What lets this game down is the two things in my opinion. Combat just isn't engaging since you can only move one unit a turn, and the enemy will next to always charge once you move close enough, end up using just one guy for whole mission, not much in the way of tactics. The other problem is that is all there really is, in between missions you can hire new people, and spend excess points to lvl up, thats it. Nice idea, just no real substance

I played the first few levels of this game and it feels like the game wants to be like XCOM but fails at it. Enemies are really dumb or op with little variation between them. being able to only use on character makes you almost want to only bring 2 or 3 troops so you dont have 5 or 6 injured men at the end of every mission.

Complete trash - you get only 1 activation per turn regardless of how many guys you control. That means that if you want to move 5 guys from your squad once each - lonely enemy will get 5 activations/actions/attacks as a response. It boils down to one of your guys fighting and all the others just standing and doing nothing.

Was kinda hyped for the game with the setting and the genre + third person shooting, but it's all kinda lame.
You can only move one unit in a round and you can run and fire.
The AI is fine, completely suicidal but fine. They rather get a shot in then run and heal but most units are stationary. Because you can only use one unit per round, instead of all your units. Which for me lead to soloing the mission with one unit and maybe switch to another unit that was nearby the objective.

I dunno if I can really recommend it...
I guess there was a reason why the game is 29,99 with 20% off on release.

If the RPG part would be more then buy a unit and use its weapons for ever and ever I could have seen me not refunding it.

Narcos is one of my most favourite shows and it's such a shame that it's only official game, minus the cash grab mobile games, is poorly done with not much thought gone into it. Rise of the Cartels has some decent things going for it but in the end it feels pretty rushed, lazy and has questionable design choices.

PRO
- Great music that is featured in the show
- The locations do resemble areas around Colombia
- You get to play as both the DEA and the Medellin Cartel
- Really nice artwork used for character icons

NEUTRAL
- Various kinds of missions but they just seem to be mainly the same
- Real life names rarely come up which I guess is a legal/licensing issue.

CON
- The graphics are pretty dated for a 2019 game that seems more like a port of a mobile game.
- You can only move one unit at a time even though you have a whole squad
- You'll be visiting the same locations quite a few times
- Enemy AI will pretty much become suicidal and put themselves in danger just to damage you
- There isn't a great level of depth to it, all seems very basic
- The voices are all in English and some of them (namely Pena) isn't very good.

With some much needed improvements and graphical upgrades this could have been an amazing tie in to the show but it seems that they just didn't find the right developers for bringing the show to gaming.
If you're a fan of low budget strategy games, like ones you find on mobile, then you may take some enjoyment out of this. If you're looking for a more in depth strategy game like XCOM or Phantom Doctrine then you may not enjoy it as much with it's watered down gameplay. Even fans of the show like myself will have difficulty.
Also buy it on sale, £9.99 still felt a bit much for me, sadly.

Replay the main events from the Netflix serie Narcos in this TuRn Based strategy game as either the DEA or the drug cartel. Do you wanna be El Patrón right? Got excited? Then keep reading and lose your excitement…

I could call this game an X-Com clone, adapted to the world of Narcos, but without anything that makes X-Com great. You can play 2 campaigns in the game, replaying each big Narcos event once for DEA, once for the drug cartel, so even the maps will be the same, with a very few exceptions.

The tactical aspect of the game is totally killed by the fact that one turn means that you can move ONE unit, not your whole squad which happens in literally every other similar genre game. Well, they tried something new, you could say, but this is clearly not working. This way AI actually could counter every single move easily…

… but AI is stupid. Very stupid. Sometimes they just camp in the same spot, moving the same unit all the time there and back. When you bombard a unit with a grenade launcher (3-4dmg), which is in cover, the AI just keeps using healing (+1health), until the unit dies. Nonsense.

The developers also have not heard anything about kinetic energy. Grenade launchers, grenades have AOE damage, that is cool. But let's say the enemy is in a makeshift building, next to a wall made of bamboo. Now target that wall from outside with a grenade launcher. Do you agree that the wall shouldn’t take any damage and the enemy behind it also shouldn’t be affected? Untouchable, undestroyable environments are like playing a game from early 2000, or perhaps from the 1990s

Well, I don't think you need to know more info. You can find much-much better tactical strategy games out there, even if you would be a desperate achievement hunter, like myself, the 16-20 hours for +1 perfection might be just too much.


If you are really desperate, then buy it with a very deep discount… but better just to get the game from a bundle.

Visuals: 8/10. Looks nice, but that's all the game has to offer.
Atmosphere: 4/10. Bad mechanisms ruining the overall experience, stupid AI, however with good AI the campaign would be unfinishable because of the terrible mechanisms.
Amount of crash: None.
Bugs: Everything worked as intended to work, in this case, unfortunately.
Steam Deck compatibility: Verified, so should work, but I played this game before my deck arrived.


How to perfect?: Just finish the campaigns once. Other than that you should have few kills with each weapon, but all of those should be done normally way before the end of the campaigns.
Perfection Difficulty: 4/10, stupid AI, so perfection not really that hard, perhaps sometimes you will lose a map, but that wont be a common thing.
100% time: 16-20h

If you like to earn achievements, but in enjoyable, fun and entertaining games, then please follow my Average Achievement Hunter curator or just check out our curated games if you looking for some gaming tips:-) Thanks

Overall: 5/10

Story:

Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a tactical turn-based strategy game with a narrative that closely follows the events of the first season of the Netflix series, allowing you to experience the conflict from both the DEA’s perspective and the Medellín cartel’s side. However, while the game captures key plot points, it struggles to translate the complexity and emotional depth of the show’s characters into a compelling story. The game’s reliance on brief cutscenes and text summaries makes the narrative feel disjointed and abrupt, while the turn-based gameplay further disrupts its flow. Iconic characters like Escobar and DEA agents Murphy and Peña lack the nuance and development that made the series compelling, often serving more as game pieces than fully fleshed-out individuals. Despite the inclusion of voiceovers and recognizable moments from the show, the story ultimately feels like a surface-level recap, missing the tension, moral dilemmas, and character-driven drama that defined Narcos.

Gameplay:

The gameplay in this game attempts to blend turn-based strategy with the gritty, fast-paced action of its source material but ultimately falls short of delivering a satisfying tactical experience. The game’s core mechanics are simplistic and lack the strategic depth expected from the genre. Each mission offers limited freedom of movement and action, with you controlling only one unit per turn, which severely hampers not just the tactical planning but the overall gameplay, and makes encounters feel slow and repetitive. The small unit sizes and narrow maps further reduce the need for nuanced strategy, leading to a gameplay loop that can feel overly straightforward and underwhelming. The repetitive AI behavior is also a very significant lowlight as it rarely challenges the you or forces meaningful decision-making in the... STRATEGY GAME!!! While the game tries to inject action with its third-person shooting elements in its Kill Shot and Counteract features, they come off as clunky and break the flow of combat rather than enhancing it.
In addition to this, Both the DEA and cartel factions suffer from a lack of variety in character design, as each sides squads present the same types of basic classes, merely reskinned to fit their respective roles. This contributes even further to the repetitive feel of the gameplay, as there is little distinction between the strategies needed to tackle foes from either faction, diminishing the potential for unique tactical experiences on each side of the conflict. As a result of all this, the gameplay fails to capture both the strategic intensity of better turn-based games and the thrill/urgency of the Narcos narrative, leaving a mechanically bland experience that struggles to engage you beyond its early missions.

World:

The world and level design is serviceable but lacks the variety and creativity needed to elevate the experience. While the game attempts to recreate the atmospheric settings of the show, many of the maps feel small and uninspired, with limited opportunities for meaningful exploration or tactical positioning. Additionally, several maps are reused across different missions, which makes the game feel very dull and monotonous over time. This lack of diversity in environments diminishes the sense of progression, as you'll frequently revisit familiar locations with minimal changes. The confined layouts and restricted movement further limit strategic options, making the level design feel more like an afterthought rather than a core element of the gameplay. Although the game does capture the most basic essence of the Narcos world visually, the repetitive use of locations and simplistic level design undermine the immersion and general experience.

Visuals:

Speaking of the visuals, here they do very little to have a positive the overall experience either, with dated graphics that struggle to feel immersive or unique in any way. Character models are stiff and lack detail, often resembling generic, low-budget recreations of their TV counterparts, with awkward facial animations that fail to convey the tension or emotion of key moments. Environments feel generic and barren, with textures that lack depth and vibrancy. The lighting, too, is flat, which undercuts the atmosphere of the game’s most intense scenes. The game's visual design seems to focus more on functionality than immersiveness, and it doesn't even do that well, which results in a lack of polish that could have made the world of Narcos more engaging. While it manages to replicate the broad strokes of the show’s look, the lack of detail, weak animations, and bland environments make it clear very early on that the visuals fail at doing the Narcos series justice.

Music/Sound Design:

The music and sound design attempts to capture the tense atmosphere of the show, but ultimately falls short of making a lasting impact. The soundtrack features a mix of Latin-inspired tunes and dramatic orchestral pieces, echoing the style of the Netflix series. While the music occasionally helps set the mood for intense moments, it rarely stands out and can feel redundant over time, lacking the memorable punch of the original show’s score.
Sound design follows a similar pattern, with environmental sounds and combat effects doing their job but failing to immerse you fully. Gunfire and explosions feel somewhat muted, and character voiceovers are sparsely used, which results in many missions feeling eerily quiet. This lack of auditory richness leaves the game's overall soundscape feeling flat and jarring.

TL;DR:

Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a turn-based strategy game that closely follows the events of the Netflix series' first season, allowing you to experience the conflict from both the DEA’s and Medellín cartel’s perspectives. While it captures some key plot points and includes recognizable characters, the game’s brief cutscenes, text summaries, and lack of character development lead to a disjointed and shallow narrative that fails to capture the depth of the show. The gameplay is equally underwhelming, with simplistic mechanics, limited tactical options, repetitive AI, and uninspired maps that strip away any real strategic depth. Despite some attempts at action through minor third-person shooting mechanics, the experience remains clunky and monotonous. The visuals do little to help, with dated graphics, stiff character models, and barren environments that fail to immerse you in the Narcos world. Similarly, while the music and sound design attempt to evoke the tension of the show, they are largely forgettable and lacking in impact. In the end, Narcos: Rise of the Cartels falls short on nearly all fronts, offering neither the narrative intensity nor the strategic depth fans of the series or genre would hope for, making it hard to recommend to anyone...

I’ve never written a negative review, because I am a person who doesn’t enjoy being too harsh towards all the hard work developers have to put in to create a game. I can point out negative aspects of a game and still recommend it to players because the positives outweigh the negatives. The exception would be two games I played and would have rated negatively if I had the time to write their reviews back then - an unfinished game Deus Ex: The Fall and another turn based tactics game called Empire of Sin. I really wanted to like and enjoy Narcos: Rise of the Cartels. I played it until the end and gained all achievements but unfortunately my opinions didn’t change.

You have an option now to keep reading if you prefer written reviews or you can check my video review on Youtube if you prefer watching and listening instead: https://youtu.be/Sz4SMynSHD8

The Story

The game has very poor storytelling and it makes the game very boring. Very often I would feel like they get a certain amount of words they need to fill for each of the story parts and because they have nothing interesting or exciting to say, they just keep repeating the same things in different ways. It made me very impatient listening to it and I just wanted to go right into the mission, because even though the gameplay is badly designed and buggy, it is still a hundred times more fun than the story of the game. Which is a shame when they claim it’s based on the first season of Narcos TV series which is pretty amazing storywise. Here it’s just a trick to make you buy and play the game as I got tricked into giving the game a chance.

The Gameplay

It’s a turn based tactics game where you can do actions with only one unit every turn. It’s always a unit of your choice. Enemies have it the same way. Except when new enemies enter the map, then the game allows them to move with more units and I didn’t enjoy the change of the rules for that situation. It felt unfair and it certainly can screw you over in many situations.

I knew about the one unit per turn aspect before I purchased the game so I definitely wasn’t against it in the first place. The problem with it started a bit later when you get missions with several objectives all over the map and a timer. You can only move with one man so how they were thinking that you are supposed to reach all of them in time is hard for me to understand. Honestly you don’t even need 5 men on your team, because you will move with 1 or 2, maybe 3 in special situations. This kind of combat system is pretty ok during missions where you need to defend a target and you don’t have to move anywhere, but still your team can’t do all these effective team tactics you probably experienced in good turn based tactics games like Xcom.


The game has two story campaigns - The DEA campaign where the team leaders are some famous guys from the TV series and The Narcos campaign where the team leaders are Pablo Escobar’s associates, also known names from the TV series. The team you create can always have only one leader and the leader is the only unit which has to survive a mission for it to be successfully completed. Both campaigns have the same system - you have to play a lot of side missions in order to unlock a main mission. But side missions are very repetitive. It’s basically the same maps over and over again to the point where you get sick even looking at them. You can choose between 1, 2 and 3 skull difficulties of side missions and higher the difficulty more money you will earn for finishing it but you also have to pay quite a lot of money to play them. It was not worth it to try to go for higher difficulties. If you fail it, you won’t get your money back, if you complete it, you will have to pay money to heal your injured units and most likely buy new units to compensate for your losses in the mission. There is nothing else you need money for. No other reason why you should challenge yourself.

Main missions have no difficulty setting and they are much easier than side missions, but for the wrong reasons. There were some missions where the enemies would skip their turns and didn’t defend themselves. Not just once or twice but most of the time. They just let me kill them all and did nothing. So imagine how excited I was to grind side missions just to unlock main missions which were so broken that they didn’t offer any challenge at all.

Unit Customization

You can’t customize your units almost at all. It’s a typical thing for turn based tactics games that you can name your units and change their visuals and outfits. In Narcos: Rise of the Cartels, you can’t do that at all. Nobody other than leaders is important. The rest are just meat shields sent on missions to die there. I understand that a lot of men died fighting Narcos, but this is a game and it should want to deliver fun game mechanics and customizations rather than too much realism.

The only thing you can customize are your skills and perks. As your units level up, you can choose those for them. The problem is that as a new level cap is introduced, you immediately have all units on max and you soon have nothing to work towards again. When your units can’t gain skill points anymore, all skill points earned in missions are sent to a common pool of skill points and can be used on any unit whenever. Rather than recruiting new high level units which are expensive and have their skills and perks chosen already, I was recruiting level 1 units and using the huge skill points pool I collected to max them out immediately. No need for collecting money again. You will never spend all the skill points you keep getting.

Voice Acting

The voice acting was pretty decent for the most part. I just hated the English voice acting for Narcos. In the TV series, Pablo Escobar would never speak English to his associates so it was hurting my ears and soul when he did that in the game and there was no option to switch it to original. But right after he is describing a mission to you, then he suddenly speaks Spanish. It would be much better to keep it all in Spanish or if one of those had to be in English then better a mission description than a part of the story.

Bugs

It has so many problems. Bugs and glitches everywhere. Your units not crouching behind covers getting themselves killed. Enemies not doing anything skipping all their turns. Mission objectives which make no sense like raiding a Narcos base to destroy the evidence. Why would the DEA want to destroy the evidence? It’s Narcos who don’t want the evidence to land in the hands of the DEA. So objectives are appearing and disappearing during missions. It’s a bloody mess all together.

Something I enjoyed

There was one thing which I haven’t seen in any other turn based tactics game before and which I really enjoyed. It is the reaction shot, something like overwatch in other games but here you use it actively. When an enemy moves in front of your units, your game switches into a first person view from the unit’s position and you have a short time for aiming and hitting your reaction shots. You can also choose not to shoot at all if your view is not so great and you could risk missing too much. It was a very nice way to make us players do something actively during enemy turns. But again it was a good idea but poor execution, because very often the game would choose the unit with the worst view and longest distance. Many times I would have a huge object in the way, unable to see anything.


Verdict: Not Recommended

Please, do yourself a favor and avoid this game. I wasted enough time for us all by finishing this game. If you want to see for yourself, you can watch some of my gameplay on Youtube and make your decision based on that: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5ZLiHR9A1eVWGaflKjxyyqcIxw7ly6j5

There is nothing about strategy in this game. In general I have a suspicion this is more a project for the "iphone in toilet", than a tactical shooter. I bought it because from videos i got illusion about "xcom like" gameplay, but there is no gameplay. Only skirmish with one(!) enemy in turn.

Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is a bit of a mix for me. While it offers some fun, there really isn't anything about the game that sticks out. For a turn-based game, the mechanics are really poorly made. I've played much older turn-based games with better mechanics.

You get to use one character per turn and that's it. Unless you have a skill that grants an extra move to nearby units, you'll find the game very lacking. It forces you to prioritize this skill for the game to do something that other games do better. In other turn based games you get a number of moves you can allocate as you wish between characters. In this game your actions is for the most part locked to the character you initially move.

It generally takes 5 moves to move a squad of 5. You get to re-position your squad in the start with unlimited moves, but one might as well pick the starting formation since there's often not any cover.

This game isn't as much about tactic for being a turn-based game. They have in my opinion missed many important aspects of turn-based games.

All you have to do to win is pick an overpowered character, isolate enemies and then get up in their face. Meta seems to be to use Murphy or any other character with a shotgun, and focus on point blank. The other characters are mostly there to cover you against flanks. Most preferable encounters will be head on, and you're kind of forced into 1 on 1 encounters unless you want to die.

Then there's the overwatch mechanic(called vigilance) which allows you to counter moving enemies that your characters can see. Counters trigger a manual firing mode that is tricky to get right, rather than an automatic one. I honestly prefer the latter.

Counters won't happen unless you order your characters to counter. You also seem to only be able to only do it if squad members are close-by. It makes no sense because only one character can counter per turn even if multiple characters can see the enemy.

I think this is a bad system because it forces you to use the squad tightly together rather than spread out, while not getting much benefit from being a more tightly together squad. Given that you can for the most part only move one character per turn, you're going to need many turns to move a squad to where you want to go. It gets tedious very fast.

Most missions are annoying because once you've eliminated all enemies, the game still acts as there are enemies on the map and will therefor switch to the enemy team to make a move, and then switch back to your team since there are no enemies left that can move. On rescue missions that wastes up to 30 seconds at the end of each mission. A preferable alternative would be unlimited movement once all enemies are eliminated. That way you can move rescued units as well as gather mission objectives much faster.

Being able to win fairly easy takes away the difficult aspect of it and makes the game more of a chore than a challenge. There's very little tactic in this game. Another thing that makes the game easier is that you can heal your whole squad fully before finishing a mission. This is made possible because the enemies will stay put unless you get too close.

The money itself, as far as I can see, can only be spent on buying squad members, healing and buying missions. None of these spending options are necessary, which means that money as a resource isn't very useful. It feels it's just there for the sake of being there.

Then there's small things that will nag you after a while. Like being unable to skip the intro, which is a few seconds(the game occasionally crashes too). There's no fast-forwarding of turns either, which really bothers me because sometimes there's no point in watching turns. The few minutes wasted per mission adds up quickly.

There's no intuitive menu navigation either. Not that you'll be spending much time in the menus... but still. There are hotkeys for navigating menus as far as I can see. Your options are using the mouse. This isn't very ergonomic. Navigating menus is overall slow too. The start menu lacks a continue option. You have to go into "load campaign" to load your game. It's more clicks than necessary.

There are also zero stealth aspects to this game as far as I can see. You are 'spotted' from the get-go. It's a shame because this too takes away from the tactical aspects. Like being able to plan an ambush.

You can't see what protection some cover offer unless you can move to said cover. This takes away from the tactical aspects a lot, because you can't really plan far ahead. You have to learn what kinds of cover are good cover. Totally doable of course, but still no reason to why you shouldn't be able to see the defense value of any cover on the map.

A far superior turn-based model would be akin to Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, where you are free to move your characters about as much as you want until you are spotted by enemies. You also have a better overwatch system, where individual characters can hunker down in cover and attack enemies that pass their line of sight. They don't rely on squad mates to do this, as they do in Narcos: Rise of the Cartels.

All in all, the game gets tiresome fast. I don't look forward towards the next mission. There's nothing fun or exciting to spend money on. There's no real penalty to dying, unless you complete the mission with dead squad members(they'll be permanently lost). Since you have the option to not do that and not lose time invested into a character, it's just more efficient to abandon the mission and try again.

As for the story. It's not that engaging. I'm not feeling it. Don't know how it compares to the TV series as I've not watched it.

I got the game in the All Stars 13 Bundle(available until April 15, 2021 9AM CEST), so the price of this game isn't really anything to talk about. The listed Steam price is currently 29,99€. Definitely not worth it, nor is the 6€, which is the lowest recorded price for this game.

If you're interested in acquiring this game even after reading my review, then just get the aforementioned bundle while it's available(it's easy to find through any search engine), or wait for a +90% discount(which won't happen anytime soon).

Final verdict. Money would be better spent on something else.