[The Review's using my Standard Edition Hours instead of my Director's Cut hours of the game, as of the time of writing I have 243 hours in Director's Cut and I highly recommend that version over standard as it adds perks, precision shot, and some quality of life changes.]
Honestly one of the best iso rpgs I've ever played. Don't get me wrong, the game's ugly, there's only a handful of character models in the game, so it's super dependent on its portraits, and it can be pretty daunting at first because of how heavily it depends on the hotkeys. It makes up for this by having portraits with ample personality and a beautiful UI system that fits seamlessly into the setting, though the game does have the issue of not having enough portraits for everyone, so you will see some reused or variations of the same one. The game also has tons of means to express your squad via customization, the ammo system builds a sense of the matter of survival in the post apocalypse as you attempt to manage your ammo, make sure your weapons are armed, and not jammed. The weapon skill's system makes certain weapons stronger early game than others, but others can be way more rewarding with superior crit scaling on leveling the skill. The perk system Director's Cut adds encourages more build synergy while not going too far to streamline it. Combat is very simple, but far from the sole focus of the game, there's a lot of in-squad interactions like having a mechanical repair expert fix locks that your locksmith broke via crit failure. The skill check system is pretty forgiving and excellent at giving players solid risk assessment while providing multiple approaches to most situations, and the system also means you don't have to fully commit to a skill but you still are encouraged to.
People will probably say the story is very linear, which is true. There's one ending that isn't just a bad end, the line of objectives will remain the same as well, the game is pretty up-front that you play as Desert Rangers and that comes with very specific responsibilities your squad are expected to fulfill. But how you approach them can drastically change, for an example I'll go with Damonta, which is a difficult location near the end of the first half of the game that burns through a ton of the resources you collected up to this point to save the people there. The items you can pick up from the enemies are heavy and effectively worthless, the rewards you get from the people are not at all worth it. However, your objective is halfway into the map, so you could just blitz towards it, complete the objective, and leave, and you will have completed the mission. But this results in the radio host of the town leaving a parting "♥♥♥♥ you" message in regard of everyone you left to die, the game punishes you for being a good guy by making it inconvenient, it's an excellent system of morality without having to quantify it in the game itself and showing the difficulties of being a lawbringer in the wasteland. The main conflict is constantly looming in the story but is subtly placed, to the point your first time playing you may not even notice that they've orchestrated the majority of the conflict in the game.
If you are to get this game, I will warn you ahead of time, the combat isn't very exciting compared to other isometric rpgs, a lot of the game's best parts is doing things that either avoid combat or being rewarded for preparing accordingly. The visuals are very plastic, and some of the quality of life changes are locked away in the Director's Cut, but if you can get past that, the story is amazing, the game's very good at demonstrating that you need to do more than the minimum to help the people you're protecting, and the finale is the best I've ever seen in a game like this, coming full circle in the message of the story but also making the player hesitate to accept the positive outcome because it risks the lives of people they saved before. An excellent game, but definitely an acquired taste and you may want to give it a look ahead of time to make sure you're okay with how it plays beforehand.
