Review for Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 04/10/2018
During the Second World War, various sources report how the Nazis, under the command of Adolf Hitler, also tried to exploit the occult forces to turn the fate of the war in their favor. Despite the Führer's passion for the supernatural, history has decreed that he was unable to tap into the demonic powers to bend them to his will, otherwise our situation today would be quite different. Whether for the atmosphere or for the cruelty, the Second World War lends itself very well to the combination of Nazi cruelty with Lovecraftian stories: combining secret weapons and war conflicts with the myth of Cthulhu had to be an excellent idea to create a strategic / tactical game with a horror background.
At least that's what the team guys must have thought Auroch Digital e Ripstone Ltd. - dev and pub di respectively Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics, already out for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and now also landed on Nintendo Switch.
We therefore find ourselves impersonating a team of chosen men, in an attempt to stem the rampant Nazi demonic madness brought by the special departments of Nachtwolfe and the Black Sun: the former will use all their knowledge in the esoteric field by bending the demonic forces of the creatures of the myth of Cthulhu, while the latter will be equipped with secret, experimental and futuristic weapons, able to anticipate the times with their war technology. We are therefore catapulted into the Second World War, in a context even more terrible and devastating than we can remember, armed only with our courage and a meager standard equipment that, fortunately, grows as the adventure continues.
Under the plot aspect, unfortunately, the development team leaves a lot to the player's imagination: scraps of information are provided through short artwork giving in fact only a hint of the situation which, as we did, can be summarized in a few lines. Moreover, in the continuation of the plot there are few elements that give depth to the story and even the latter are only barely mentioned. However, the atmosphere is well transposed thanks to dark and mature atmospheres, adorned here and there by what is certainly one of the most evocative horror myths of the last millennium: the myth of Cthulhu.
Even the background of the team commanded by the player, in our opinion, deserved more depth: we find elements of all respect among charismatic soldiers, foreigners with the turban with secret abilities and special agents who have made deals with the devil in exchange for devastating powers. With such a cast we would have expected a more complex hint of their lives, which unfortunately remains little more than sketchy. Such a pity.
The gameplay itself boasts excellent foundations taken from the previous titles of the genre, XCom above all. The playable maps are vast, well designed and full of obstacles, shelters and environmental elements - unfortunately not destructible - even if at the beginning of each run much of it will be hidden by darkness and fog. After a brief exploratory phase, aimed at finding the few interactive elements capable of providing meager scraps of plot, we find ourselves facing a portion of territory up to the fateful encounter with the enemy troops: in this isometric map we will have to take turns placing and have our troops attack. The map will only be partially visible and will only be discovered when one of our players arrives at a point and turns his visual cone in that direction, branching out the darkness that hides obstacles and enemies.
Once the troops are positioned, we will be able to attack the enemies with the weapons or with the powers at our disposal: thanks to a small box we will be able to see the probabilities of making the attack, as well as of course being able to choose how to attack. To move and attack we will have a series of AP available that will be gradually consumed: when the entire team runs out of attack points, the hand will pass to the enemy who will operate in the same way. Interesting is the possibility of deciding, in case we advance PA, to put the character on the alert in a given direction: by doing so for the opponent's turn, our man will automatically attack the enemies that cross his field of vision.
The Momentum is also available to the player: extra PA placed in a bar and common to the whole team, which accumulate thanks to a system that rewards critical hits and kills. By using these extra points you are entitled to exceed the PA limit and perhaps score one more shot. We also find a stress component that affects our team, penalizing them with permanent penalties that can invalidate their offensive abilities.
Each character is able to manage a minimum of inventory, which includes two weapons and an item, as well as various upgrades. There is also an upgradeable skill tree that can unlock common characteristics such as increasing range, plus unique abilities characteristic of each individual. Unfortunately, one soon realizes how this vast skill tree is affected by a system that suffers from a devastating repetitiveness, being in fact few skills and weapons that are worth having and expanding.
Unfortunately, in the same way also the tactical / strategic approach gets blessed quickly: in practice it is always necessary to keep the team united, to advance a lookout to be placed on alert and attack with the rest of the team, always with the same weapons, given that, as already mentioned, it is only useful to upgrade part of the supplied military armament. Inexplicably then the AI suffers from disturbances, advancing for no apparent reason or lurking without attacking in some maps, while in others the enemy throws himself into the fray becoming easy meat to be slaughtered.
We also did not understand the system that establishes when a hit is successful or not: sometimes 92% of success is proposed from incredible distances, always or almost always bringing our hit to hit and then finding ourselves surprising the enemy behind and a few centimeters find that the odds of hitting the target stop at 40%. We can understand the horror setting and the accumulated stress of the battle, but to think that a veteran soldier misses the shot inches from the enemy's head, no. In the same way we don't understand how the action of shooting a rifle costs 4 AP and reloading the same costs as much, and unfortunately the game is full of similar anomalies.
This greatly reduces the pleasure of the game experience, sometimes resulting in moments of pure frustration: those who love tactics expect the game conditions to respect a profound consistency, and finding flaws of the genre penalizes the title, which on the contrary in itself has enormous potential. In addition, the port for Nintendo Switch suffers from slowdowns, lag and disarming bugs: you find yourself with buttons that do not respond when you switch from one character to another going back and forth, or the camera that follows a blind spot automatically without letting you participate. to the action of the enemy. A real shame given that the peculiar characteristics of the newborn from Nintendo are on paper perfectly suited to such a title.
Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics, made by Auroch Digital and published by Ripstone Ltd., is the typical example of how a splendid idea can be misused and devastated by deep holes in the plot and gameplay. The bugs further limit the gaming experience of a title that should at least be rewarded for the atmosphere and for the idea itself. We can therefore only fervently hope for updates that limit the bugs, and in a second chapter that fills the gaps of this first episode.
► Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics is an Action-Indie-Strategy-Tactical game developed by Auroch Digital and published by Ripstone Games for PC, PlayStation 4, Steam and Xbox One, the video game was released on 04/10/2018
