Tactical Breakthrough Wizardthe next game by Tom Francis (At gunpoint, Heat signature), has everything you could want from a game with that name. There are 1) wizards, 2) tons of tactical infiltration, 3) a huge conspiracy to uncover, and 4) so many windows to throw people out of. What may not be obvious at first glance is how incredibly fun the game is (beyond the humor of window defenestration) and what a biting satire it is.
An early conversation with a police officer paints the picture quite vividly. Jen Kellan, the storm witch who Tactical Breakthrough Wizard’ De facto protagonist, has just returned from a job gone wrong. As a private investigator, she responsibly goes to the police to submit her report and findings before she is fired for meddling in missing persons cases and her skills are dismissed as “witchcraft”. Since the game is incredibly perceptive, you can contradict them directly and point out that maybe she wouldn’t need to get involved if the police were doing their job. Soon after, you spend a mission investigating the brutally inefficient policeand once again throw people out of the windows.
Tactical Breakthrough Wizard is incredibly talkative. It has an unfiltered voice that I’m deeply jealous of, and it’s reflected in its presentation and beautiful level design. Some of my favorite moments in the game aren’t even in combat, but in the dialogue-heavy cutscenes that play between missions or just before you break down a door to begin a level. You meet Zan, a skilled black ops wizard with ties to the game’s villain, and the “base” he takes you back to is actually his mother’s apartment. Once you’re there, the two regale you with Zan’s “origin story” and his mother tells you that he inherited his father’s “dog poop mind.”
Everyone is a character In Tactical Breakthrough Wizard, which makes me realize how much is made of these cutscenes. A traffic warlock with uncanny hearing named Steve Clark is one of the smartest among them and he thankfully keeps popping up as a hilarious rival to Jen. Bori, a pyromancer known for barely producing hot flames, is another such oddity and a necromancer named Banks even joins your team at the end. Her whole gimmick is that she can only heal people by resurrecting them and she can only resurrect someone who has died within an hour so she carries around a gun to speed things up. Yes, she resurrects you with a headshot.
Naturally, this quirk also affects the game’s story and level design approach. Combat is played out via a turn-based system on an isometric grid, where you deploy your units and perform your actions first before the enemy gets going. Leaving one of your allies in a precarious position lets you anticipate what the enemy will do before you end your turn and commit to it, and a rewind button lets you carefully calculate each step of the turn before letting your enemies advance. Most of the time, you won’t be dealing direct damage, but rather weakening enemies, knocking them into parts of the environment, or hurling them out of a window or into holes. However, Tactical Breakthrough Wizard does a wonderful job of intensifying performance, even though that may sound simple.
One of the last levels I tackled took place in Jen’s own nightmare, and was quite unorthodox and challenging both thematically and mechanically. On one level, Jen is literally questioning herself over her inability to separate her identity from her work, which diminishes her value and self-esteem. On another level, two versions of her are battling through stifling bureaucratic offices filled with the same cops and traffic witches that filled her otherwise boring daily life. That is, until Zan came to her and asked for her help in preventing World War II. Five and she felt like she could be more than just a cog in a broken machine.
This nightmare not only made me familiar with her problems, but also made me learn all of Jen’s tricks. For example, the best thing about Jen is that she is both very agile and can push units around. So instead of facing enemies head-on, I tried putting her near windows. That way, she could use either her main weapon (which pushes one unit at a time) or her chain bolt (which pushes back even further and also attacks multiple enemies) to hurl people out of windows. or use her broom to fly out of a nearby window and emerge from another.
Banks plays an excellent supporting role, as he can transfer damage from one character to another, open eldritch portals that enemies can be sucked into, or simply soften them up with a thrown tranquilizer, multiplying the effectiveness of knockback damage. Zan is much more offensive and can set fire to any enemy that crosses the axis he sets his sights on, but finally my favorite move of his allows him to send out multiple projections of himself to take fire, shoot at nearby enemies, or even interact with targets. It’s cheesy to admit this, but at a certain point it feels downright magical. Tactical Breakthrough Wizard therefore rarely feels out of place to your advantage.
An enemy turret will still absolutely take you out in 1-2 hits, and other traffic warlocks will send ghostly cars and buses three lanes straight at you. Neutralizers will occasionally fill the ranks of enemies, and since they lock onto the unit closest to them and drain them of their magic, you’ll need to carefully consider whether you’re drawing enemy aggression when invading a room and tactically position your allies accordingly. For example, you don’t want Zan to get pinned down in that opening round, as his clones and unique attack abilities make him ideal for taking out that Neutralizer quickly. That then provides Jen with the opportunity to zip around the room, knocking people into walls, portals, or out of windows. Whatever you think the goal of this game is, it’s push as many people out of the windows as possible.
If you don’t believe me, try completing all of the “confidence objectives” in each level. These sub-objectives encourage you to fine-tune your playstyle, sometimes asking you to beat a level in a certain number of rounds, throw a certain number of enemies out windows in one turn, or extend a round long enough for you and all of your allies to use a series of abilities that require either action or mana, or sometimes both. Each character has their own confidence objective, which gives points toward unlocking cosmetics, but only beating missions rewards you with XP, which can be distributed to modify and upgrade individual skills in a system that will be very familiar to anyone who’s played the game. popular tactical game Into the breach.
Despite being two acts into the game already, there are two more that are even longer, and there are plenty of dream missions, including challenging gauntlets and survival missions. Just in case you thought there wasn’t enough meat on the bones. Between its ridiculous cast and premise, a sleek sense of style, and a mystery I actually want to unravel – complete with a board and plenty of interactive thread – not to mention its incredible wit. Tactical Breakthrough Wizard is absolutely one of the best games I’ve played this year.
