I have always had a love for the idea of turn-based games, but I am also the kind of person who's difficulty preference is "I want to feel like I have to use quite literally everything I've got to get through it". There are very few, in fact, none, turn-based games I have yet played up to this point that have gotten me remotely close to that feeling.
Reverse Collapse, however, is PERFECTLY to my tastes.
I played on Challenge+, effectively the hardest difficulty + only scripted points where the game auto-saves mid-mission. Aside from even just Challenge, I think the "+" part should just be the default experience of the game. Unlike many other games I've played, Reverse Collapse is dead set on making sure you use your items. There is no "saving it for a later point I might need it more", you will use it *now* or there will not *be* a "later point". Early on, it often feels like every mission begins with looking around the map and going "how in the hell am I going to survive this?" To then, indeed, survive it, feels absolutely amazing. The gameplay is finely tuned to a T, I have played through all of NG on Challenge+, then NG+, all of 2092R (a remaster of the original game Reverse Collapse is based on), 100%ed the game, and have begun doing challenge runs because I love it that much. It is the perfect indication that when MICA chooses to cook, they absolutely can, and it will make you even more frustrated with how bungled the gameplay of GFL2 is, knowing full well that they're very capable of putting out absolutely peak strategy experiences.
Contrary to what other reviews may say, very little ever felt unfair to me. There are a lot of 'surprise' objectives, but in general I really like these. In many cases, the player ends up being just as surprised as the characters, it's a nice feeling of connection between the cast and the player of "oh ♥♥♥♥ what do you mean there's MORE?!" Yet, they're all pretty much exclusively pretty fair and rarely (if ever) trigger in instances in which you cannot do anything about them, often also just starting you with a fresh bar of Action Points.
Also contrary to other reviews, I am, generally speaking, fond of the stealth. Many people like to claim that it is completely unfair, that you practically can't solve them without guides and that mind-reading is necessary to figure stuff out. This is completely false. Rather, the game will 100% punish you for being hasty. For not checking enemy patrols, for placing scanners in 'dangerous' locations where you're not *100%* sure that it's not next to an enemy you can't see, or for sleep darting enemies that are in the pathway of patrols or sightlines of another. Purely by paying attention and being diligent, you can very much so figure everything out by yourself. Even the most infamous stealth map, one called "Midnight Stratagem" plays by these rules. There is not a single moment in which you are expected to have to fail to gain information that you could not have reasonably otherwise. Not all of the maps are perfect, but they are all certainly *fair*, and many would rather consider it a failure on the game's part before they will acknowledge a skill issue, or that they got punished for taking risks in an attempt to shortcut diligence.
While there are 'surprises' in stealth too, these are all, without failure, triggered at times in which you can compensate for the adjustment. You need to change your plan on the fly, yes, but you always will have time to, unless you have made other blatant mistakes earlier. The only 'oops you're caught, no counterplay" is if you're unlucky enough to have a piece of equipment next to where one of these surprises happens. Every time this happened to me (like, twice), I felt less like it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and more like I had my equipment in an obviously weird spot, usually looking around for hidden collectibles rather than 'normal' use.
The more I have played, the better I have gotten at the game as a whole, the more I have come to love it. Much of the original challenge feels pretty easy to me now, and I love that feeling, of conquering something that was so borderline impossibly difficult during my first attempts, and coming to understand all its systems well enough as to make it look easy. If you want fair, genuine difficulty, Reverse Collapse is amazing.
I also like how character skills are handled. Once everything is unlocked, every character will have 5 passives, and 8 active skills, of which you can bring 4 of those active skills into any given mission (some characters also get some "special skills", which cannot be leveled, but work like normal actives where you can slot them). As you level up, you will gain "potential keys" that can be used to level up your skills, both active and passive, up to lv5 for each of them. (In NG, at max level you will have enough for 5 passives and 4 actives, though you do not have to distribute them in that specific manner). Each character has what I'd call a "main" archetype, and various "sub" archetypes alongside that.
For instance, Atena is generally a tank. She has various skills for damage reduction, a taunt, that kind of thing. But she's also an item-junkie, having a skill to increase her damage with damage-dealing items, and a passive that improves stealth items and gives her more range when using items. However, she is not limited to either of these archetypes either. Her main advantage for tanking is "Armor", that is, flat damage reduction on incoming hits. As such, she has a skill that temporarily increases her armor, and her taunt will also do so. Yet, there's another skill that can take this armor value, and deal x% of that value in a line AoE in front of her, which can get *deceptively* powerful. If you choose to, you can build Atena to use her tankiness as a weapon, or, another one, in which gives her guns double-shots. Both of her guns are close-range. She is not intuitive to use for damage nuking. But one is a really high damage shotgun, and the other is a pistol that she uses to counterattack when shot at. So, you can use this double-shot skill to both set up turns where she just blasts a boss with effectively 8 shots from her high damage, high armor-pierce shotgun, and/or, set her up to counter with double shots from her pistol as well, giving another flavor to her abilities. There are very few outright 'bad' skills in the game, almost everything has a niche or some way of playing the character that it aids. You can mix and match to make a character as 'pure' or 'spread out' as you want. Atena can have solely tanking skills. Or, she can spread out with a few different niches that she's lightly committed to, etc. Everyone operates in the same way. Their main archetype defines them, but it is not all they are capable of.
Similarly, there are no outright 'bad' characters. Everyone has a role, and everyone can do a lot of things. You can misutilize them, you can faultily believe that only Jefuty is useful at a point, you can think a character is hot garbage and only decent for dispensing items, but I assure you, they can ALL kick major ass. Nearly everyone can set up to be able to drop nukes, and nearly everyone can set up to help others perform their roles better.
224 hours at the time of this review, and I am sure it will go up by a lot with time. I would kill for more stuff like this. 9/10, I want a workshop level editor.
...Note that none of this applies to 2092R. I am happy 2092R is in the game. I am glad a remastered version of the original 2013 game exists as a side game. I am glad you can play it. It sucks ass. It's garbage. Your Turn: 75. It is agony in the unfun way. It is simultaneously harder and far easier. Your flashbangs last for 2 turns. The moment you learn this, nothing will ever move near you again. I cleared the final map on the NG+ of 2092R, by meeting the relevant S rank condition, then dropping about 70 cruise missiles (really) on the rest, no thanks. It's at least short.
