Tactical Breach Wizards review

There's a phenomenon observed among most tabletop roleplaying (TTRPG) groups: As you play together, falling into each other's rhythms, two things start to happen. Firstly, your capability for sincere storytelling reaches new heights; secondly, your ideas grow increasingly unhinged.

Tactical Breach Wizards, a turn-based tactics game by Suspicious Developments Inc, captures the essence of a seasoned TTRPG group and distils it into around 18 hours of absolute malarkey, heartstring-pulling character stories, and yes—defenestration.

Tactical Breach Wizards is far from XCOM in a robe and wizard hat. Instead of long-term battles, it zeroes in on the 'breach, clear, repeat' loop of bite-sized combat puzzles, and gives you more tactical tools than you could fit inside a bag of holding. It's what's scribbled in between the margins, though—the story, the characters, and the stream of top-tier party banter—that really makes Tactical Breach Wizards soar.

Be kind, rewind

Tactical Breach Wizards is not a game that's entirely interested in consequences—instead, it's invested in making you feel like the biggest genius this side of the Bay of Teeth. Living with your mistakes is for people without magic, after all. Owing to navy seer Zan Vesker, (a man who occasionally does a prophecy, but can mostly see just one second into the future) your actions in Tactical Breach Wizards always be reset, as long as you don't click the "end turn" button. 

Missions are split up into three phases: the action phase, the foresee phase, and your enemy's turn. In the action phase, you plan out how your team's going to react. In the foresee phase, you watch how that all pays off, and during the enemy's turn, they get to move their pawns around, giving you a new set of circumstances to puzzle your way through.

Playing on the game's intended difficulty, I never found any of its challenges insurmountable—what teased my brain, however, were its optional in-mission challenges. These can be anything from "Defenestrate Steve Clark, traffic warlock" to "Deal with all enemies by turn 2." 

You can replay these missions to tackle the extra bits later, and they're not mandatory, but there's a good reason to complete them as soon as you can: fashion. Completing challenges earns you Confidence, which lets you unlock outfits for your squad—severe necromancer Banks had some of my favourite outfits, including a wild west gunslinger look, two hoodies, and drip that would make the grim reaper envious.

Nailing these optional objectives is imminently satisfying, too, and it's owed to the sheer flexibility you have to piece together some buck-wild combos.

Power Word: Wombo

Each character in Tactical Breach Wizards is brilliantly put together, fulfilling a niche that synergises with their compatriots in various ways. As you unlock more perks, you go from barely being able to knock three guys out of a window to an unstoppable breaching machine.

For example, Vesker the Navy Seer and Banks the Necromedic (she can revive people, but they have to be dead first) work nicely together. Vesker can use False Prophet, which summons a clone that (with all his perks unlocked) fires its assault staff at an enemy whenever anyone, including other clones, hits them with a basic attack—and while each clone only gets one potshot off per triggering strike, they all trigger off each other, leading a volley of gunfire that melts just about anything. 

Once they've earned their keep, Banks swoops in with her 3x3 attack (upgraded with a perk to increase its instant damage) and deftly kills them. This is a very smart strategy and not a horrible betrayal of your clone buddies because of a perk that refunds their mana cost as long as they die before the end of the turn, allowing Vesker to summon a fresh batch of helpers next round.

Storm witch Jen Kellen and riot priest Dall Sabin also make great partners. Jen has a chain lightning attack that knocks people around based on its angle of entry, strewn between three (and eventually six) targets. This can link to enemies, allies, and objects—including Dall's riot block, which she can throw down just about anywhere. 

Dall can also swap herself with allies and enemies. Essentially, this means she can manipulate enemy positioning to make the best use out of Jen's chain lightning, punting enemies out of windows or into objects for massive colliding damage. Simple tools that make you feel like a Harvard graduate when you get a triple kill with one well-angled bolt.

Usually, turn-based tactical games irritate me because they have hyper-specific solutions to any one situation—and while Tactical Breach Wizards does have the occasional puzzle box level, it has just as many stages that saturate the field with foes and let you figure out your own solution.

My only real complaint is that, while you can replay older missions with your full kit, the game feels like it's missing a NG+ option, bar ratcheting up the difficulty and going through every mission one by one again. There are some post-game challenges, but I swept through them in a handful of hours without much trouble.

By the time you've got access to six maxed-out agents, you're pulling off absolute nonsense every single turn. It gets to the point where it feels a smidge unfair. I played the game on its normal difficulty, though I did try some of its endgame missions on hard with a maxed-out crew—and while I certainly had to get more inventive, I wasn't sweating too much, especially with the pressure of completing its optional confidence goals taken off.

Mind, the game's coming released with both a comprehensive level editor and the ability to share them with other players—so who knows, some wunderkinds might assemble the endgame nightmare I've been craving.

The saving grace of the game's slightly-undercooked replayability (which is only a problem because I want more of it) is its story, which completely caught me off guard.

Friendship is magic

Tactical Breach Wizards is a very funny game. Characters quip with each other in snappy, well-written ways that send up the absurdity of its setting tremendously. For example, in the very first mission, both characters take a moment to puzzle over a druid mafia Great Oak in a ghillie suit. "Isn't it already a tree?" your companion asks, to which you can reply: "Maybe they wanna be mistaken for a sniper."

Few opportunities are wasted for a good gag. Every mission complete screen comes with a joke objective that usually pulled a cackle out of me. And while that might sound exhausting on the face of it, Tactical Breach Wizards breaks up its comedy with bouts of laser-focused character writing.

It presents itself as a high-octane action military romp with its tongue firmly lodged in its cheek—and it absolutely is that. But it's also unfailingly sincere, with character development that somehow manages to be great despite the limited time allocated to such things in your average tactics game.

The story is told via pre and post-mission cutscenes, but it's also delivered in quick conversations before every door breach, Anxiety Dream missions that delve into a character's specific psyche to unlock high-powered perks, and a cute little corkboard map that helps you literally string things together. 

One-on-one conversations between your party members, meanwhile, flesh them out. Every character gets to be explored, with attention devoted to their personal shtick, insecurities and tragedies—elevating what would otherwise be a very competent action flick into something memorable.

Playing it straight

The one word I keep coming back to when thinking about my time with this game is "sincerity". Tactical Breach Wizards is a tight, well-designed turn-based tactics game, but it's executed with both an earnestness and enthusiasm that's impossible to ignore. 

Its mechanics are well balanced, but will always drop balance in favour of letting you pull off dumb and cool manoeuvres. It's a game that trades in nonsense and irreverence while managing to be thoughtful, and my 22 hours with it—which include completing all optional confidence goals and dream levels—were spent utterly spellbound. 

If the worst I can say is that I simply want more of Tactical Breach Wizards, that's a sign we've got something special on our hands. If you like tactics games and character-driven stories, the only crime this game commits is leaving you hungry for more of both.

Disclosure: Tactical Breach Wizards' developer Tom Francis was an editor at PC Gamer for 10 years, leaving in 2013 after the release of his first game, Gunpoint. We assign writers and editors who do not have personal relationships with Tom to any coverage of his games.