Don’t Miss 2024’s Best Tactical RPG

SteamWorld Heist II snuck out last year in early August and didn’t create as many ripples as some of the other genre spin-offs in its quirky robotic universe. That’s a shame because the bones of this tactical RPG are some of the strongest around, even if the surrounding fluff can get in the way sometimes.

A sequel to Image & Form’s 2015 3DS game, SteamWorld Heist II trades its predecessor’s sci-fi setting for a Pirates of the Caribbean-infused take on the high seas, but otherwise the bulk of it still revolves around turn-based encounters in side-scrolling 2D maps where gunshots ricochet and grenades blow up cover to create memorably chaotic fights.

You’re still looting procedurally generated levels and trying to escape as bullets and lasers go whizzing past your crew’s mechanical heads, but there’s a major difference in SteamWorld Heist II. Unlike the first game, in which characters were each ingrained with specific class archetypes, the sequel lets you give any crew member any weapon and then start building their kit around that. Equip a sniper rifle and you become a sharpshooter that specializes in dealing critical damage from afar. Wield a hammer and you become a brawler who gets extra turns and other bonuses from smashing foes up close.

This offers a lot of flexibility and freedom, but SteamWorld Heist II goes a step further and lets characters mix and match skills from different classes once they’ve unlocked them, rewarding experimentation and incentivizing a hunt for synergies that will break the game and help you take no prisoners when breaking into high security bases in search of powerful treasure. It’s basically the inverse of the Final Fantasy Tactics job system where skill trees were linked to classes rather than weapons. The result is a refreshing change-up that’s more streamlined without ditching too much depth.

I finished the game last summer on Switch (it’s also on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC) and loved every minute in which I found myself analyzing bullet trajectories, blast radiuses, and the odds of success if I sacrificed one character to cover the rest of the crew’s tactical retreat. Even through procedurally generated maps where any lollygagging will quickly find you overrun by enemy forces, SteamWorld Heist II’s ingredients form an excellent recipe for tense moments, analytical showdowns, and seat-of-your-pants escapes. It cleverly iterates on the best elements of the first game and makes them even more robust and fun.

The only downside to SteamWorld Heist II is that it lacks the first game’s concise 12-hour runtime. It’s almost twice as long, with the extra hours going toward some late-game grinding and a new overworld exploration system in which you explore as a submarine gunning down enemy ships in real-time in exchange for small rewards that quickly stop being worth the trouble. Like the rest of SteamWorld Heist II, the shoot-‘em-up sections are smartly designed and control well but ultimately feel like unnecessary time wasters and frustrating distractions from the excellent 2D tactical combat at the game’s core.

Ultimately, SteamWorld Heist II is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with an extra piece of bread in the middle. Still delicious but eventually way more than you want to eat. I still ended up finishing the game because the 2D XCOM-like shootouts are good enough to make wading through all the filler worth it. SteamWorld Heist II is a great tactics RPG that genre acolytes will be doing themselves a disservice to overlook.

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