Tactical Breach Wizards Review | GodisaGeek.com

Suspicious Developments sure do enjoy throwing people through windows. In fact, Tactical Breach Wizards is considered the third installment in their “Defenestration Trilogy,” which previously included two fairly devilish action-puzzle games, Gunpoint and Heat Signature. Now, they’ve brought their strategic expertise to the world of turn-based tactics in a game that’s decidedly more MiMiMi than Firaxis.

Look, the world of Tactical Breach Wizards is a lot like our world, except there’s magic. And wizards. And warlocks. And some of them direct traffic. In this world, magic is just a fact of life. This isn’t a secret society story like The Dresden Files; people just do magic, along with their everyday, normal stuff like you and me.

It focuses on two protagonists, Zan and Jen. The former is an ex-Black Ops specialist who can predict the future and uses this ability to lay down Overwatch-style traps, while the latter is a seasoned private investigator who can use shockwaves to throw people across rooms and, yes, out windows. In fact, windows are so integral to most of your tactics that there’s a character later on who can literally conjure one up if you need it.

Perhaps Tactical Breach Wizard’s biggest departure from its predecessors is its lack of difficulty. This isn’t a mind-bending affair, and it doesn’t need to be. While something like XCOM works by limiting your skills and making it entirely possible to bring the wrong team, anyone who’s played games like Shadow Gambit or even Chimera Squad knows that it’s more fun to be wildly overpowered, so the only way to truly fail is to miss an opportunity. Even then, though, TBW lets you rewind as many times as you like for free, removing the pain of save-scumming.

Most missions involve clearing a series of rooms filled with an increasing number of enemies that feel more like puzzles than action sequences. You yell “Breach!” and burst through the doors in a shower of magical sparks and splinters, then set about taking out whatever’s inside. Sometimes there are doors that need to be sealed before reinforcements can get through, occasionally there are boss fights. Quite often you’ll have secondary objectives to complete that grant additional XP towards unlocking perks for your five recruitable characters.

If the world of Tactical Breach Wizards is a strength, it’s fair to say that the story is one of its few weaknesses. It’s not badly told, and the dialogue is even witty and touching despite being silent, but it fails to maintain the game’s momentum. What begins as a botched hostage rescue quickly becomes a globe-trotting adventure taking on the “Druid Mafia,” but the odd pairing of special forces soldier and grumpy sleuth never quite makes sense.

Simple, sharp graphics, responsive controls, and intelligent level design work in its favor, though. You probably won’t feel truly challenged until you start tackling the individual story missions called Anxiety Dreams, which are a lot like Shadow Gambit’s training missions in that they focus purely on that character’s gear and require you to use it to its full potential. You’ll also eventually unlock Proving Grounds missions, which offer the only real challenge.

That’s not to say Tactical Breach Wizards is a breeze, but anyone who grew up with XCOM and has a perverse penchant for missing a 95% hit chance from three feet away may feel like they’re being babysat. Oddly enough, if you’re struggling with a mission, you can simply skip it and come back to it later, or not at all. You do run the risk of running out of power later, though, so that’s a choice you have to make.

My ultimate conclusion to Tactical Breach Wizards is that I simply didn’t expect it to be this refreshing. That a game like this doesn’t deliberately smash my balls for fun is a relief, but the confident writing (which occasionally verges a little too closely on a Joss Whedon quip-a-thon) and laid-back approach to challenge and structure make it feel like a game designed to be fun above all else. If a Defenestration game is going to get a sequel, this seems more likely to be it. The world is cool and has a lot more going for it, while the breadth of special moves and abilities is really only limited by the imagination.