I guess for the price tag the game is bretty good, and a surprise for a movie based game. Because normally IP based games are outright garbage and devoid of creativeness. This one isn't, and has a unique roguelike gameplay but instead of some random RPG character, you roguelike with an army. You manage their equipment, supplies, manpower, weapons, vehicles, so on and so forth. No base building so to speak, but it is unique and I can appreciate that they tried with something instead of lazily going along with what's already out in the market. And if you support such endeavors in the gaming industry and also are a fan of managing things while also controlling a post apocalyptic free company, this game might be for you.
Combat, I feel that the game plays alot like "casual" but "stealthy" Men of War 2. It's pretty reasonably realistic, with line of sight, ammo limitations, squad members dying permanently, vehicle module damage, cover, etc. Enemy attacks are quite lethal if you play on higher difficulties - one shotting your assets quite often - as the lore should be! So if you are into that, I can say this game might be for you.
My 3 complaints:
1. Deal with this now! type of cutscenes
There are lots of moments that just forces you to savescum. They will throw things at you and expect you to be able to handle it without any sign or warning. You'd expect some kind of recon units, preparation timer, or mission briefing can prevent this, but there are insufficient. Also, i'm talking about forced scripted cutscene and spawns that you have no prior knowledge of. You are then railroaded into taking a generalist approach because you don't know what you are going up against anyway - then where goes the fun of building your own army?
2. Too cartoonish for the setting (for my taste anyway)
Sometimes, the game feels cartoonish and childish. "Oh no we have to save the people" type of childish. Marble cape hero garbage type childish. The kind of disappointment you feel when you play Starcraft 2 when you are a fan of Starcraft 1.
Granted, the original series was children oriented. You have a child main character and this badass robot protects the boy. But I expected something more gruesome and gritty in a post judgment day warfare, and the original movie came out decades ago. I doubt children are into this series, so yeah. Maybe I am not the target audience, but I guess it's a matter of preference.
3. Bugs and bad QoL
This game has some bad issues outside of its design philosophies. Infantry pathfinding is not too good. One of the squad members will get stuck inside a building or a vehicle wreckage for example.
There are no tools to check line of sight, and camera view is quite limited - to top down view, when determining LoS is critical if you are getting one shotted by the robots, vice versa.
And not sure why I can't merge squads, or create/train new ones. You can disband a bunch of "Militia" to acquire "manpower" to replenish "Rangers (former US Army type)" but can't train new rangers neither can you train new militia. You either get t hem from missions or hire them as mercs. Weird but the game is like this. Weird solution for removing base building aspect.
