TheMoon
Member
Developed by: Intelligent Systems
Published by: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Release Dates: March 13, 2015 (NA) / May 14, 2015 (JP) / May 15, 2015 (EU) / May 16, 2015 (AU)
Genre: Turn-based tactics game x third person shooter
Local Multiplayer: Yes (1v1)
Online Multiplayer: Yes (1v1)
New Nintendo 3DS Enhanced: Yes (C-Stick support, amiibo support; no graphics/performance enhancements)
Circle Pad Pro support: Yes
StreetPass: Yes
SpotPass: Yes (online tournametns)
eShop download file size in blocks: 8390 blocks (1049MB)
Demo on the eShop?: Yes (Medals earned in the demo carry over into the full game, including a special weapon unlock)
Aliens have come. Abe Lincoln faked his death to create a secret team to combat threats such as this: Strike Team Eleminating the Alien Menace. Apparently they hit London first so that's where the story starts. What more do you need to know?
If you do want to learn more, there is an in-game library accessible between missions with a helpful librarian called Milton who will point you towards reading material and also offers up his two cents on any of member of S.T.E.A.M.
Who's in it?
Tom Sawyer (yea, that one!), the Lion from The Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow also from Oz, Tiger Lily from Peter Pan, Queequeg from Moby Dick, African American folk hero John Henry, H.P. Lovecraft's fictional alter ego Randolph Carter, Henry Fleming from the American war novel "The Red Badge of Courage," a lady just called The Fox who may or may not be a reference to Barbara Meridith who happens to be Zorro's great-granddaughter (zorro is Spanish for "fox") and last but not least a fictional warrior queen called Califia who commanded a bunch of amazons (not the store where you buy your TVs and video games) and ruled over the Island of California. Oh and Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America. Seriously.
There are two additional characters that haven't been officially revealed:
It's the Tin Man and Dorothy Gale, both from The Wizard of Oz.
There is also an unlockable 13th post-game character:
How does it work?
You select a team of four out of any available characters (including or consisting entirely of the supported amiibo), select a loadout of various sub-weapons/boilers and enter a mission. During a mission you can choose to collect Gears and Medals. Missions are scored based on the number of turns it takes you to complete the objective and whether or not all your team members are alive at the end. If those conditions are met, you get a Medal bonus. You can replay missions any time you like to go after missed Gears or beat the "par time" for turns.
Steam: This is your main resource for actions. You want to move? You consume 1 unit of steam per tile. You want to attack/heal? You consume various amounts of steam depending on the weapon you're using. However, you can move around as much as you want during your turn as moving back to your point of origin gives you back the steam units so you can experiment with various routes until you decide on a move. However, if you're hit by an enemy's overwatch attack or pick up a health pack, that character's move until that point is locked in with only the remaining steam left available for use.
Overwatch: This one's familiar to all the XCOM players. You save a bunch of steam from your turn to fire your overwatch-compatible weapon during the enemy turn if one of them enters your line of sight. The big difference here is that the enemy has a chance to evade or attack first since your characters track the target to line up the shot. The same is true for the enemy's overwatch, btw. Note: Overwatch remains active if a target enters line of sight of an enemy and triggers an overwatch attack. If the target moves again, overwatch will also trigger again.
Additionally, overwatch attacks have the chance to stun the target. Stunned units take twice as much damage (every attack while stunned is a critical hit). For some advanced tactics, try to pull off a stacked overwatch with one character with high chance to stun setting a trap and another character second in line waiting to shell out crits on the freshly stunned unit.
Color Coding: Pay attention to the color of an enemy's eye(s). It's based on a traffic light system:
Green - Enemy not alert, has no target in line of sight.
Yellow - Enemy is on alert but has no target in its line of sight.
Red - Enemy has a target in its line of sight, will come after that target next turn or, if previously on overwatch, will attack again if target moves or new target enters the line of sight/raises attention.
Note: Colors are unrelated to potential overwatch status. It is not possible to tell if an enemy is on overwatch by the colors or any other method other than guesstimating based on its previous moves.
Special Attacks: Every character has a unique special attack that can be activated once per map and comes in either offensive or defensive flavors. Notably, they don't consume any steam!
Vehicles: On certain maps you will come across vehicles such as tanks that you can enter with any character and use to wreak havoc. Reign death upon thine enemies or just keep that heavily wounded teammate safe.
Collectibles: On any given map you can collect Gears and Medals. Medals are useful for save points where you can, well, save and/or revive/heal your team. Medals also unlock access to new weapons. You don't purchase weapons, they simply unlock when a certain amount of medals is collected. Gears, of which every map has three to collect, are what unlock additional boilers for you to customize the team.
Upgrades/Weapons: By collecting Gears on maps you can unlock new boilers, With new boilers comes more steam. This is how you expand your available moves and buff up stats. There's usually a stat trade-off, though. As you progress, you unlock more sub-weapons. Select with regard to your other teammates' loadouts for best results.
Death Match - 1v1, 60 seconds per turn only, 30 turns max, Last Man Standing. Beware of traps.
Medal Battle - 1v1, 5 turns only, team with most medals wins, can still attack.
A.B.E. Battle - 1v1 Giant Abe Mecha face-off. Beat the steam out of each other.
Tournaments - Nintendo will host official tournaments. Players can set up custom tournaments or join existing ones similar to Mario Golf: World Tour or Mario Kart 7/8.
Pro Tip: Headshots are a thing! (Only on playable characters so don't bother trying it in single player)
The four pictured amiibo are compatible with Code Name S.T.E.A.M. and they can be used as playable characters with unique abilities in the game. Yes, you can got through the story mode with a full Fire Emblem team. They still use steam as a resource. Notably, amiibo characters cannot be revived mid-mission but they're available for activation again after the mission. The amiibo characters do not appear in the game's story, they exist solely for gameplay purposes. Oh and yes, they can be used in multiplayer (online and offline), too!
- Marth is an all-melee character and his special ability makes him immune to Overwatch attacks.
- Ike's main weapon uses melee but he has a weak ranged attack and his special ability is lets him push crates or enemies. Both have no Overwatch ability.
- Lucina: details unknown because her amiibo isn't out yet.
- Robin: same as above
If you StreetPass with someone, your mission stats are compared against those from the other player. Those will be displayed on a leaderboard. If you have the top score among your StreetPasses on a mission, you will get a score bonus (Medals).
These enemy turns. They're SO LONG! UGH! Can I skip them or speed them up?
Well, look at that! During the April Nintendo Direct, they announced an update is coming soon that will let you speed up enemy turns (2x for regular 3DS, 3x for New 3DS). So that kills those complaints. No more excuses!
Software Update 1.1.0 is live in North America (as of April 8):
Here's a video of the update with the new speed-up options: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stuiZRrA8lk
Lost Cloud did a speed test:
Out of curiosity, I did some basic comparison testing on my old 3DSXL of the speed of the first enemy turn in 4 different missions using a stopwatch. I used the same "Default" party, same weapons, took the same actions, moved the characters the same way and made sure that the enemies did the same thing in each test.
Mission 1-1: Original speed = 40.8 s / 2x Speed = 24.3 s - 1 overwatch attack in both tests.
Mission 5-1: Original speed = 55.5 s / 2x Speed = 30.7 s - 1 overwatch attack in both tests.
Mission 7-1: Original speed = 27.5 s / 2x Speed = 16.6 s - No overwatch attacks.
Mission 10-1: Original speed = 1:37.9 m / 2x Speed = 51.7 s - 4 overwatch attacks in each test.
Quite an improvement! It's not exactly twice as fast, but it sure is close. Mission 10-1 was slowed down quite significantly because of all of the overwatch attacks, but that's kinda how things have to be in that mission if you don't want to be blown upAnyway, I don't see how anyone could find the enemy turn speed an annoyance now, especially if you have a New 3DS for 3x speed.
Yes. If you have already downloaded the demo, you will get an update prompt in the Home Menu like you do with full games, so you don't have to manually redownload the demo. If you haven't yet downloaded the demo, the one you download now should be the updated version. However, the demo got updated in all regions, not just North America. So Europeans, go nuts with the speed in the demo. One more month!
Who did the music? This reminds me of something...Yoshito Hirano (who these days goes by Yoshito Sekigawa), composer of various Fire Emblem, Advance Wars and Paper Mario soundtracks!
So is this like Fire Emblem or Advance Wars?No, this game has very little in common with IntSys's previous titles aside from being a tactics/strategy game.
Is it like Valkyria Chronicles and XCOM: Enemy Unknown then?Yes, sort of, it's more like those than FE/AW but not identical. The focus isn't on taking out the enemy but completing the mission (that might be reaching a physical goal or saving civilians). But if you like these games in general, you should check this out! There is a demo on the eShop, in case you didn't know.
So, is there really no map?Correct, there is no map/zoomed out view. This is a conscious design decision to remove a layer of abstraction and put you right into the game. This way it becomes about exploration as if you're playing a normal third person action game. You have to use vantage points cleverly and position your team members accordingly.
Do I have to actually aim?Yes, in fact you do manually aim. That's where the TPS element comes into play. Enemies have weak points (pink glowy spots, hard to miss) and you can try to hit them for extra damage.
Is there perma-death in the game?No, your squadmates cannot permanently die. They can get KO'd during a mission but you can revive them at save spots by spending medals and they will be recovered with full health. Either way, even KO'd characters recover automatically after every mission. You cannot revive amiibo characters at save points mid-mission, you can reactivate them after the mission, though.
Is there a hard mode?No, there is only one difficulty setting in the game. The game gets plenty challenging, though. However, you can replay missions with different configurations to increase the challenge along with the Medal rewards:
Can you level up? RPG elements?No, you can equip your characters with different boilers (affects available steam and give various buffs/debuffs) and sub-weapons.
Does Multiplayer affect Singleplayer in any way?Yes, Medals earned in multiplayer transfer over into singleplayer
These tiny flying sonofabitches that stun me, can I kill them? I'm going insane!You can indeed kill them. Though because their animation has them constantly moving, they are a pain to hit.
Do I have to use the Touch Screen thingy to aim if I don't have a Frankenstick or a fancy New 3DS (XL)???Why no, you're in luck because you can also aim with ABXY!
amiibo? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Who do I need to camp out for?Marth, Ike, Robin and Lucina are supported. Marth will get new shipments sometime in Spring in North America.
General Trailer (TGA)
amiibo Trailer
Abraham Lincoln Trailer
Sing-along Trailer
Official NA Website
Giant Bomb Wiki with more details on characters and their weapons
A GameFAQs thread about some of the combat mechanics and damage %
NeoGAF Review Thread
Remember this, guys. It's important!
