When SteamWorld Heist first came out in 2015 on the 3DS, I was blown away by how inventive and polished the game was. Capitalizing on the surprise success of SteamWorld Dig and the renewed interest in turn-based strategy games driven by the revival of XCOM, the small team at Image & Form (now Thunderful) delivered Steamworld Heist, a unique side-scrolling twist on the genre where your aim and positioning matter more than stats and percentages. After nearly a decade and numerous re-releases of the original game, Thunderful has returned with SteamWorld Heist II. Not content to rest on its laurels, Heist II has shaken up the formula with a new and expanded setting and more in-depth class mechanics without losing the simplicity and accessibility that made the original so beloved.
SteamWorld Heist II sees Captain Quincy Leeway and his ragtag group of Steambots braving the high seas and searching for the mysterious source of the planet’s water crisis. All Steambots need water to power themselves, and some strange malady has caused the planet’s water to become corrosive to the Steambots’ insides. The Royal Navy, staffed entirely by Dieselbots (who run on oil rather than steam), takes advantage of the crisis, pushing the Steambots into hiding and ruling the land with an iron fist. It’s up to Captain Leeway to get back his ship, acquire a full crew, and address the water crisis to save the Steambots’ way of life.
The stakes of the narrative are high, but the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. The emotional core of the story lies with Captain Leeway, who grew up in the shadow of his mother, the legendary Krakenbane. Throughout the story, Captain Leeway struggles with feelings of inadequacy but gains more confidence with the support of his crewmates and becomes a hero in his own right. Your crewmates and a robust cast of side characters do a nice job of fleshing out the world and adding a bit of personality to story scenes, and the progression of events is satisfying without getting in the way of the turn-based tactical gameplay.
Unlike the previous game, which took place in the far reaches of outer space, Heist II occurs entirely on a single planet covered by vast bodies of water broken up by many islands. While this might initially seem like a step back in scope, there is significantly more variety here. Lush tropical biomes transition into harsh, inhospitable arctic ice floes, setting Heist II visually apart from its predecessor. How the player interacts with and explores the world also varies along with this change in setting. The previous game had locations connected linearly along nodes on a map; in SteamWorld Heist II, you pilot a ship across a vast overworld map and select missions in any order. Story progression limits access to some areas or specific ship abilities that need to be unlocked, but overall you have a greater degree of freedom in which missions you complete. This open approach prevented any particular mission from becoming a roadblock to progress, as I always had multiple options if a specific mission proved too challenging for my crew.
While the more open-ended world design is a nice change of pace, SteamWorld Heist II also adds naval combat to the mix, and unfortunately, this aspect of the gameplay is a mixed bag. Unlike the core turn-based strategic combat in missions, the naval combat is real-time on the overworld map. As you sail around the various island locations, enemy ships will cross your path and attack. In the early hours of the game, naval skirmishes can be particularly dangerous since your ship has few upgrades or weapons to fight back. There is also a lack of control to contend with; you have direct control of your ship’s movement, but your ship’s weapons will fire on their own automatically when enemies get in range and position.
The main issue is that you cannot aim and move independently, so my attempts to dodge enemy fire often caused my attacks to miss the enemy. As such, naval battles devolve into a frantic experience of weaving between enemy ships and hoping your weapons hit their mark. However, once you have upgraded your ship with additional weapons and armor, the battles lose all sense of challenge and danger. By the time I hit the mid-game, I was effortlessly blasting through entire fleets of enemy ships, my reinforced ship hull shrugging off damage without needing to dodge incoming fire. The naval combat provided an additional way to earn currency, but it felt tedious rather than exciting.
Thankfully, the game’s approach to exploration and discovery saves the overworld experience. As you sail around the open seas, you uncover more points of interest on the map. Some locations are particularly well-hidden and reward you with significant upgrades or gear. Others require the use of ship abilities you unlock throughout the story, like dashing or the ability to dive underwater. Heist II’s world design borrows from Metroidvania games, and you are rewarded for returning to old areas with these new abilities to discover hidden secrets and even additional missions.
Steamworld Heist II’s greatest strength lies with its turn-based combat, and Thunderful has done an excellent job meaningfully expanding upon the first game’s core mechanics. The core elements of positioning behind cover and manually aiming your shots remain as satisfying as ever, but the character progression systems got an overhaul. This time around, characters start as one of six distinct character classes. Each class has unique abilities suited to their role: Snipers focus on dealing damage from afar, Brawlers have increased health and armor that helps them get into melee range, and Engineers have utility skills like buffs and healing, etc. You can change a character’s class simply by swapping out which weapon they have, enabling you to swap roles on the fly to better suit each mission.
As characters level up in a particular class, they unlock new abilities and also cogs, which you can spend to carry those abilities over to a new class. This allows for a wide variety of character builds as characters master additional classes. For example, you can combine the high accuracy and increased damage of a Sniper with the ability to take additional turns with each kill from the Reaper to create an offensive powerhouse or the healing and damage buffs of an Engineer with the high armor and mobility of a Brawler to create a Steambot that is nearly impossible to kill. Each character also has a unique character-specific skill, which helps differentiate between characters even if they are using the same class type.
The number of options and combinations at your fingertips may sound overpowered, but Heist II maintains a good gameplay balance through its enemy and mission design. The first game focused almost entirely on missions where your bots would infiltrate a location, gather the loot, and then extract from the enemy base. This basic format is carried over into Heist II, but with additional objectives and variations that shake up the formula. Some missions might have you survive for x number of turns or defend a specific character, while others have you fighting a single large and powerful boss enemy. Each mission also has optional side objectives that grant additional rewards if completed. Even at the end of the game, I still found new mission types, ensuring that combat never felt monotonous or stale.
Enemy variety is another strong point, as multiple enemy factions with unique character classes and abilities stand in your way. At the beginning of the game, you mainly fight the Royal Navy’s Dieselbots. Most Dieselbots have roles similar to your Steambots, but they also have Captains who can bestow damage buffs, shields, or other benefits on their units. Further into the game, the Rattlers arrive, a cult of bots who have traded their metal parts for bones. The Rattlers have a particularly nasty class type called Shamans, who can place totems on the field that act as cover but will also debuff your characters or summon a swarm of melee attackers each turn. Some of the best missions feature multiple factions at once. For example, there is a mission where your crew infiltrates a Royal Navy prison and can open up the prison cells to unleash the Rattlers against the Navy, only to have them turn on you once the Dieselbots have been defeated. The fact that enemies have special classes and you are always at a significant disadvantage in troop numbers keeps battles engaging even when your characters are fully upgraded.
SteamWorld Heist II continually impressed me throughout my roughly 30-hour playthrough. Thunderful has done a wonderful job carrying over the immediacy of the engaging sidescrolling combat mechanics while expanding upon the design in meaningful ways. The addition of character classes adds a new dimension to building your crew, and the expanded approach to the world design had me exploring every nook and cranny for more secrets. Captain Leeway’s seafaring adventure is a must-play for any turn-based strategy fan.
