[Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden] It's a ducking good time

GnomeTank

Mutant Year Zero is a new XCom/Stealth RPG Hybrid published by Funcom and developed by The Bearded Ladies Consulting. It combines the tactical combat of XCom with some RPG elements, exploration and even stealth that isn't obnoxious.

Launch trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzQ6-FFCGaM

GiantBomb has a reasonably in-depth QuickLook that should give you a good idea of what the game is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNM0wUT1O80

It's available on PC, XBox and PS4. If you have Xbox Game Pass you can play it for free right now!

GnomeTank

I saw GiantBomb's QL of this and grabbed it on XBox Game Pass and I've been having a great time with it. The combat blends really well with the world exploration and encounters tend to be relatively compact. The blend of the combat, exploration, looting and light stealth is a killer mix for me. It's not perfect, I hear it can be a bit linear, but so far I'm having an excellent time. This has been a surprise gem.

Yilias

I played it for about an hour and a half. UI is a little rough around the edges but serviceable. Cover is significantly more powerful than it is in Xcom. I found it to be just a little too slow and clunky compared to just playing more Xcom.

GnomeTank

Yeah, the combat isn't as good as XCom...it's the blending of all the other stuff that makes it unique to me. I like XCom, but I can get very bored with the long battle treadmill of some XCom play throughs. This breaks up the tactical combat with other moment to moment activities which is a plus for me.

Medium Dave

Grabbed this from Gamepass and finally sat down to play it today. It's super neat!

GnomeTank

Yeah, I played it most of the weekend. I'm really enjoying it so far. It doesn't seem to be terribly long (which I'm fine with), so I'm hoping to finish it over my works Christmas break.

MegaMek

I'd been having a lot of fun with this for the first few hours, but as the game progresses enemy HP scales up so fast that the whole stealth element becomes useless pretty quick, which is frustrating.

Phillishere

Got this on sale, and it my favorite turn-based tactical game in awhile. I love the focus on the small squad, the exploration aspect, and the way stealth gives you more than enough feedback to make it a viable but risky strategy for most encounters.

GnomeTank

Yeah, it didn't seem to make much of a splash here on the forums, but I loved it. Might go back and do another play through soon.

SatanIsMyMotor

My big issue with the game was that there was a lack of variety with the character builds despite the character's themselves all being pretty varied from a design perspective.

The end of the game is also just kind of a wet fart if I recall correctly.

Phillishere

SatanIsMyMotor wrote: »

My big issue with the game was that there was a lack of variety with the character builds despite the character's themselves all being pretty varied from a design perspective.

The end of the game is also just kind of a wet fart if I recall correctly.

I felt like the limited variety of weapons combined with a few key abilities differentiated them enough, but I agree that the leveling system overall was pretty weak. My biggest issue was that, by late game, I was relying on a handful of ability to keep stealth viable (immobilize with vines, knockout with the body slam, and EMP for robot).

If you swap out a character who doesn't have one of these, you can no longer rely on stealth, so it definitely became one of those RPGs where you had a bunch of options for who would be in your party but most of them were worse than the three starting characters.

Jealous Deva

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/02/07/mutant-year-zero-developers-announce-their-next-tactical-game-out-this-month/

New tactical game incoming from Mutant:Year Zero developers...

Corruption 2029 is set in the not-so-literally-distant future of post-apocalyptic America but a technologically further flung reality of augmented super soldiers and cloaking devices. You’ll command a squad to “infiltrate an inhuman regime and discover the cause of an ominous corruption that turned America into a war-torn wasteland,” The Bearded Ladies say.

GnomeTank

Cool. I'm excited to check it out. I like their work, I hope they continue making these kinds of games.