Frozen Synapse 2

this is still broken

I don't think the game is working properly for me. When I tried the tutorial city it crashed during the first battle. I reloaded it and I think it turned off the tutorial messages? I finished the first level anyway and then when I was back on the map I never got any new incursions. I clicked around the menus until I found contracts and so I made a bunch of money by standing in buildings for 6 hours. I bought up a bunch of the city. But, I never had the plot progress. Even if the game was working properly I'm not sure how interesting it is to have this strange abstracted turn based combat. I never feel like I really understand what I'm doing even in that aspect.

They were so close. They were SO close to something special. SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ close.

It doesn't live up to its full potential and drags on for a lot longer than it probably should, but it's definitely still worth playing. Just... maybe not worth finishing. In 2024 it's still a bit buggy -- you'll get some crashes and occasional weird behavior, especially with the mission generation -- but not nearly to the nigh-unplayable extent that old reviews make it out to be. Crashes aren't a huge deal since the game autosaves extremely often, so it takes like two minutes at most to recover from them.

The game is a bit buggy and would have benefited from more patching (and perhaps a bit more time being worked on before it was released in the first place!), but regular patching ended at the end of 2018 so the state of the game is basically what you're stuck with. Everyone's experience is slightly different, but I've personally experienced crashing (crash to desktop either when loading a mission for the first time, or when loading a turn's results) roughly once every 3-4 hours on average - thankfully in these instances the auto-saving means I've lost minimal progress each time I've experienced a crash (several minutes at worst). A few parts of the game feel slightly underdeveloped, and several aspects of the game feel quite under-explained, which is unfortunately exasperated by not having strong third-party resources to fill the gap (no comprehensive wiki etc). Despite these shortcomings, I have personally LOVED playing it so far - so much so that I've racked up 30 hours in 2.5 days (!!). I loved FS1's tactical combat already - you get most of the intensity of real-time combat combined with the careful planning that turn-based inputs allow for. Some of the additions in FS2 take it to another level again - it's definitely among my favorite tactical combat in any game I've ever played. I thought the extra city metagame works okay and it does have some cool aspects (like tactical maps being based on how they look on the city map, allowing a cool transition as you zoom in from the big city map to the tactical map!). It's kind of a shame, really. If some of the game's weaker points (most obviously the technical stuff, but other things too) had been improved I think FS2 would've been a GOTY contender for plenty of people. Instead the game's withered away into near-obscurity, and a player count in the single-digits also makes the multiplayer largely untenable unless you recruit a friend to play with or something. I'm honestly a bit surprised at just how little traction the game's gotten; a look at the Steam review chart (combined with the shockingly low number of reviews) tells a pretty sad story. I think if you enjoyed FS1 (which has a free demo if you want to check it out if you've never played!) it's definitely worth at least trying FS2 - at sale price if you're hesitant.

Amazing open world, turned based tactical strategy game sandbox. If you like Door Kickers and would like a similar experience with a greatly expanded, randomly generated, and extremely re-playable campaign; Get this game. Massively underrated. Despite a few bugs and performance issues that remain after the devs could no longer continue work on the game Frozen Synapse 2 is still a great game and well worth the asking price.

Cool idea, but half baked. I really want to like this game, I loved frozen synapse 1, but the truth is it's been 5 years since release and it still feels like early access. The city campaign is an an absolute mess, the faction AIs do extremely weird and illogical stuff constantly. The game also crashes about once per hour. It pains me to say this, but it's ..not good.

Fantastic concept, but way, way too buggy and unpolished. The multiplayer might be worth it despite the bugs and jank, but the single player is every sort of broken.