TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children

The gameplay is overwhelming but good, and it feels like it's designed around long, long campaigns where you got hundreds of hours in the game to customize your characters to do cool stuff, but the story kinda sucks; it's generic and stuff I've already seen before from so many free to play short story games. I mean I've enjoyed my time with it but I don't really care to go back to it. The jazzy music is unique to it too, but it doesn't match or carry the bad and generic story enough for me. I mean the main character is some guy that feels out of place trying to be the cool tuff cop guy basically, and then making friends along the way (who also feel exactly the same by the way in a different way and in a different angle. "Oh I've all been alone all my life growing up, but with a friend, now I don't feel alone!" kind of dialogue). That's the story from what I remember. But I don't care, and that's the problem. My reward for completing levels is corny dialogue and 'of course' backstory, great. I mean get it you absolutely love anime and turn based strategy games together, but for me, for this one, it's not for me sadly. Don't get it if you want to be engaged in a good story for a long period of time.

无厘头的日韩式热血青年剧情，在这个框架下看见他人不断的成功使我感受到了巨大的伤害 我不知道有没有像我这样的人，但是我的伙伴只有遗憾、错失，以及不欢而散 十多年了还是电子假人，现实则是出现过过度信任以及背叛、反目成仇。这座城市里的某些少数人要么是被执念囚禁，要么互相舔舐伤疤、自相残杀罢了，那种理想..青春...从来都不存在。debuff太多我个人是无法维继了，有时候我会回忆现实和网络上的每一个人。 从出身再到城市再到人性再到性格再到生活，就注定了会与向往的友人们背道而驰 一切皆遗憾 但，人生并非动漫游戏，也没有个人自由主义的英雄，我尝试了集合他人也尝试组成朋友，只是都失败了。做一枚有道德的齿轮就够了。

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children — An 82-Hour Argument Against “More Is Better” 🎬 Cold Open (because this game definitely has one, whether you want it or not) Welcome to TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children, a game that begins with promise, ambition, and optimism… and ends with you wondering why you just read a novel-length script about spoon-worshipping cultists without hearing a single human voice. It’s the kind of game that proudly says “We have depth,” and then shoves 82 hours of it into your lap without checking if you actually wanted that much. WHY IS NOBODY TALKING?! WHY AM I READING EVERYTHING?! I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR A VISUAL NOVEL DISGUISED AS X-COM! 🧠 What Is This Game, Really? On paper, Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children sounds fantastic: a tactical, turn-based strategy RPG inspired heavily by X-COM, mixed with anime aesthetics and a dash of Persona-style social elements. You play as a group of “Troubleshooters” — essentially licensed vigilantes — protecting neighborhoods from gangs and criminal organizations while being backed by the police. It sounds like it should work. And sometimes… it almost does. 🗣️ Voice Acting? Never Heard of Her Let’s start with one of my biggest personal issues: this game has no voice acting at all. None. Zero. And considering this game takes roughly 82 hours to beat, that means reading everything. I ended up skimming entire paragraphs just to preserve my sanity. This game would greatly benefit from English voice acting, or any voice acting. Instead, it asks you to absorb mountains of dialogue while constantly interrupting gameplay to explain mechanics, lore, relationships, and systems — most of which don’t need that much explanation. 📖 Story: Meh, But Also Way Too Much The story itself is… fine. Meh. Not offensively bad, but nowhere near strong enough to justify how much time it demands from you. There’s a cult that worships spoons. Yes. Really. I assume it’s meant to be funny or quirky. It’s not. There’s also a major character named Carter, and yes — I have beef with him. Your final confrontation with Carter is a one-on-one fight… and he still gets away. The outcome? Carter becomes a leader, the Spoonists (who are, by the way, families with children abandoning their city to find a “new world”) head off into the distance, and the game heavily hints that his radical methods will be explored further. IN THE SEQUEL. Which is fascinating, because this game came out six years ago. 🧩 Abandoned Children… Where? By the way — for a game titled Abandoned Children, I genuinely expected… abandoned children. Kidnapping. Gang recruitment. Something. Nope. The crimes I saw were assault, robbery, and hostile takeovers. That’s it. No child gangs. No kidnapped kids. Nothing that really justifies the title beyond vague metaphor. 🎮 Gameplay: X-COM, But Louder and Worse This is where the game really starts to lose me. It’s basically a quirky X-COM, but inferior in almost every way. The beauty of X-COM: Enemy Unknown was its clarity: simple systems with deep tactical depth. You understood cover, positioning, and risk immediately. Troubleshooter adds complexity without benefit. Combat systems are overly complicated Affinities, rules, counters, fog of war triggers Research systems are unintuitive Enemy encounters feel chaotic rather than strategic Combat doesn’t feel satisfying. Enemies come in waves. Bosses die. And it rarely feels like you accomplished anything. I NEVER FELT SMART PLAYING THIS GAME. ⏳ The Grind: The Real Final Boss My biggest issue? The grind. I have 82.22 hours logged, and a huge chunk of that time was spent replaying the same maps over and over for side quests, materials, enemy info, and loot chests. Maps are long. Drawn out. And the loot chest situation actively makes them worse. Getting new characters takes way too long. People say 9–12 hours for another party member, and I believe it. The character I wanted most joined eighth, which made me ask: Why am I even here? This game could’ve cut 85% of its content, and it would’ve been a better experience. 🎨 Presentation: Surprisingly Decent… Sometimes Some animations are genuinely impressive. The art style isn’t my taste, but it’s well-made, and thankfully the anime excess is mostly restrained. Mostly. Yes, there are still high school kids doing backflips off buildings for no reason, and edgelords in fur coats who are clearly meant to be intimidating. Right. Menus in the HQ are needlessly obtuse, but there is real customization depth layered throughout the game — credit where it’s due. 🧠 Final Thoughts I don’t think this is a bad game. For turn-based fans, the gameplay is okay. The lore and world are interesting enough. I liked feeling like a hero backed by the police — it genuinely felt like one of those Korean webtoons. Some characters had me invested. Others, I skimmed past without regret. I constantly expected to be backstabbed — especially since three teammates were friends with Carter — and that tension almost paid off. But overall? The game is tiring. Tedious. Overwritten. Overdesigned. ✅ 5 Good Points Deep customization systems and character builds Surprisingly strong worldbuilding concept Some excellent animations and presentation moments Tactical combat can shine in smaller encounters Ambitious first project from an indie developer 😐 5 Meh Points No voice acting at all Story is serviceable but forgettable Music and sound design are bland and elevator-like Social system exists but adds little value Art style is competent but inconsistent ❌ 5 Bad Points Excessive dialogue and constant interruptions Overcomplicated combat with unclear payoff Extreme grind and bloated runtime Poor pacing for character recruitment Misleading store page and unclear genre focus 🎯 Bonus Talking Points Shoutout to Dandylion, the indie developer — impressive ambition for a first game, even if it overreaches The sequel, Troubleshooter: Banished Children, exists… somewhere… allegedly Persona-inspired social mechanics feel tacked on and undercooked Tactical clarity is sacrificed for mechanical bloat “Less is more” is a lesson this game desperately needs Final Recommendation I would give it a 6/10 This looked like a JRPG melded with X-COM. It turned out I was horribly, horribly wrong. Ambitious. Overlong. Occasionally impressive. But ultimately exhausting.

For some reason I have been suggesting this game as an "ultimate x-com experience" on reddit too often, while I haven't done it here. So I need to fix this. And yes - it still is. * You can replay levels and use different difficulty options if you want more challenge. * A variety of characters with unique skills. * A bigger variety of customization for those unique skills with builds for each character. * An even bigger number of options with more trait-specific customizations for builds. * Weapon customization and creation from material? Yep. * Animal farming and capturing? Yes. * Robots? Add on top. * And as in every korean MMO, you have farm options for materials and so on. But this might be a minus for some. * Some story, but it wasn't really engaging. It's ok. Even after 60 hours of gameplay the game keeps adding more features, as if it wasn't enough for you before.

I am usually not a fan of anime, Japanese culture and storytelling, but this game made me put that aside. This is a game that is born of actual love and care for the genre (XCOM type) and playing it for the first 10 minutes shows you just how much of it has been poured into creating it. Customization is fun, a bit overwhelming at times, but the whole masteries system is pretty cool and intuitive once you decide to optimize a build for a character. The game might feel a bit easy at times but very challenging at others (as a game should) and I really have to commend something that is probably unnoticed by most players - the options to fast-forward, skip and auto-step cutscenes and cinematics. As I mentioned above, I'm not a fan of the usual Japanese game storytelling and writing and the inclusion of these options have let me enjoy the game without being expected to wait for some annoying unskippable monologue about food or love interest (you should know what I mean if you play a lot of games) and the game has a lot of enjoyment to give. I will definitely wait for the developer's next game and get DLC's as they come. Thank you Dandylion for your work, much love and appreciation! Edit: In order to not hide my incredible ignorance and foolishness about the culture of the game - I'm leaving it as it is and leaving a note here to maximize my humiliation.

難易度は高いです。 難易度ノーマルでもそれなりに苦戦するでしょう。 特に中盤からは雑魚モブですらワンキル拒否のスキルを持っているので、ただでさえ悪い戦闘テンポが更に悪化します。 ストーリーは何かが盛大に始まりそうで何も始まりません。 期待しないようにしましょう。 じゃあ何でオススメなんだよと言われそうですが、このゲームの素晴らしい部分は圧倒的なスキル数による多彩なスキルビルドです。 これがこのゲームの面白さの99％と言ってもいいでしょう。 基本的にはスキルの練り直しで詰まらないようにはなっています。（DLC2除く） 正直ゲームバランスという点ではかなり雑ですし上記の欠点等ありますが、ここが刺さったのでかなりハマりました。 とはいえ正直、人を選ぶゲームだとは思います。

TLDR: XCOM but an Anime JRPG. Simple, easy to digest linear story with a variety of cool characters. Large amount of mechanics and systems to optimize, and some surprisingly high in depth. Very high content-to-price ratio. Some grinding may be necessary if you want to do every fetch quest or play on challenge difficulty. Setup: In this world, teens with special powers (keyword TROUBLESHOOTERS) fight for justice in the middle of a police vs gangs vs wildlife ongoing conflict. Your main character starts off as a newbie troubleshooter, learning the ropes under a mid-tier one before branching off to start his own one and gather his own team. You don't hire generic units like in XCOM, instead you have a small roster of unique characters, each with it's own special backstory and reasons to join you. You often meet them many times before you actually hire them for real, as the game is weirdly grounded and realistic when it comes to characters joining you (not happy-go-lucky, party-member-at-first-sight type that happens often in RPGs). Story: I don't have much to say about the story, it is nice and simple, uses a mix of in-engine cinematics and visual novel. The characters are maybe a bit cliche but I personally enjoy it. The police are generic goons who bow down to the might and command of the TROUBLESHOOTER teens who are just build different. The villains commit serious and truly evil acts while at the same time looking like silly goofs. The story has depth when it wants to, usually when it comes to the life and motivations of the main characters. Missions: Something that surprised me is that in the story missions you often get to make meaningful decisions which actually affect how the mission plays out, such as deciding to face a challenging situation instead of retreating, where to enter an area from, party-splitting/who joins a fight, the NPC backup's composition (3 ranged with 1 melee, all melee, etc.). Sometimes you get to pick what character to play as, giving you a unique path throughout the same event, and ocasionally this even includes picking which side you fight as. Mechanics: There's a good deal of optimization to be done to your party beyond just leveling up, be it leveling each of their different subclasses, which class attacks/abilities to bring, the diablo-style RNG modifiers equipment with levels/rarities/star ratings, choosing battle consumables and tools, picking between various relationship bonuses when specific characters are close in the field, gathering/salvaging materials to craft things or just farming gold to buy them instead. And then there's the absolutely massive and in-depth perks system (they call it masteries but that word is way too long for how many times I'm going to be using it). There's a LOT (several hundreds) of perks to equip, some perk categories are unique to specific classes and the number of perks you can equip at once slowly increases as you level up. The perks range from simple straightforward stat bonuses to new mechanics such as counterattacks, new abilities, equipment slots, controlling how EXP gets shared, etc. When combined these perks can completely change how a character plays, and there are a wide variety of builds you can make. Perks are additionally grouped into "sets" (usually groups of 4, rarely 3), each set essentially being a super-perk that either directly powers up said perks or adds new stats/abilities that make them work better. A lot of perks actually belong to 2 or 3 sets, letting you efficiently multi-track-drift into multiple set bonuses at once. Optimizing this is hard given your limited perk slots, so it can be very difficult, but it is *extremely* rewarding to build a complex and efficient perk setup with 5+ set bonuses at once. Conclusion: All in all, a pretty good game with tons of content and easily a hundred hours of gameplay for a low price. The turn-based combat can start to feel repetitive after a few dozen hours, specially if you decide to grind, but the game gives you insane combat speed options and lots of auto skipping/prompt simplifying to try and solve the issue. No real complaints.

I absolutely adore this game and have been playing it on and off for around 6 years now. For the amount of content available and how in depth all of the combined system mechanics can be it's shocking how inexpensive the game is. Honestly I wish there were a bit more things like the costume DLCs offered, just to help contribute and ensure that the sequel game Banished Children gets completed! Like others say, when it comes to just pure game mechanics this game is unbeatable. There is just so much freedom in the way you can try and build out your team and characters from a glass cannon that can roam and clear a map all by themselves to a support tank that locks down a point and freezes anyone who tries to walk up. I love Irene's lone hero build personally :). There are just so many systems that can impact your gameplay in ways you don't even really think to expect, like having my fire abilities be a bit weakened in the rain or a hit chance penalty for melee characters based off the distance they have to run. The beast taming and drone constructing also just add a whole level of customization that really lets you support your team however you want, with so many options of beast to train and collect you really can just make one for whatever role is missing from your team at a given time. I think the only system mechanic I'm not fond of is the relationship decay for bonds between characters when they aren't taken on a mission together. I get that it makes sense narratively that the relationship would drop but it gets annoying to have to keep seeing a bond break and then repair it one mission later over and over again while trying to level up different groups of the main cast. Oh and I guess I would also like it if there were more (maybe all?) missions where you can bring your full company with you not just the 8 max. I know there's some story maps and optional maps where that is the case but I just love using all the characters so much it's hard to choose who to leave behind sometimes :(. I think this game's story is very enjoyable. It can feel a bit loose at times as it tends to jump forward and backwards as you revisit events from different character perspectives as they become more relevant, but I think creatively it's a very bold attempt and can really help drive home the individual character narratives and motivations well. And I do think that is a point where the story excels, as each character seems to have a pretty interesting backstory and pre-existing place in the world, which is refreshing to see. I do find it funny that most of the people joining your Troubleshooter company have ulterior motives when joining and don't seem that interested in actually being Troubleshooters (lol Poor Albus T_T). I also like that the game takes a bit of time to flesh out the story villains and their interactions with each other even if it pulls away from the main cast occasionally. It's definitely one of those stories with a lot of moving parts but if you pay attention to little hints dropped here and there throughout it can be very rewarding. Also the art panels used for cutscenes are just beautiful. Recently I recommended this game to my friend and we have both been enjoying a playthrough together! We've been delegating who gets to control and ready equipment for which units on missions and have been having a blast playing through the game, collaborating and arguing over strategies and builds in our weird sort of made up co-op lol. 10/10 This game is a must buy for anyone even slightly interested in strategy games, there's just so much content here for you to enjoy and I'm very excitedly awaiting even more news about the sequel.