I love BSG so this game was a must get for me.

The gameplay isn't too sophisticated for a Strategy Game neither is it too simplistic, there's a nice blend in between.

KEY TIP for New Campaign Players:

As soon as you can, build a strong secondary fleet to always travel alongside your primary Fleet - the Daidolos. This is because whenever you move the Daidolos across the space map, more often then not it will get attacked by a randomly generated Cylon fleet - which makes you HAVE to play out the fight which after a while gets REAL repetitive because it's the same 3/4 battles recycled again and again. Any secondary fleets you have however are given the option to AUTO-SIM any Cylon attacks with win/loss probabilities in the instance of a single click - by having an escort secondary fleet alongside the Daidolos, you can save so much time by 'skipping' compulsory fights as the game gives you the option to use your secondary fleet to AUTO-SIM the attackers instead.

This has got to be one of the best space combat games i've ever played, made far better if you are already a fan of the BSG universe. With that being said there are quite a few minor annoyances and a couple of big ones too.

The good:

+ The turn based nature of the game suits the playstyle perfectly, something i wasn't expecting to enjoy but i did never the less.

+ The ships are utterly gorgeous and are beautifully detailed (Individually animated gun turrets and the such)

+ It's a BSG game and we don't have enough of these, plus the story is canon :D

+ Every ship has a very specialized purpose and/or role making you naturally want to use almost all of them at once

+ Most fights can be won with superior tactics even against normally unwinnable odds, giving the game a high skill ceiling

+ The post-game replay tool plays the whole thing back at full speed and is essentially space battle porn

+ The colonials and cylons have very different playing styles (Colonials are brutish firepower/Cylons are sabotage and hacking) which allows for an added layer of tactical gameplay other than just whoever has the bigger guns

+ The story mode has some interesting political aspects to it and forces you to manage your resources effectively and to keep everyone happy

+ Full 3D space combat for added layers of tactical value

+ In game ship specific tweaking allows for very precise control over your ships effectiveness and how they control

+ The (as of time of writing) DLC is well worth the price of what you get

+ The soundtrack and audio work is nothing less than stunning


The Bad

- The AI can be annoyingly clever or dumb as bricks depending on how it's feeling that day

- The UI is fiddly and un-cooperative at the best of times

- There are some serious balancing issues, especially when the dumb AI is involved. I've had one light battlestar take out 7 basestars before... Also Cerastes OP please nerf

- Once you learn the game you'll realize there are some weird quirks of the ships. E.G. The Artemis Battlestar (among a few other ships) has almost all of its firepower on the top of the vessel, so most battles with compotent players turns into a race to see who can get under the other

- Probably a bug but the ships have a habit of just slightly missing all their shots sometimes

- There are numerous bugs within the game as of time of writing

- Can get a tad repetitive after awhile

- Arguably overpriced

- Very few maps but to be fair it's space... you're not exactly there to explore.

- The limits of the battles especially in skirmish mode annoy me greatly (Max 7 ships on either side, Max 8000 points) It's probably to stop people's computers exploding but i have a gaming rig for a reason damnit


Overall i would certainly recommend this game, as irritating as the bugs and quirks of it can be it is still none the less a superb space battle game and by far the best Battlestar Galactica game i've ever played. if you are unsure about buying, perhaps wait for a sale but in my opinion it's worth the money.

Battlestar Deadlock is a high quality game in a niche market.

First, the bad.
Many first time players will be intimidated by the steep learning curve. It takes time to figure out which ships are designed for broadside attacks and which need to be aimed directly at the enemy.
Large fleet battles take forever. The gameplay dictates that you must micromanage. A single ship must be told at least its course (2D with 3D offset), and probably details like power management and targetting as well. This takes something like half a dozen mouseclicks. With a full fleet of seven ships plus fighter squadrons and missile launches, a single turn involves more than fifty mouseclicks. This is the price you pay for this level of detail.

Now, the good.
The game has incredible atmosphere, and is born for story telling. I had two wounded carriers fleeing from a heavily armored Cylon cruiser. Unable to outrun the Cylon, I had them come about with all power shifted to weapons. Didn't think it would work, just wanted to make it pay for my ships. It's been months, and I still see the desperate curtain of red tracers tracing patterns on the Cylon's hull, the vipers making strafing runs to exploit weak spots.
Most importantly, the game is heavily supported. The developers listen to the community and are constantly making improvements. DLC are released every four months with new ship designs and abilities. Free updates have added persistant damage, smarter AI, and enhanced playbacks that feel like watching a movie.

Summary
A steep learning curve and time-intensive gameplay scare off many players, but those who remain find a polished, atmospheric game that you will be telling stories about.

Edit: Since this review was written, many quality-of-life updates have been released. You can now give ships orders as a group, slashing the length of a turn to a fraction of its former size. You can now preview a ship's firing arcs in the campaign, removing the problem of trying to figure out a new ship class on the fly. In short, every part of the this game has been loved on and improved. It's even more worth the money now than it was then.

The base game only contains the first chapter of the story, if you want to finish the story you have to buy episodic DLC that costs more than the base game.

Deadlock is a starship tactical combat simulator featuring Colonial and Cylon capital and support ships, fighter and support squadrons, and munitions true to Battlestar Galactica. The full game also features basic tutorials, a survival mode, and five campaigns that tell an interesting story with intriguing subplots.

Some say that the game’s tactical combat is turn-based. That is not quite right. Players do not take turns, one player after the other. Rather, gameplay is simultaneous but divided into phases. First, while the action is paused, players issue detailed orders to their fleet. Next, the game goes live for 10 seconds and players watch as their ships carry out their orders! Then, again, the action is paused and players can issue new orders, etc. This allows players to carefully choreograph fleet maneuvers for maximum video replay presentation, which is awesome, not to mention tactical advantage.

Some say that the tactical combat environment is three-dimensional. Strictly speaking this is true. However, gameplay limits maneuver of capital ships to changes in yaw (turning left and right), and changes in height and depth to ascent and descent without changes to pitch (tilting up and down). Capital ships are not able to roll. So, the environment is three-dimensional but gameplay for capital ships resembles something like submarine warfare with changes in heading and changes in depth. Nevertheless, this fits very well with TV presentations of Battlestar Galactica, and is much easier and quicker to manage tactically.

Players can choose to play as commanders of Colonial or Cylon fleets in the Skirmish simulator. However, players must play the basic tutorials, survival mode, and campaigns from the Colonial perspective. The interesting story and intriguing subplots therein provide players with commanders that can level up and with subtle changes in setting and with motivation to engage in tactical combat. Still, the game is not an adventure game, but a starship tactical combat simulator at heart. Season One missions do provide players with an interesting strategic level perspective of Colonial worlds and fleets, including basic resource management of political, economic, military, and scientific assets, in addition to the ever-present tactical combat. The strategic perspective changes with Season Two to a more streamlined taskforce oriented perspective.

In conclusion, Deadlock is a detailed, two-phase (issue orders phase, live action phase) starship tactical combat simulator with awesome starships, beautiful scenery, and enough story to keep you motivated to engage in tactical combat for a long time. The presentation of graphics, music, and sound is awesome, and really puts you in the mood for more Battlestar Galactica!

I got really into BSG: Deadlock for a while, but eventually I got fed up with it.

The basics of the tactical combat would be decent, except that the game hides a lot of important information from you. Mostly this is about arcs of fire and weapon effectiveness. You can see the arcs for your own ships, but the arcs don't show limits on firing upward or downward. Online guides will tell you to get below the enemy with some ships, because some of your ships can't fire downward, and some of theirs can't either, but there's no way to tell that in-game.

There's no way to tell what enemy firing arcs are, so there's no way to know that a particular Cylon ship has almost no forward firepower. The information about your ships just says they have certain kinds of guns, not how many, or how much damage they are likely to do. Weapons have vague descriptions like "low" accuracy, and there's no way to know how much more accurate that is than "very low" accuracy.

Some of this information is available online, but some, like real weapon effectiveness, is just not available anywhere.

Tactical combat is still kind of fun, for a while. The problem is there's really not much else to the game, and you end up playing very similar tactical battles over and over again. After about the 20th combat with more or less the same ships on both sides it gets really tedious.

That's the fault of the strategic game. There's just not much too it. Mostly it's about stationing fleets on top of worlds and parking them there. This raises the planet's loyalty. When it reaches "steadfast," you move the fleet to either another faltering world, or go Cylon hunting. Cylons are always popping up more or less at random, so it's a never ending game of whack-a-mole.

The only other strategic decision you make is what ships to build. You can have up to 3 in construction at any time, but you're largely limited by your income, which is a function of planetary loyalty. Which is why your fleets spend a lot of time in garrisons, to guard your income.

You do unlock ship types via story missions, but the progression is slow, so you'll fight a LOT of battles with the same roster.

The theme is a mixed bag. The ships and combat feel very much like 2004 Battlestar Galactica, which is great if you're a fan. The writing and the voice acting is terrible and inappropriate. Everyone acts like petulant children rather than naval officers.

I couldn't bring myself to finish a single campaign, let alone replay it, or try the campaigns provided with the DLC. I really can't recommend it.

This is the Battlestar Galactica experience the fans have deserved for over ten years. Let's get down to why that is.

Section One: Simultaneous turn combat.

This is a mechanic that players of the X-Wing miniatures or Armada may be familiar with. You have your planning and movement phase, you've got various options such as focusing fire and launching fighters- and once you issue all of your orders, you watch it all play out for ten seconds, and repeat the process. You can even watch the entire battle over in real time.

The genius of this is that despite not being Real Time, it demands that you know what you're up against and how best to utilize your units in a predictive, proactive manner. If you play reactively, you will lose. Consistently. You have to accurately predict the oncoming threats and do what you need to, to gather such information so you may act accordingly. This is the benchmark of success. Knowing your enemy. Not holding resource nodes because you rushed it with low cost units.

It is very, very much a real Strategy game. Proactive, not Reactive.

Section Two: Lore, Writing, Setting.

BSG fans know all too well how rich the characters, setting and story are. Regardless of how you feel about the ending of BSG 2004, those of you who are fans cannot deny that for a majority of the show's run, it had you enthralled with all of those aspects.

In perfect, unabashed honesty, no, the story is not of the precisely same quality. However, with the content one may observe in the DLC, Broken Alliance, one can see how the writers of the story matured- and in a very brief time, AS writers, from base game to DLC. Broken Alliance makes the story even more rich, well thought out. Not much DLC does that, since most DLC doesn't weave itself into the game from the word go, on a new playthrough. Even the new and sort of controversial Anabasis DLC implies quite a bit.

The characters' surnames are mostly familiar, which I feel to be fairly on the nose- too on the nose, at some points, but then I remember that yes, (the) god(s) have a plan, and it is no coincidence that these families are loosely bound by fate forty years before the events of BSG 2004.

Oh, yes. This takes place during the First Cylon War. Five years in, and some time before our beloved William Adama makes his way in as an ace Viper pilot. So don't worry, you're not going to run into anything from the not exactly lauded Blood and Chrome.

All in all, the story, implications, so on and so forth, are very good in the final package, and as time rolls on, leaves us asking more questions than answering them, in typical BSG fashion. Only this time, I'm confident that the writers will actually tell us things in the future, unlike the unforgivable "The Plan" film.

Section Three: Balance, Units, Campaign.

What can I even say here? I've played for over a year now, and I can safely say the units get rebalanced nicely, often, and that the game's developers are very keenly aware of any troubles the balance has, and are always- literally always, tweking it.

The design of the Cylon and Colonial units alike are exactly what you'd expect old predecessor units to look like. You can see the familiar Colonial lines in all of their units, yet they all remain perfectly distinct from one another. So too is this true for the Cylons, seeing harbingers of things to come in units such as the Argos and Cerberus, but of times past in the classic Basestar and Revenant Cruiser.

Fighters are essential but can be countered by non-fighters, nothing feels like it shouldn't, and more content is consistently added to flesh everything out properly.

Section Four: Visuals, Audio, Overall feel.

The game's visuals are interesting in that yes, the units are of a middling-low end of the polycount, but this means low end machines can max BSGD pretty well. Since there is as of yet (11/30/18) no modding support, no HD texture packs for us very unfortunately. What exists is very true to the show and everything feels right. No out of place tech or visuals.

The soundtrack however... I was certain Bear McCreary lent his beautiful artistic mind to it, but so far he's had nil to do with this game. This soundtrack is Battlestar Apotheosis. It is wonderful, it feels absolutely perfect. Especially the DLC tracks. (Seriously, buy Broken Alliance with this, you CANNOT go wrong at all- it is Lair of The Shadow Broker levels of game enriching / quality increase from the base package!)

I am STILL pushing for an official soundtrack release as of writing this review.

Section Five: Multiplayer.

Join the Discord.

Okay, now that you've done that, get ready to learn a whole new metagame. All that cheese you can do in campaign? No, that doesn't work in Multiplayer. This is a highly tactical game in Multiplayer. 25% of your victory is in listbuilding, but the rest of it? That's how you position, utilize, and take advantage of opportunities. This game also has a reigning champion, so you certainly have something to strive for. If you've read any of the guides... Well, those were written by him. He's an expert for sure.

But even if you aren't playing competitively, even if you're playing a fleet for laughs, this game is immensely fun. Play it online. Come and talk to us. We're a very open community and we all love this franchise together.

Section Six: Difficulty.

Campaign? Not that hard. Broken Alliance? A little harder. Anabasis..?

Let's get something straight.

Anabasis is Bane. It is going to break you. It is meant to be oppressive, hard to beat, you are not supposed to succeed on your first outing- and if you do, you're very good at this game. The playerbase asked for something like the show, and Anabasis succeeds in that. It is emotionally, psychologically, and sometimes physically draining to marathon.

But god is that final jump to Caprica worth it. No matter how much you've lost, surviving the onslought is amazing.

If you lose, try again. Practice. Learn from your mistakes. Victory is a reward, first and foremost. Not a right. You should never be simply granted victory, not in anything.

Anabasis is this game's ultimate challenge. Defeating it is the ultimate victory. Especially in a run where you bring only one Jupiter Class Battlestar (Galactica, particularly.)

Section Seven: Addendum, final thoughts.

I'm a star jockey. I wanted to fly a Viper MK II and shoot toasters. This isn't what I asked for or even wanted.

But when I saw the trailer, I knew it was special. When I followed the news, I had a good feeling. When I saw the gameplay, when I heard that soundtrack, my heart was swollen with blood from the rush of excitement I felt.

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is one of those "Damn long time coming" types of games. It gives you something you never knew you wanted. It is fantastic.

Play it. If you're on the fence, don't be. Don't even wait for a sale. This company is amazing to its customers, the fanbase- and are wonderfully dedicated fans themselves. Hell, they even use Caprica as source material to cite from.

This game deserves a permenant slot in your library.



So say we all.

The base game only contains the first chapter of the story, if you want to finish the story you have to buy episodic DLC that costs more than the base game.

This is a "meh" strategy game and a fantastic tactics game.

Strategic Layer:
The strategic layer (that is, the map of the 12 colonies that you play over for the campaign) is a little bland and clunky. It works pretty well when you only have a few fleets wandering around, but once you have a dozen or more, plus groups flying around to replace losses or rebalance fleets, it shows its limitations. It's extremely simple - defending the colonies from Cylons keeps them happy, and happy colonies keep paying you to defend them. The mobile construction yard that you build ships out of is a fun little conceit, but I found myself leaving it in one place after the first few missions of the campaign.


Tactical Layer:
The tactical layer is extremely fun, and is the game's strong point. It's enjoyable to play around with all of the different ships, manuver them, try to make the best out of the strength and weaknesses of each class. This, incidentally, is why I think if you're going to buy the game, you should buy the DLC. A couple of extra ship classes may not seem like a huge deal, but the different ship classes and how you can use them in tactical combat are really the "meat" of the game's content. A handful of extra tactical options for 5 bucks is well worth it, in my opinion, as this is where the game's fun lies.

Each fleet is limited to seven ships, so there are no "throwaway" units - once your fleet is deployed for battle, each of your units is important and you have to get the most out of them. This is a refreshing change of pace, contrasting with so many strategy games that involve masses of fodder on both sides. In Deadlock, when you lose a ship in a battle, just a single ship, it often really is an "oh ****" moment.

My only real gripe on the tactical side is that you can't roll ships - it's annoying that if one of your ships loses armor on a side, you have to turn it instead of rolling to present an undamaged aspect.


Other/Concluding Throughts:
The game's biggest weakness is a lack of replayability. Though I enjoyed it, I found myself with no desire to play the campaign again once I played through it once. Some additional campaign missions to extend the expereince could bring me back to it. I may play skirmish mode here and there in the future, but unless there is story DLC or a major campaign update I don't think I'm likely to put a ton more time into this game.

Unfortunately, multiplayer seems dead. However if you can talk some friends into getting the game too, you can probably get some more play out of it buy squaring off against them in multiplayer.

Still, it was a fun game, and by playing the campaign very slowly (I did tons of side missions and other battles, only doing a main mission infrequently) I got 23 hours out of it. Not bad for $40 of game plus $5 of DLC in my mind.

Kinda rough around the edges now, needs some balancing. Here are a few points after a little play. AI strategy can be summed up in three words - "hack and run" see #6 below. As other have said, price is too high wait for a sale. Wait for the first few patches now, this is one of those games that needs a few patches. Also this game could use a sandbox campaign because there isnt a lot of replayablility. I see DLC in our futures...

1. As the campaign progresses, you have no idea how well you are doing and you have have no idea what the goal is (hint: maybe there isnt a goal).
2. Difficulty scales poorly. One mission you fight three ships then the next mission you fight six with another wave of two that come in because the AI decided you were doing too well (at least someone knows how well I am doing, see #1 above).
3. Some missions seem un-winable. The rescue a freighter comes to mind. Even with the fastest ships I have in turbo mode it is not possible to interecpt the enemy before they destroy the ship. Balance needed.
4. 7 ships per fleet max is just bad design (this is 2017 after all, try harder). It becomes painfully obvious when you will get to a point where your old ships are useless. Since you can not concentrate your bad ships, they are doomed to die and the player is forced to grind to that end.
5. There does not seem to be an estimation of the size/power of enemy fleets until you are there beside them. Considering there are many humans live on these worlds with ships flying around, you would think someone would give the defense forces a heads up. Edit: I found out how to see the enemy strength. Is it on the campaign map maybe displayed with the enemy fleet icon? NO. Is it visable when you click on the enemy fleet? NO. It only seems visable when you open the enemy fleet sub-menu.
6. Hacking is basically an omni-direction, long range, weapon used to prop-up the AI and give it a chance. If the AI was limited to firing arcs and special weapon types, it would be too easy. Now the AI knows to hack your ships and run. Even their mid sized ships run and scatter when there is a lot of hacking going on (hint: this is the main enemy strategy for the ENTIRE game, as far as I have played. Hack and run, the end).
7. The battle maps are pretty plain despite there being a mechanic for debris. Some of the maps have one of two asteroids, but most objects are on the edges of the map and therefore worthless (decoration). The game might actually have a tactical element if there were real decisions to make.
8. There is no way to skip the cut scenes or some of the talking scenes. It is maddening to wait for them to stop talking after you have read the message while they talk. This is also bad when you start a new campaign and have to replay the tutorial with sooo much talking...
9. Because of the lack of variety between fleet intercept missions, it looks like the designers paniced and used the only tool left in their tool box - varied start locations. But since the battlemaps are just big open fields and the fleets are ALWAYS at least 3 turns distant, the start locations seem boring. Saddest of all is that the start locations are not random, per se, the enemy fleet always starts on one of your flanks and at a significant height difference. Since the fleets are always so far apart, the fleet setup before the battle is kinda worthless (there is no reason to waste your time setting up). In short there are 4 general enemy fleet spawn points - left flank, high and low, and right flank, high and low.


List of lost opportunities -
1. The game is all about using a small number of big ships, but individual ships are so unimportant and disposable. If you are going to play with the limited number of ships (as if they are important), give each ship - upgrades, individual officers, and ship exp.

more to come....



List of bugs?
1. I forget the name of the mission (about the 6th mission in the story line), it starts by giving you a chance to get setup before the enemy fleet jump in (there is a marker)(in the mission they intent to attack some meeting). In this mission as you fly towards the marker where the enemy will jump in, the mission will end saying something like "All marks destroyed and the Cylon transmitter is down", but I never fired a shot or even saw an enemy. I think what triggers it is that I send my fighters ahead and they trigger the end?