Last Train Home

Story - The narrative of the legion was what pulled me into the game. A lone train trying to make their way home through enemy territory is an enticing setting. - Unfortunately I find myself not really caring about the story or the characters. The writing was unfortunately quite mediocre, and even Langer isn't that memorable with barely a couple lines about his backstory. [spoiler] Also why did the story keep building towards Langer not boarding the ship and even have him left the train when he most definitely survived??? I felt like that was trying to build an emotional gut punch but it makes no sense[/spoiler] Combat - It's alright, pretty standard RTS controls. But because there's a unit limit every game (10 characters max per squad plus occasional allies) it's very much a small-scale squad-based skirmishes. It won't have the same feel of battles like the typical RTS game - AI is dumb, really dumb, for both friendlies and enemies. Both sides will blindly charge towards machine gun fire with no regards of avoiding grenades or firing positions. Only possesses the most basic ability to find cover so the gameplay is mostly about cheesing them by setting up machine gun fire and let the enemies walk into their death - Stealth and executions are way too strong. 80% of gametime will be spent on trying to throw rocks to distract enemies, crawling through bushes or circling around enemy line of sight just because it's way better doing that than taking injuries and using resourecs. - Also AI does not react to explosions and gunshots as long as it's a certain distance away, so you can blow things up with explosions and still proceed stealthily in the rest of the mission while in reality the explosions and grenades would've alerted everyone on the map. Honestly breaks immersion quite a bit and makes stealthing way better than it should be. - What's the use of the machine gun post? I don't think I've ever used it at all. Maybe I'm just too good at avoiding aggression? - I don't understand why they didn't insert anything that require you to defend the armored train in the main missions. It certainly would've been a lot more fun to see the train in combat action more Train and Crew Management - The character stats don't matter. I barely upgraded anyone without feeling disadvantaged at all as long as the combat role levels are sufficient. - there are many character traits but they barely have any impact on the gameplay at all. far too few story choices are affected by the traits if at all. The only noticeable effect is morale, and even then it didn't really matter - The train management and upgrading are alright. Can't say much about it as I'm not really a management game enthusiast. Bugs and other minor issues also pops up from time to time, including but not limited to: crashes, enemy not dropping main objective item and hard-locking the mission, visual bugs, clunky UI design (especially with the train management). Nothing major but the frustration adds up. In the end this felt more like a stealth RPG game with bird's eye view than a traditional RTS game. I finished it but honestly can't say I like it a whole lot. It's a passable game but for the average RTS enjoyer like myself I don't find it exactly an impressive title