Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus (2018) by Bulwark Studios

Most immediately striking about this game is the absolutely phenomenal sound design. The ambient sound is superb, making you fearful and near awestruck each step of the way. The soundtrack fits the setting well; it's an industrialized set of organ songs, with heavy electronic and ambient touches. It's the perfect window-dressing for what is essentially a game about transhumanist cultists. Had the Western Roman Empire never fallen in the 5th century, perhaps this is what it would have grown into. I love the strong inspiration of the Christian late Roman Empire here. The usage of faux-Latin for the character's names and their garbled, mechanical voice effects does a lot to impart a certain mood: that of a dark, dreary future populated by these mechanical monsters who seek to eradicate alien life and steal their technology. The entire thing gives you a sense of otherworldliness, like you're witnessing something that's just utterly beyond you. It's difficult to explain until you jump in. I don't know the Warhammer 40k lore very well, but I do enjoy what little of it I've experienced.

Probably my single favorite thing about the game is something rather minor—the aforementioned voice effects. This game does have actual voice acting, but it is relatively rare. The vast majority of the dialogue is read by the player rather than listened to, but the characters speak in their own native language, which is depicted here in sound effects sounding something akin to garbled Latin, and then put through an extremely disorienting voice filter. It is probably a relatively simple process, but the effect goes a very long way to helping the mood of this game resonate as incredibly unsettling. It's amazing, and I wish more games would do something like this if proper voice acting was not an option.

A lot of what I like about this game is in how it manages the mood. The art style, specifically regarding the characters' portraits (see right), is excellent. It reminds me a lot of the art found in Darkest Dungeon—something I loved about that game. In general, there is such a Gothic, uncomfortably dusty and masonwork-like feeling to the entire thing. A lot of the cutscenes feel as if you're witnessing some great cultural crime of epic proportions. The characters each express their own quirks, providing nice wrinkles in this mood; one of them is extremely dogmatic and is constantly citing scripture, which I loved. Another speaks in a computerized set of faux-programming commands, which is equally characterizing. There are so many nice little touches like this that make the moment-to-moment gameplay come alive for me. I think these things are necessary, especially in turn-based tactical games, which can become rather dry if they focus too much on nuts and bolts aspects of the gameplay. You need the impact of these artistic touches to balance things out and give some color to the blueprint of the game.

Perhaps the only thing I'd criticize on these grounds is the actual, in-game graphics. The hand-drawn illustrations used in the portraits are fantastic, but I found the actual polygonal characters during gameplay to be somewhat wanting. The animation is not very good, and they seem like pieces on a game board rather than the semi-living, semi-mechanical abominable personae they exhibit in their character portraits. I would love to see a sequel go all-out with the hand-drawn style, getting rid of the polygonal characters altogether and rendering the entire game in this art style. The artistic effort here is that strong.

As far as the gameplay, I suppose I'm a bit biased, as turn-based tactics is probably my single favorite subgenre of RPG—and a woefully underutilized one, in my opinion. I am glad to see games such as the XCOM revival series, and Divinity: Original Sin using this playstyle. It's not for everybody—particularly the turn-based nature of it—but for those of us who love it, this game definitely scratches that itch. There are a bevy of different abilities, passive perks, and gear to keep the game dynamic and flowing forwards. I've always considered the sign of a good turn-based tactics game to be getting absolutely wrecked in an engagement, then reloading a save and trying it again with slightly differing tactics, only to succeed easily. It's a sign that the emphasis is where it should be—on how you approach each battle—rather than on something like getting an overpowered weapon. The tutorial mission is actually a great example of this: I went from getting both of my tech priests killed, to adjusting my tactics and sending my peon units at Argolekh in suicidal charges, and was able to kill him without taking any damage. It was immensely satisfying.

Sadly, though, the difficulty scaling throughout the campaign seems to be somewhat off. I believe this is due simply to having so many different abilities and so much different equipment present in the game, which had to have made it difficult to balance everything. The beginning of the game seems very difficult; you have small pistols which do 1-2 damage, and if you try and face up a Necron Destroyer with those weapons, you're going to get your butt kicked. However, once you get to mid-game, you are cruising; if you know what you're doing and you've thought about your Tech-Priests' builds, you're probably going to be able to deal with everything that comes your way rather easily. And by the time you get to the late game, you'll be steamrolling everything. This is definitely not scaled like XCOM 2, which is quite difficult and punishing. It felt rather like Final Fantasy Tactics to me, or any other game in which you can break it completely if you progress your characters the right way.

I did read that they patched the game to make it more difficult, and it isn't a total breeze, but if you build smartly, you'll still probably watch your power level grow considerably as the game continues onwards.

Although this might be a controversial opinion, I don't believe that completely breaking a challenging game by becoming overpowered via intelligent character building is necessarily a bad thing. While this is a detriment to enjoyment for those who like to be challenged, it can also be quite rewarding; there's a sense of growth in power when you go from getting killed against one Necron Destroyer, to slaughtering everything in your path just 20 hours later. It imparts a sense of what the Adeptus Mechanicus do within the fiction: they may be ill-equipped at the start, but they will learn more and more about your technology and adapt it to their purposes to such an extent that they will use it better than you will. And then they will kill you all because you had the nerve to exist in the first place.

If I did have a complaint, probably it would be that some of the tomb events feel a bit arbitrary. There are sometimes instances of selecting an option in an event room and having the results of your choice play out in an unexpected way that felt rather arbitrary.

I know nothing about Bulwark Studios but this is such an engrossing, carefully crafted game that I'm very excited to see what they do from here on. I'll be watching their future games closely, and I'd recommend Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus to any fan of the genre of turn-based tactics. If you like the Warhammer 40k setting and you're not too averse to turn-based gameplay, give it a shot—you might enjoy it. But if you dislike other turn-based games, this one likely will not sell you on the subgenre, and there will be little for you to enjoy here unless you're an absolutely rabid Warhammer fan.

⭐⭐⭐⭐