with 20+ interlocking mastery abilities at once. Run teams of ten of these complicated characters at a time. Combine certain ones to unlock secret mastery bonuses. Specialise in certain jurisdictions to obtain bonuses from the respect of their communities. There's multiplayer that I've never touched. Order drinks for your crew at cafes. Pay their salary (you give them a bonus for their hard work - why would you ever not do that? They deserve it.) Assign teamwork bonuses. The Hero Irene thinks Heixing needs to put a shirt on so she gains -50% less affinity for him. I play on normal difficulty and I'm pretty sure I could ignore at least some of these systems but wow there's still a ton of them.

Sometimes the translation can be a little stilted, but the feelings it wants to convey definitely carry through. I like it!

Also, it has this incredible obsession with following the antagonists of the game as characters - like, pre-mission scenes are always from their point of view? Always? Whether they're cultists or gangsters or... like, frog monsters. You get to pick dialogue choices for them. Sometimes the dialogue choices affect their tactics in the fight you're about to do. It's wild.

Do you want to play what is possibly the most unbelievably maximalist tactical RPG ever? That's Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children. It rules.

Calling a game a 'Hidden Gem' is kind of cliche at this point, but this is absolutely 100% a hidden gem of the strategy RPG genre. I've been a big fan of series like X-Com, Fire Emblem, or Tactics Ogre for a long time and this $25 game from a small studio holds up against the best of the best. So even though I never write Steam reviews I feel like it would be a disservice NOT to shill this game a bit.

If you're familiar with X-Com or similar titles, you can largely understand how this game works. Top-down, tile-based, squad fighting. Unlike X-Com and more similar to titles like Final Fantasy Tactics, this game uses an AP system where instead of each side taking its turn at once, each individual character will take its turn depending on its speed, as well as modifiers such as what actions it took the previous turn or status effects. Also unlike X-Com, through the game you build a small squad (9 at end of main game) with no permadeath.

+Pros/-Cons:

+ High Build Customization: There's a system in this game called the Mastery Board. Basically, each character has multiple slots to place Masteries on. Masteries are modifiers for your character, and equipping certain masteries together might also unlock a Set which boosts the modifiers given. There are, at this moment, 827 masteries and 427 mastery sets. Many of these masteries are class or even character specific, and many of them are also limited to Beast units (more on that later) but that is a MASSIVE amount of build variety possible. I spent a lot of time workshopping combinations and then testing them in battle and I loved every minute of it. Also, every enemy you encounter in the game is built on its own masteries, only a few of which are enemy-restricted. So if you see an enemy with an interesting build, you can check that enemy's masteries and build your own unit similarly.

+ The Beast/Drone System: Later in the game you get a character on your squad who can tame beast enemies you encounter-- including many bosses. The process of taming is rather delicate, and taming a difficult enemy can involve a lot of risk taking for the ultimate reward: however tough that enemy was, once tamed your tamer character can summon them to most battles. This greatly expands the variety of units you can build and bring into battle. The drone system is similar-- you get a character who can summon controllable drones to the field. These drones have their own version of masteries called modules, of which there are 103 with 45 possible sets. There are different kinds of drones with different niches from high-speed drones with flamethrowers to tanky slow drones that fire movement-restricting spider webs. You individually build each drone with the crafting system, and it's a good sink for excess money and material late-game.

+ Massive gameplay customizability. If you don't like something about the game, there's a decent chance you can change it. For difficulty level alone, there are five options (Safe to Cruel), as well as a Challenge Mode that makes missions much harder which can be enabled for most missions individually. You can enable additional challenge options such as making boss units more difficult, limiting your level to the recommended level cap of each mission, give enemies additional masteries, and more. For speed of game, there are SEVEN options for how fast your or enemy's movements go where most games would give three options at most.

+ Guides and Information: This game has a lot going on in terms of mechanics, masteries, enemy variety, loot, etc. However, just about anything you need to know CAN be found in game. The help menu is extremely thorough and even gives exact information such the equation to see how a unit's speed translates into AP. Every piece of loot or crafting material you get, as well as every mastery and every mastery set you have used, are all kept in easily accessible indexes in-game. There is an information system where as you encounter an enemy type more and more you get information on what masteries and attacks it has, its loot drop table with exact percentages, what maps you can find it on, and other useful information. For such an complex game, I only had to use google ONCE to find an answer to something I couldn't figure out. Everything else was readily available in-game.

+ The story takes a while to really build but it is very engaging, does a fairly good job balancing the arcs of all the different characters that join you, and gives a lot of interesting lore about the world around you both implicitly and explicitly. The end of the main game ("Season 1") leaves some plotlines incomplete for the DLC and possible future seasons, and I genuinely want to see where it goes.

- The early game is slow and doesn't come close to how good the later game becomes. You start off with just the main character supported by generics, and you only build your team up gradually through the game's story. I think this largely comes down to how the game was developed chapter to chapter in Early Access. The best battle mechanics such as beast taming or the dance system only really come into play midway into the game because they took time to develop.

- When you first start a new game you have to choose between playing Online mode or Offline mode. If you choose Offline, you can not switch that game to be Online later, meaning you can not interact with other players in-game or fighting others in PvP (I don't see many people online at any given time and have not tried to do PvP). If you choose Online, you have to have internet connection and the server has to be up any time you want to play. You CAN export a copy of your online mode game to offline mode, but this option isn't really mentioned clearly anywhere. I don't think all these restrictions are worth it for fair PvP experience

+ The game is STILL being updated gradually. If you look in the DLC you can see that after the game came out of early access in 2020, an additional free DLC chapter was added, and now there's an additional $10 DLC chapter for which content is still being released. So that's new missions, higher level caps, new unique characters with their own highly customizable niches, still being added to a game with 100+ hours of content in the base game.

+ Content Content CONTENT: I've gotten 100+ hours of game time without even touching the DLCs yet. Main game has 7 chapters divided into 47 missions. A few of these missions are as short as a one-on-one battle but some can take well over an hour to complete. Every single story mission is repeatable and you can take different options in story dialogue by repeating these missions, with some achievements even requiring this. There are (as far as I've discovered) 35 repeatable mission maps, 11 of which are 'violent case' maps which offer additional challenge in exchange for useful boss drops. There are a few other one-off maps you might see through doing side quests. The game gives you plenty of incentive to repeat chapters to unlock new masteries, get better loot, tame the interesting boss beast, complete a side quest, etc. There are 258 steam achievements, some of which are quite difficult and I'm tempted to get them all.

There's probably a lot more I could say about this game, but I'll end by saying that if Troubleshooters 2: Banished Children or whatever it could be called came out tomorrow for three times the price of this game, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

[EDIT]: I have since beaten the first, free DLC and tried PVP. The free DLC adds one chapter and two characters, each of which holds up to the quality of what is in the main game.

As for PVP, it is unlocked only once you beat the main game meaning you could, like me, hit 100+ hours before ever even getting access. It is, however, very fun when you happen to find someone to do it with.

Not since FTL have I felt like I've ripped off a developer this badly by buying their game. I've got over 200 hours of fun out of this game and am looking forward to more - that is a steal at this price!

If you are in to squad level turn based strategy this game is a treat. It does two things better than any other entry into its genre than I can name: Give you a wide variety of options to customise your characters and make those options feel like genuine differences in kind.

Tactically speaking the real highlight of the game for me is the mastery board. A mastery is a passive bonus that can be simple like "+10% chance to hit" or quite specific like "If you deliver the killing blow to a target affected by one of the bleeding debuffs then take an extra turn". These wind up being things you want to combo in quite complicated ways, because the extra turn is great but your attack will be on cooldown so you need to find a way to reduce the cooldown to 0 so you can use it again. Also you have to start that bleeding somehow so it'd be good to make your attack do bleeding and then to get a second attack straight away so you can trigger your bonus. But of course every attack costs vigor so you might wind up spending it all if you get too many bonus turns so it'd be good to find a way to get that to come back faster...

Each individual thing is a bite sized ability you can get your head around, but finding combinations that let characters fill the role you want and then successfully executing those strategies in game becomes a challenge all of its own. The variety of enemies helps to add to that too - it's easy to feel invincible once you've managed to get a character to the point of having a block chance of 160% but then you encounter a giant frog that shoots its tounge through her to any of the characters beyond, snipers who take free shots with reduced block chance whenever any ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ attacks a character in your line of sight, or something else that stops it being a "One approach solves everything" game.

This in turn works because the game is scrupulously fair. The enemies are built on the same system as your characters, using the same collection of masteries as you. Whenever you take an enemy out you have a chance to learn one of its masteries. That adds up to being able to access a huge variety of strategies but also finding what happens in the game comprehensible. When someone throws a punch and a volley of sniper fire follows you don't go "Well that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t" you go "Oh they're using that supporting fire mastery I looked over. It's good, but it has a vulnerability, each support shot delays that characters next turn - so I know I can run someone at the snipers and their turn will probably come up again before the snipers are ready to fire"

This approach to enemy design means that by becoming familiar with your options and your characters abilities you automatically become familiar with the game's systems in a way that lets you figure out how to counter your opponent's choices.

And the thing is this: I've only scratched the surface here. That's just the mastery board, I've not mentioned mastery sets, equipment, animal taming, drone building...the game is full of integrated interacting systems that are generally rewarding to play with and give interesting options. There literally isn't space in a review to talk about everything that's good in this game - but at the same time they're introduced gradually enough that it never feels overwhelming.

It has its downsides too. It's a small Korean studio and the polish and translation sometimes shows it - you'll find the odd awkward phrasing or ambiguous description - but in 200 hours I've not experienced a crash or game breaking bug. It also has a few MMORPG sensibilities that feel out of place in this sort of game, things like a system that sort of prevents you from playing too many missions in a day (but in practice one that you can reset for a fraction of a fraction of the payment you get for finishing one mission). These don't really get in the way, but they make the experience feel a little less streamlined.

The tactical stuff aside the story is pretty enjoyable. While it does lean on some cliches it also has a few genuinely interesting and emotional moments. I particularly like how it'll show you cutscenes or even give you small gameplay sections from the point of view of your enemies. It makes them feel like intelligent adverseries who have goals and hopes and dreams beyond "We fight the good guys because we are the bad guys"

At the time of writing the reviews are mostly positive and the game outright deserves that, it's huge and brilliant and the devs keep adding more and more to it! Even the negative reviews are by people with 30-50 hours play time in the game, so you have to ask "What is the likely quality of a game where even the people who most dislike it decide to continue after spending more than a day of their life playing it?"

If squad based tactics is your jam, do yourself a favour and pick this one up.

Awesome. If you like to tinker with your games, this one is amazing. The ways you can design your team feel like they are functionally infinite. Excellent turn based combat. Limitless customization.

I've been a dedicated computer gamer since the late 1970's with only a few short dalliances with consoles. I've played thousands of games, and most of them were pretty good. Troubleshooters is a real standout - I'd put it in my top five, right next to Diablo 2 and Civilization 2. These are games that fire the imagination, inspiring to to hang on for just one more turn, just one more map. Just one more re-design of your newest pet. I'd say Troubleshooters is more of a "toy" than a game because there are so many interesting ways to go about your business. Play however you want to play.

Having played Troubleshooter for over 500 hours now, I feel I have a good grasp on what the game has to offer, and it's not hard to guess that I intend to recommend it. However, I'm going to start with the biggest problem first, since while it appeals very strongly to a specific kind of gamer, many would be put off by its structure and more importantly, its pacing.

As many other reviews have pointed out, one of the most difficult challenges of getting into Troubleshooter is its very slow start. To put it bluntly, everything about the early game is slow. Missions are slow, leveling up is slow, getting new masteries is slow, unlocking new characters is slow. Missions can very in length but on hard or above there are so many enemies that missions will likely take at least 45 minutes, possibly well over an hour, although to the game's credit it warns you about this. The gameplay follows the X-COM format of having two action points per turn on a square grid, with moving taking one, and dashing and attacking taking two. Turn-based combat is rarely fast, and Troubleshooter is no exception. To make things worse, this is also when the best feature of the game, the Mastery System, is at its weakest.

The Mastery System is at the core of Troubleshooter, and it is the reason why troubleshooter stands out among its peers. Essentially, masteries are mainly drops from enemies that provide specific benefits when equipped to a player character. They can also be unlocking by leveling up character classes, or completing specific achievements. These are inserted into character specific mastery boards, and only those which are equipped provide any benefit. These can vary from reducing the cooldown on abilities, to increased damage, or improved defense or healing. Furthermore, certain sets of (usually) four masteries can be equipped simultaneously to form a mastery set bonus, and these can be very powerful effects, typically being much more impactful than individual masteries. Many masteries are used multiple times in different sets, adding an additional layer of strategy to creating mastery boards. This brief description is however, underselling what is one of the best implemented systems for character customization I've ever come across. It's shame then, that its first impression is so mediocre.

In the beginning of the game you won't have many slots unlocked for masteries, as more slots only become available at certain level requirements. Additionally, the masteries from both basic and advanced character classes will only be partially unlocked, and these are some of the most powerful and interesting abilities in the game. This means that in the early game not only suffers from having few masteries unlocked, but also few slots in which to place them. The choice of mastery sets is even more restrictive, with the total available to the player being around a dozen for much of the early game. To put that into perspective, with all DLC, there are currently over 800 masteries and over 500 mastery sets. Even 500 hours later, I still don't have them all.

Unfortunately, none of this depth will be available to new players, and I could easily see someone put 15-20 hours into it, only to get bored. I myself have taken several extended breaks from the game, due to feeling like I wasn't progressing quickly enough. Even so, the sheer depth of the mechanics and the constant updates eventually drag me back to it, time and time again. The Mastery System deserves special attention, so I will be expanding upon it here.

Masteries are all classified as one of Basic, Attack, Ability, Support and Defense. They each slot into a sub-board of that specific type. Each mastery has its own cost ranging from 0-4, and takes up one slot on the board. In order to equip a mastery you must have at least one slot open of that type and the total cost of all equipped masteries must be equal to or below that total. For example, if my attack board had one slot open and a total cost of 10/12, I would be able to add a two cost mastery for 12/12, but not a three cost one, since 13/12 would be forbidden.

Each character has their own set of abilities tied to their basic and advanced class. There are 9 characters in the base game and 12 with all DLC, each with two advanced classes. Some classes are shared between characters, like Martial Artist, Black Mage, or Battle Mage, while others like Great Swordsman, Barbarian or Superstar are unique to specific characters. These class-locked masteries are generally more powerful then general masteries usable by everyone, which helps to give each character their own unique identity. Even characters which share classes feel distinct thanks to their ESP type, fire, wind, earth, spirit, etc., and their individual mastery unique to them (which is not part of their mastery board).

The Mastery System's complexity is also a double-edged sword, and players will have to balance physical vs. ESP damage, hit chance, critical hit chance, speed, ability cool down and cast delay. There is a lot to consider, saying nothing of gearing or ability selection. Using guides is almost mandatory when starting out, especially given the relatively poor tutorial and introduction the the game's mechanics. Players who truly want to min-max their characters and get the most out of the Mastery System will have to spend as much time, or even more time, out of combat then in combat and that's saying something. If that sounds about as fun to you as playing with an Excel spreadsheet, this game probably isn't for you.

For me, the number of viable builds per class is the greatest achievement of Troubleshooter. There are so many ways the create builds which play and feel very different to each other, even for the same class and character. Certain classes are so flexible they can fulfill any role from glass-cannon to support-tank, though others, like Black Mage, are more limited in scope. Even so, with the right masteries, gearing and abilities the options that you have for each team member is overwhelming, in both the positive and negative meanings of the word.

Normally the dev team would be a strange thing to mention in a review, beyond simply thanking them for their effort, but I feel the fact that Dandylion consists only 6 (SIX!) core devs is worth noting. The amount of content and rate of updates, bug fixes and patches, already among the most frequent I've ever seen, becomes even more impressive. Dandylion clearly love Troubleshooter and their endless dedication to it is incredible. I've rarely seen a bug and never had the game crash while I was playing it, and for a game as complex as Troubleshooter that's a great achievement.

I have a few minor criticisms here and there, such as how the story is meandering and unfocused (though the cast is likable), how the 3D models look dated, how the UI isn't the best, some balance issues, or how the translation is somewhat lacking (but serviceable). At the end of the day however, a game lives and dies on its core mechanics and Troubleshooter's are very, very good.

In conclusion, should you buy Troubleshooter? If you are looking for a simple pick up and play experience, I can't recommend it. But if you are willing to invest the time into it so that the mechanics reveal themselves in all their complexity, you'll find a lot to love. There's always another mastery to unlock, another build to try, another challenge to overcome. If you can get past the initial, grueling start you'll be rewarded with some of the best turn based combat you'll find anywhere and hundreds of hours of entertainment. Best money I've ever spent.

Very strong title in the gameplay vein of XCOM.

Rock solid gameplay with unique player characters, each with their own approach and abilities. Core combat is excellent, surpassing the new XCOM games.

Character progression is ridiculously deep, with an elaborate system of "Masteries" to create ability sets. For example, a group of Masteries might allow you to: 1) move farther; 2) do extra damage to a wounded target; 3) take an extra action after downing a target. This simple synergy makes a perfect "hunting dog" type character who can finish off several wounded enemies in a single turn. Imagine pairing this character with a friend who specializes in area effect attacks to spread wounds among several enemies at once.

And this is just one possible combination of a few example Masteries. There are hundreds of Masteries in the game - learned by defeating enemies who already know them - and characters can each equip a couple dozen! Building your characters as individuals and as a team is a joy, and beating new enemies to learn new Masteries is endlessly motivating.

Missions follow the familiar turn-based tactical format: move, cover, shoot, rush, flank, etc. but far from being a tired rehash of older titles, this game feels like a fresh new refinement of what makes such games good. Gameplay is kept fresh by steady introduction of new enemy types and a multitude of different mission parameters: assaults, defenses, rescues, escapes, area control, object retrieval, and more.

I don't like to write a review before I've completed a game, but I'm 60 hours into this with no end in sight. There are still a ton of characters to recruit, new enemies to discover, and even new systems to unlock! (I don't really understand what these magical element deposits are for yet ...)

If you need more turn-based tactics in your life, look no further. Don't wait for a sale. The base price of $25 is a steal for the value here.

Good hunting!