I’m a big fan of the SteamWorld series, but the original SteamWorld Heist was not my favorite. I really wanted to like it. Not just because I love SteamWorld, but because it had such a unique take on tactical strategy; an RPG-flavored evolution of Worms with a Space Western theme that checked a lot of boxes for me.
Unfortunately, the execution left me dissatisfied. The engaging strategy it offered just couldn’t make up for the lack of character customization, grindy gameplay, and randomly generated maps that all felt the same. I jumped off SteamWorld Heist before the end and treated myself to a run through SteamWorld Dig 2 to remind myself what I love about this world in the first place.
I first saw SteamWorld Heist 2 at Summer Game Fest earlier this year and it seemed like the team at Thunderful Development had addressed a lot of my concerns. The sequel builds out the core RPG systems of the original in some important ways to improve the team-building and character customization features that were underdeveloped in the original. With hand-crafted maps and a new emphasis on gear, it looked like SteamWorld Heist 2 was fixing all of its predecessor’s big problems. But after 15 hours, my similar feelings about SteamWorld Heist haven’t really changed.
While it's true that there are new systems in place that address the prior shortcomings, those new systems also add flaws of their own. Heist 2 introduces a job system that allows you to assign your characters to any class based on their equipped weapon and over time develop them into completely customizable cross-class fighters. It’s a cool way to approach skill trees that gives you a lot of freedom to build your characters with the exact skills you want – but only if you’re willing to grind for it.
I wanted to unlock abilities from different classes to fine-tune my heroes, but in order to do that, you have to restart the leveling process for each new class. I found that even with good gear my characters just weren’t strong enough to keep up if I tried to train them in a new class while pushing the story forward. I needed to train them up in easier missions I’d already completed, or lower the difficulty, but both options felt bad.
The other problem is that some classes have abilities that are so powerful, you just want to have them available on every character. Flankers get incredibly useful movement abilities that are essential to have, especially towards the end of the game when the maps are huge and take multiple turns to traverse, so I found myself leveling up all of my characters as flankers. Not only did this somewhat flatten the composition of my team, but it also added more grind. I like that Heist 2 gives you more freedom to build your characters, but it might give you too much freedom.
And while I appreciate that each level is handcrafted (with some randomization for variety) there’s still only so much you can with a 2D map. Every level is a series of interconnected rooms with barriers to hide behind and weird angles to ricochet bullets off of, but they do tend to all blend together after a while, just like the first game. There’s definitely more variety in the enemies, hazards, and layout of levels, but I eventually felt the same fatigue in Heist 2 that I felt in the first game.
My commitment was really challenged in the last few hours, when the mission times extended to 20-30 minutes each. One wrong choice about where to move a character or aim a shot can snowball into an irresolvable situation, forcing you to restart the entire mission from the beginning. A couple of missions I got stuck on took me five or six attempts and multiple hours to get through thanks to one or two bad shots and unlucky spawns I couldn’t bounce back from, and were I not reviewing, I probably would have just given up.
I love the world of SteamWorld. Heist 2 is as flavorful as ever, with great characters, funny writing, and a great soundtrack by Steam Powered Giraffe. The overworld exploration is charming too, with its own pirate ship progression system and simple naval combat. I really want to like SteamWorld Heist 2, but I can’t get past the more tedious aspects of the grind, or the long, punishing missions in the late game. It’s an improvement over the original to be sure, but I’ll have to wait patiently for SteamWorld Heist 3 to see if this series can finally reach its full potential.
SteamWorld Heist II
3.5/5
Pros
- Deeper character customization than the original.
- Another charming adventure in SteamWorld
Cons
- Too grindy for such a short game.
- Character customization is too open for its own good.
- Late game missions are too long and punishing.
