Tactical Breach Wizards

The Good
XCOM meets Into the Breach.

The Bad
I could nitpick that the XP mechanic is entirely arbitrary and appears to be completely outside the player's influence. Or how finishing all optional goals in the same session could've been rewarded in some way (with something superficial like a shinier star or achievements).

But the reality is there aren't really any bad elements to point out.

The Bottom Line
Tactical Breach Wizards is a sublime mix between XCOM and Into the Breach. Where I really loved Into the Breach's full information mechanics, I couldn't really get into the rogue-like structure of the game. Tactical Breach Wizards instead presents itself with a wonderfully crafted single player campaign and a collection of loose optional dreams. Each level is a manually crafted puzzle on its own and there's a consistent influx of new team members, abilities, and upgrades which keeps things fresh.

Because of the full information of what's going to happen there's never quite that anticipation moment when firing, that XCOM does so well. Nor do we ever feel the loss of one of our long-surviving team mates, but we get a lot in return. The puzzles are carefully crafted and with infinite undoes your are fully free to experiment. There's a lot of ways all the powers work together and throughout the game you'll start to learn them all through experimentation. There's a nice mix of levels in which I felt I could "solve" it in multiple ways, while in others they clearly try to teach you new trick. You'll often feel smart about finding some new combo. Which in occasional situations can become extremely overpowered, but what works well in one level doesn't necessarily work in the next, due to the composition of the team, shape of the level, types of enemies, other interactive elements in the level, and your actual goals.

The conversations in between levels serve well to give the characters some personality and keep the story going. None of the characters follow any familiar class system and instead really feel like a ragtag bunch because of it.

The focus on moving enemies around rather than directly damaging them is an incredibly fun gameplay mechanic, although the balance shifts a bit more towards damage dealing later in the game with more heavy damage powers becoming available.

While a different beast than XCOM, being more of a puzzle game, and less about gambling with lives. Counting them both as "Turn Based Tactics" games, I think I finally found the game that dethrones XCOM from the top position.