Satellite Reign - Review @ Trusted Reviews

Daniel Griliopoulos (Trusted Reviews) has reviewed the recently released tactical squad game Satellite Reign:

Back in 1993, Bullfrog made a ground-breaking cyberpunk tactical combat game called Syndicate. Its 1996 sequel, Syndicate Wars, was one of gaming’s lost Ur-genres, an even darker game about religion in a fully-destructible cityscape. Both were perfect recreations of grim cyberpunk worlds that you had to take over with your gang of cyborgs, by stealth, hacking or straightforward ultraviolence.

Satellite Reign (named punningly after Satellite Rain, the most indiscriminately-destructive of Syndicate Wars’ weapons) is a spiritual sequel to those games. You take control of a corporation seeking to muscle in another corp that’s dominating your city, using a group of four specialised cyborgs.

Despite the wealth of text in the game (or perhaps because of it), we're somewhat hazy on what the actual storyline is. It appears that the Dracogenics corporation has taken over everything, using a technology that makes people functionally immortal, and you’re a rival corporation trying to break their monopoly – for your own dark purposes rather than human happiness, of course. [...]

Pros

• Great cyberpunk city to explore
• Welcome revival of a dead genre
• Deep, difficult and rewarding

Cons

• Combat is loose, combat AI buggy
• Support agent’s view mode damages atmosphere
• Story is backgrounded compared to the combat

Verdict

These quibbles aside, Satellite Reign has infiltrated our hearts. It’s a handsome tribute to a much-loved game series that also functions as a unique RPG and a tactical combat game. As a revival, it takes its place alongside Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Pillars of Eternity with pride; as a tactical combat game, it runs a close second to XCOM.

Score: 8/10