Twilight Wars Review

Twilight Wars is a cyberpunk strategic turn-based dungeon crawler developed and published by Comrade Bear Games. The game basically combines XCOM: Enemy Unknown’s base building and management with Darkest Dungeon’s battle system and use of its (somewhat expendable) party of misfits and weirdos, while retaining both their punishing difficulties. Having failed horrifically at those very games, I thought it would be a good idea to check it out myself. So, are you willing to join the Agents or is it better to go into hiding?

In the mid-21st century, where corporations have become the world's superpowers, a special organisation called the Triple-A (Anonymous Arbitration Agency), run by an AI called Shi, was created to keep the peace by stopping their tyranny through espionage. However, a surprise attack has left the Agency in ruins, leaving only you and Shi to pick up the pieces. As its Warden, you will need to assemble a crack team of specialists (not necessarily professionals) to bring order to the chaos caused by the corps, find out who brought the Triple-A down, and ensure that it doesn’t happen again. It won’t be easy, and not everyone will survive, but if it’s all to save the world, maybe some blood spilt is worth the cost.

The presentation is really nice. Locations and characters are done in this painted style with a technological UI that looks busy at first, but is easy to grasp once you get into it. Shi might be a little off-putting to look at, but overall, the character designs and animations are done well and bring life to this grimy, metallic world. I also quite enjoyed the music. It’s subtle and doesn’t take over even in the most tense moments, but it does highlight the tension in each fight. Each encounter might be an Agent’s last mission, so think through every turn. If you do like the music, there is an in-game playlist and music tracks to find… which take up inventory space. How much are you willing to sacrifice for CDs?

Onto the gameplay, I find myself reminded of roguelikes when you launch a mission, which will consist of exploring areas filled with enemies, items, and events. Your goal is to simply get to the exit where a tough battle awaits, but there will be diverging paths that you might want to check out for more resources, at the risk of running into more trouble. I'm a little annoyed that I need to click on each individual spot to make my way to the next new encounter. It feels unnecessary and wastes time, as little as it may be.

However, no matter how sneaky you might be, your team of Agents will run into enemies, so it’s time to ensure that they’re silenced. Fights start off with a roll of initiative to determine turn order before we get to business. Each of your Agents will have skills they can use to damage and disrupt opponents and support allies. You can't go too nuts with each fight, as your team shares an Energy bar that their most useful moves rely on. You also need to think carefully about the position of your party members, as some skills are better at range or at melee distance, as well as their Morale, as the worse it is, the less effective that Agent will be. 

Preparation is key to success in this game, and I find this fascinating. I quite liked the battle system where everyone has a role, with proper compositions allowing you to come out of missions without a single scratch, but it’s also likely you might face a total team wipe. It’s all on you to ensure that complete failure is mitigated as much as possible.

This ragtag bunch of misfits aren’t unfeeling, robotic puppets made to send to their deaths… at least not yet. You have drones for that. Whoever you employ is an actual human being with their own backstories that shape their gameplay abilities and attitudes, and a salary that needs to be paid per day. From an MI6 agent with a pug and a cyberised monk, to that hacker guy from Kung Fury and a nature-loving demolitionist, you’ll have your work cut out for you. There are tons of people willing to join your Agency, but it’ll take time and effort to make them a proper, functioning team that actually tolerates each other.

With each mission is the potential for them to develop better traits, debilitating flaws, or just… die. Don’t worry too much if you lose your favourite Agent, it’s cyberpunk, so their consciousness is digitised before every mission and is ready to be cloned. Be warned that this doesn’t mean infinite lives. It will cost some of their humanity, which means they’ll lose some of their max Loyalty. At zero, they will permanently leave the Agency, locking you out of their personal missions. It’s not easy to please everyone.

For that reason, you’ll need to build your base to accommodate and improve your Agents. There are various facilities you can build and upgrade to make your next mission a little easier. Assign Agents to the Gym to have them gain EXP outside of missions, send them to the Infirmary to heal their wounds, or let them relax in the Lounge to boost their Loyalty and slowly shift their alignment to yours, even have them go to therapy so you can iron out their less pleasant traits. You can also purchase better weapons and equipment, upgrades to make your social skills a little better, maintain a drone to replace humans on missions, and so much more, and you’ll need each and every advantage you can get. That being said, you also need to ensure you have the resources to do all this, and funding a secret agency isn’t easy.

Although, to be frank, the term “easy” will not be on your mind throughout your playthrough. On Normal difficulty, you can retry missions and fights if you dislike how a mission is going or hate the outcome. However, on Hardcore, you can’t reload at any point. On either difficulty, you seriously need to be on your A-game. Twilight Wars will punish any fumble or misstep… or it just hates you today and decides “Hey, everyone is dead now”. Seriously, I’ve done missions that started out well until the game decided to give the enemies an Ambush, which means they get two turns in a row. It also has the problem of XCOM’s accuracy rolls and makes you miss when you need something to land the most. It is not a great feeling to be destroyed by things outside your control. Resetting your campaign might be necessary as you will end up in unwinnable scenarios.

Onto performance, it didn’t struggle at all to keep at a consistent 60 FPS. The load times were actually much quicker than I initially thought, due to finishing before I even picked up my phone to write parts of this review. I also didn’t encounter any bugs while I played.

Twilight Wars personally isn’t for me, I don’t like being punished by things outside of my control, but it will scratch a strategy fan's itch. This game requires a lot of thinking and planning multiple steps ahead, and when things go right, you’ll feel satisfied when all your Agents come back better than ever. However, be prepared to fail. You don’t know what might strike you from the dark.