FTL and XCOM had a baby!

Role Playing Games are famous for having very engaging and thoughtful stories to go along with their combat. However, the tactical RPGs usually focus on the battle side of things and tend to let the story and character development fall to the wayside. Depth of Extinction is looking to fix that by trying to meld the two and try to produce something with the best of both worlds. In this world, you play as agents of the now crumbling government of a nearly dead world that is overtaken by water, and has very few resources left. You fight pirates, mad robots, and everything in between to help keep humanity alive.

Check out my stream of Depth of Extinction here:

The start of the game has you invading an abandoned facility in which a robot tells you of danger, and directly after that is killed by giant insane robots. It’s an interesting way to start things off by immediately setting a bar of excitement and danger, and that humans are very capable of being wiped out if you don’t get your stuff together. You are then thrust into combat where the controls are very intuitive and explained easily without too much complexity.  Anyone who has played something like the XCOM games or many other turn based systems will recognize the two action dynamic that lets you move and then fire, or sprint the whole way. There is cover, and of course percentages of success when attacking so you don’t have to waste time figuring out if you can in fact hit someone.

To go along with the easily understood combat is the simple loadout menu that lets you decide which characters will be fighting and the equipment they will be using. Each character brings something different to the table, as you are given certain members to start but can buy mercenaries to help shore up any weaknesses. It allows for some great replaybility when you only have limited money to try one style of play, but then have to readjust each time to maximize your potential. Along with the characters and their weapons, you can also choose a class for each character once they level up for the first time and it helps you decide what kind of character they will be, like a sniper with a deadshot power, or an all-around soldier with a rifle.

However, before all this combat begins, you need to know where you are going. To decide where to go, a similar to FTL node map system is used where you have a very small amount of fuel and you can try your luck from node to node.  It’s possible to not fight at all, and get resources by sneaking, or even as a gift, but it’s all random and there are many times when the fight isn’t worth it, and you can decide to go to a map point with nothing going on, just to get closer to the target point at the end.

Depth of Extinction is a good game, but it’s very clear to many who play it that it is standing on the shoulders of giants. That is to say that it takes good ideas from excellent games and marries them together nicely, but doesn’t really break the mold either. From the animations, to the pixel art, to the good but repetitive music, it’s all good but just not great. It’s still definitely worth the $20 is on sale for now, just for the amount of story and content presented, but it won’t likely change your life.