TL;DR So I've played the game and the demo more than 300h, so its safe to say the game is engaging and lot of fun, but I am giving this a lukewarm thumbs up. Basically, I was expecting it to be as good as Overhype's last game BB was on EA, or at least to be assured the game was heading there, but there are just too many unbalanced and borderline broken features in the game to assume the problems will get fixed down along the line. At first the game was fun to play, but once you learn how to play the game, Menace doesn't really challenge the player at all, as the opposing factions don't have enough good quality units and capabilites and the enemy AI is weak. Once you gear up after the first few operations in the game, it pretty soon gives the player the means to mitigate all threats and risks almost entirely. Instead of grappling with risk&reward scenarios like in BB the game turns into a pretty much risk free slog after the early game where even the rewards are nonexistent.
Comparing to a complete game is not maybe fair, but the problem with Menace in comparison to Battle brothers, is that it doesn't challenge me in a fun way like Battle Brothers. The AI in Menace is weak, doesn't make effective use of its capabilities(it even struggles to commit all its troops), doesn't know how to effectively counter stealth and range based player tactics, and in general doesn't have enough capabilities(cover, concealment, artillery support) in the first place. Since the launch, apparently in response to player feedback, they've also toned down some of the actually challenging missions in the game by gimping enemy reinforcements and supply. So far during the EA developers have mostly made changes that have rendered the game even easier on all difficulty levels, which raises the question if making the game challenging to those players who have bothered to learn how to play the game is even a thing to them. The patches with some AI improvements, like more aggressive enemy heavies, haven't in my experienc eliminated the AI's mission specific timidity, tendency to mill around aimlessly and failure to achieve force concentration during battles.
Most of the minimal challenge comes early game and is centered around the supply system the player has to content with. And it's a profoundly unfun way to challenge the player. The supply economy system of the game initially saddles you with the inability to use all of the gear and units you've accumulated due to the supply point system. Which leads you down the path of finding the optimal build where you discard everything that isn't strictly necessary for every mission. Almost always this means armor, because it always tends to boil down to having maxed out the firepower and to a degree concealment, to get the best mission clearance levels. Given how the game is easy, it's possible to make use of heavily armored infantry as well, but settling for a less effective build just feels wrong.
While I've fought all the factions in the game, I've never finished EA Menace campaign due to the game becoming a bit of slog when it enters mid-game. I believe the EA story is completed in about 20 operations, and the longest playthrough ended on about op 17 or 18 mainly due to boredom that wasn't alleviated much by encounters with the titular Menace faction.
BB was often dubbed as risk management game, Menace on the other hand seems to be intent on providing the players some sort of risk free safe mode, even on higher difficulties. While in BB combat encounters were often risky affairs, where you could lose valuable employees, in Menace the risks can be pretty much annulled or at least heavily mitigated once you know the enemy capabilities and have the right gear and personnel to outmaneuver and outgun the AI. There are even some truly weird design choices that work towards removing risks in a gameplay, like the way the game informs the player if its unit has been spotted by an enemy unit, even if this enemy unit hasn't been detected in any way. I mean, it's pretty easy to advance safely in the game through smokescreens and cover, and by utilizing heavily armored spearhead units, if you choose to, but for some reason the developers added this magical sixth danger sense to all your units. Apparently the AI also shares the same awareness and some of the perceived timidity of the AI apparently boils down to them reacting on this information.
The AI fails to use its gear to full potential. It's overall too timid and doesn't make effective use of special armaments like smoke(or doesn't use it at all) and artillery when attacking. For example when your objective is to defend a area and the AI seems to refrain from using artillery when it loses a visual on targets, even if it is unlikely or even unfeasible that the defenders have moved away. The bug faction seems to suffer from overall lack of sufficiently deadly AoE ranged units, while the player tends to have an abundance of cost effective deadly close to long range weapons.
It also seems there are only few optimal builds you can utilize in the game. The central reason to this is the supply system that limits the amount of hardware, gear and personnel you can take on a mission. If you're trying to win the most lucrative missions with the highest possible rating, it's almost always better to maximize firepower and available supply. On the strategic side of things, this means you'll be better off investing in ship components minimizing supply costs, maximizing armaments and intel and disregarding everything else. Which combined with the way the AI opponents behave, the functionality of Squad Leader skills and mission types, all tend to railroad you towards using rather similar and repetitive equipment and SL builds in the game. I initially tried out a close combat specialist with a heavy armor, but unless you're challenging yourself with a infantry only playthrough, it's far more cost effective to maximize the value of a armed APC, by fielding mobile infantry that pretty much starts and ends all its turns inside the APC, and therefore needs no infantry armor. Other than the units that can specialize into mobile infantry, some SLs have talents that negate most or all need of heavier armor.
This all greatly devalues some items like heavy armor, since it's almost always better to spend the supply on camouflage armor to minimize being noticed, and on superior firepower, which can come in the form of extra squaddies with rifles, artillery units, special weapons, accessories etc.
Armor doesn't protect you that well from being suppressed or pinned when fired upon. Suppressed status applies malus lowering AP and accuracy to the unit and a unit pinned down by enemy fire forfeits their turn entirely. This further erodes the usefulness of armor, given it only protects your troops from dying, not from suppression that accumulates from being fired upon.
Since spending all points on superior firepower and concealment is almost always the best way to go, on my aborted playthroughs this meant that about 80% of the time my squaddies were wearing nothing heavier than cloth armor and rigs for accessories. When I encountered the Menace faction, things changed a bit, since that faction has some counters on concealment tactics and has the capacity to deal massive damage to infantry on long range. So I started giving few of the on point squads (upper) mid-tier armor, but most of the time you can just eliminate the spotter enemies and fight from the safety of stealth. Most of the time current supply system just makes it way more cost effective to play most of the game with minimal armor, which is kind of boring.
