It's the first SteamWorld Game that just didn't ever click with me. I think the two biggest killers here are the pacing and combat design. I felt bored of the dungeon layouts and movement between areas. Battles move at snails pace making it feel like a requirement to hold down fast forward. It made the overall experience pretty rough.

The deck building and core strategies that come with it also leave a lot to be desired. It presents a decent variety of combinations that are limited by its rules. To simplify, for the 3 characters in your party each have a card limit that combine into your deck. The limit is very strict. It also doesn't help that when a character goes down you can't use those characters cards for the rest of combat. This can lead to boss fights where if one character in your party goes down you might as well wipe. The balance in this game is completely off.

It still has that SteamWorld charm that I love. Character designs aren't as strong but the artstyle is great, music is nice and the writing is charming. I made it halfway through the game before stopping. At the time of writing SteamWorld Heist 2 got announced and all I could think about is how much I would rather play that leading me to drop this one.