Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics favors turn-based firefights, squad development and equipment choices over real-time action. At ≈ $27.60 from Kinguin, it makes most sense when its solo campaign and tactical decisions match what you want to play. Check that the platform and edition suit your purchase; the described battles center on a squad under your command. At $29.99 on Steam, this offer is ≈ $2.39 less than the comparable Steam version.

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74%Steam Reviews7.4K reviews80Metacritic/10082OpenCritic/100

Released: Apr 28, 2020

Strategy · Turn-Based Tactics · Turn-Based · Gore · Tactical

KinguinGears Tactics Steam Altergift·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-21~~~ $78.63~~-65%from~ $27.60(~ €24.57)Save $2.39 vs SteamBuy now

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Steam·Platform:·United States Steam official price~ $29.99Buy now

Microsoft Store·Platform:·Checked 2026-10-21~ $29.99Buy now

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All-time low ~ $7.49across Steam & third-party stores

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Price History

Past 36 months · Updated daily

Historical Low~ $7.492024-05Current Low Across Stores~ $29.99Microsoft Storevs. Historical Low+300%

Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.

01About Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics pairs fast, turn-based battles with squad recruitment, development and gear customization. As Gabe Diaz, you build a force and lead it on a mission to hunt down Locust leader Ukkon. Large boss battles add another scale to its tactical encounters. Steam players rate the game 74%% positive across 7,408 reviews. The Steam PC version supports Simplified Chinese, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese-Brazil, Russian, and Spanish-Latin America interface languages. Released April 28, 2020.

Credits

Developer

Splash Damage · The Coalition

Publisher

Xbox Game Studios

Steam player reviews

74%positiveMostly Positive7,408 Steam reviews

Lowest recorded in 36 months

$7.492024-05-07 · Microsoft StoreBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.

Language support

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
Simplified Chinese	Yes	Yes	—
English	Yes	Yes	Yes
French	Yes	Yes	Yes

Show 8 more languages

Language	Interface	Subtitles	Audio
Italian	Yes	Yes	Yes
German	Yes	Yes	Yes
Spanish	Yes	Yes	Yes
Japanese	Yes	Yes	—
Korean	Yes	Yes	—
Portuguese-Brazil	Yes	Yes	Yes
Russian	Yes	Yes	—
Spanish-Latin America	Yes	Yes	Yes

Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22

02Before you buy

Language

The Steam PC version lists 11 interface languages, including English. English has full audio and subtitles.

Controls

Full controller support is listed, and the description specifies an optimized Xbox-controller experience on PC.

03Frequently asked questions

Can I play solo?

Yes. The Steam PC version is categorized as single-player.

What is the gameplay about?

Recruit and develop a squad, then command it in turn-based battles against the Locust Horde.

What additional content is described?

Jack is described as a playable character with over 20 skills, alongside new enemies and Supreme equipment.

Popular Steam reviews

Native-language selection · 10 reviews

Selected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.

RecommendedSteam player

04/28/2020

It has 'almost' everything I want in a turn-based tactical game, except replay value and strategic choices. The campaign holds your hand and pushes you in a linear direction in which you have no real say or choice on the path to the destination, but it's a really well done story, with really well done characters. I loved playing it. It's a very good game. The combat mechanics are, in my opinion, a fun and refreshing deviation from the standards of XCOM 2, however the game overall lacks the depth that I want to see from a $60 title. If you can get it on sale, it's worth it. I'm recommending it based solely on the fact that it's a well-made game, such as it is. It simply lacks enough content to justify $60 (or even an insane 70 Euros for those outside the United States). Either get it on XBOX Game pass (recommended) or wait for a deep sale. It's good; just not "You'll definitely be playing this again and again" good, as XCOM is/was. Perhaps, if/when they allow mods/workshop, that could change. I break down the most important differences between Gears Tactics and XCOM 2 here, for those that want a deeper look first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2EHVDg4rk VIDEO BREAKDOWN HEREShow moreShow less

27.1 hours at review400 people found this helpful

Received for free

Not recommendedSteam player

05/01/2020

tldr: Tragically unpleasant. Gave it a fair try (see hours played), but they f***ed this up on various fronts. - No world map, just a linear campaign with no replayability. - Randomised gear system where you can't go do extra missions for gear, so you're stuck with what you get despite the campaign ramping up the difficulty. Did that extra hard mission for a legendary? got a useless piece? too bad! You can't redo it. - No buying gear. No rerolling gear. No crafting. Gear is hyper important and you're completely at the mercy of the RNG. - Limited xp, but they disable party members for missions so you have to waste xp on hired NPCs that you'll never use again. - Incredibly slow leveling. You can go in on an extra hard mission with massive penalties to your characters, nail all the optional objectives and have no-one faint...then be rewarded with like 25% of a level. Then you get told you can't use that character in certain mission. Great. - Progression is terrible. New enemy types have WAY more health, better weapons, better range, etc. Your characters don't get extra HP, movement, AP, etc when leveling at all. Your level 8 star character dies as easily as your level 1 character, but fights things with twice the health that fire without penalty from a screen away. - You get forced to use the story characters on bosses, so why the **** do I get forced to level other characters? Max party size (when they let you use it) is 4. There are 3 story characters.. Why do I have to manage a barracks when you won't let me use them when it matters? If you ever (ever) stop leveling the 3 story characters you are completely ****ed. - No saving and a random checkpoint system. Get used to redoing chunks of the mission because an enemy scored a lucky critical hit. Yeah, read that: no save and continue. Not on any difficulty level. Checkpoints in a game where a single misclick can get you killed. - They force modifiers on your missions: can only use 1 character, can't use grenades, enemies get more damage, etc. These are not optional. They range from annoying to absolutely crippling, and often waste xp. They get applied ON TOP of the basic mission templates, which are pretty much designed to destroy any sense of fun: Defense missions: - Enemies only need half the points you do on defense missions, spawn near the objectives and are infinite. This is fine when you're fighting basic enemies. This is not fine when you're fighting large groups of enemies that require cooldowns to kill. The further you get in the game, the more cancerous these missions become. There's even one you have to do with only half a party. **** off, devs. Scavenge missions: - Run through a map while being chased by a never-ending carpet bombing run. This is in a supposed "tactics" game. Nope, you're now playing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ flash game where you're guessing where the enemy will spawn as you run through a maze of chests. Gotta split the party to get em...did you send the right characters to the left? no? **** you, better restart the entire mess because they just dropped an entire group of enemies on you. Rescue missions: - These are about as much fun as dental work. Whoever balanced these needs to sit down and re-evaluate their career. You like timed missions? You like timed missions where you can only take 1 character? No, because no-one does. You get 15 turns when you're fighting basic enemies at the beginning. You get 15 turns when you fight elites mid-campaign. See the problem? The only fun missions are the ones where you get to use the characters you want, don't have arbitrary loss conditions forced on you and don't have mandatory penalties that cripple you. That's like, 20% of the game's missions. Maybe. The customisation, the gear, the skills, the visuals, the audio...that's all great, which makes this game so frustrating. There's a decent game here, mired by absolutely boneheaded design decisions by someone who's never played gems like Enemy Unknown, Silent Storm, Final Fantasy Tactics and XCom. I hope this game is moddable, because otherwise it's just a waste of money at this point.Show moreShow less

38.1 hours at review596 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

04/30/2020

Gears Tactics is not XCOM. This is a good thing, I think - though the game is in a genre that is inspired and overshadowed by XCOM, it demonstrates that all tactics games don't need to be mere reskins to be good. That's not to say the general ideas won't be immediately accessible to veterans of XCOM and similar games. You control a small squad of soldiers in a turn-based, top-down view. Units spend action points to move, shoot, and use special abilities. Cover is essential. What makes Gears Tactics truly interesting are its deviations from the XCOM formula: every subtly adjusted mechanic feels like a genuine step forward for the genre as a whole, a thoughtful refinement on the original template. How Gears handles action points is the first and perhaps largest change. Characters have 3 AP by default, and shooting or using an ability doesn't end their turn. Want to stand still and shoot three times in a row? Have at it. Want to shoot one guy, move to a better position, then shoot another? You can! This makes the flow of combat much more fluid and leaves you feeling more in control of your squad. There are also multiple ways to regain AP in the middle of a turn, some of which - like executing downed enemies - require careful consideration as to whether rushing forward to kill a foe is worth the AP bonus. This encourages aggression on the part of the player: you WANT to get in there, up close, and chainsaw a downed Locust. You want to take that risk. The second notable change is in the overwatch mechanics. Gears Tactics requires units to establish an arc of fire when going on overwatch, instead of shooting at any unit that enters their visual range. While this may feel like a nerf initially, what it does is force the player to carefully consider what the enemy's avenues of approach are and strategically lay down arcs of fire to cover where they anticipate an attack. Players can also set the range at which overwatch triggers, meaning overwatch shots won't always be wasted on enemies far outside their weapon's effective range. This also applies to enemy overwatches, which the player can see; enemies love to pin down characters behind cover by entering overwatch in their direction, which results in frequent scenarios where another character has to flank the pinning unit to take the pressure off. Not only is this strategically satisfying, it's a realistic and believable military tactic. Another, and perhaps a subtler change, is the overall focus of the missions. XCOM and those games closely modeled after it often place the player in situations where they have to carefully creep up on foes and lay out ambushes and traps in order to draw out overwhelmingly powerful foes. By contrast, Gears drops you front and center and pushes you directly into confrontation with enormous hordes of relatively weaker foes. Where XCOM evokes horror and a perpetual sense of being outclassed, Gears puts you firmly in the boots of a team of badasses gunning down Locusts by the dozens. This doesn't mean the game is easy or the tactical equivalent of a button-masher; the large number of enemies in a given mission demands careful placement and ability usage. It feels perfectly like a tactical version of the Gears of War shooters, where foes fall by the dozen but one slip-up is fatal. Some people may be disappointed by the fact that Gears Tactics has no strategic layer. There is no base-building, no juggling competing regional needs, no doom timer. Missions are linear, with frequent side missions available that the player can choose to undertake. Personally, I don't consider this a negative; not every tactics game needs to mimic XCOM in every mechanic. If someone complained that Final Fantasy Tactics, a patriarch of the genre, didn't have a strategic layer, would you take the complaint seriously? We should be glad that Splash Damage isn't just copying everything XCOM does, and feels free to do their own thing with the genre. I'll be honest, when I first heard of this game, I thought it would be a cheap cash grab to piggyback on XCOM's popularity. What I got instead was a polished, carefully reasoned strategy game that successfully translates Gears of War to a new genre. Well worth the investment.Show moreShow less

4.8 hours at review325 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

05/10/2020

Between Gears Tactics and XCOM, I am seeing a lot of trolls, idiots and fanboys claiming one better than the other without discussing any specifics whatsoever. So, here is a detailed in-depth comparison between the two. Bear in mind, I finished on experienced. Buckle up. 1. Difficulty If there is one thing XOM is infamous for is it’s ridiculous RNG and brutal difficulty. Actually, the real difficulty is figuring out the optimum base mgt. and not the combat itself; which will not happen the first time, especially if you are new to the series, or genre. Once that is done, and you start to understand the AI, mechanics & utility of consumables, the game (vanilla, without mods) becomes a cakewalk, even on legend. Gears however, is a different story. Your guns and skills are the only tools at your disposal. No consumables. (No more abusing mimic beacons kiddo…) However, Tactical combat veterans like myself would have liked to start the game on insane, which is not an option. Because, simply put, it’s unbalanced. (Enemies never miss, almost always crit/one shot, and your soldiers outright die instead of bleeding out). Till a balance patch/hotfix is out, +1 for xcom. 2. Performance No comment necessary. +1 for Gears. 3. Variety In vanilla (Unmodded) XCOM, In the very first mission, you face 3 different kind of enemies, while in Gears, you face only two. As time progresses, new enemy units start getting introduced. The thing is, in XCOM, most of them has multiple forms of attack. Sectoids can mind control, raise zombie, shoot. Officers can, mark, shoot, grenade. Sneks can shoot, spit, bind, tongue pull etc. Here, pretty much all enemies seem to have only one form of attack. So, not only enemy variety has lack in design (there are a grand total of 9, 2 of which are reskins), but offensiveness as well. However, when it comes to the Skill trees, Gears is clearly ahead, with each class having the freedom to go into 4 separate directions, which can drastically change playstyle. But XCOM saving grace is it’s modding community, which provides you with basically endless classes and skills to pick and choose from. Wanna be a samurai? A jedi? How about ninja? Or a freaking tank? Mods got you covered. Also, Gears being a linear, story driven game, you would expect varieties in missions (look at mutant year zero, or wasteland 2), but nope. There are a grand total of 4 mission types. In a 60$ Game. While XCOM has close to 10. As you can guess, missions get super repetitive pretty soon. But the biggest culprit are the extremely boring and downright tedious boss fights, which are by no means difficult, but rather stupid, and irritating. So, again, +1 for Xcom. 4. Replayability Even without modding, no two XCOM campaigns will ever be the same because. i) Mission sequences will be different. ii) Your research path may be different iii) Maps in mission will be different iv) Your soldier builds will be different v) Your squad compositions+ Loadout will be different vi) Enemies in that mission will be different Point I, ii, iii, vi are not applicable in Gears. Throw in mods (LW2, Spectrum green, Armors of the Imperium, New LWOTC), and XCOM basically has infinite replayability. So, +1 for XCOM. 5. Story & Progression Despite being a combat driven game, XCOM has ‘a’ story. However, having high expectation from gears, despite some nice cinematics, the story is not even remotely interesting. And the incorporation of missions into the story makes very little sense, especially act 3. There’s a big baddy, and to take him down, you yank random soldiers. None of which you can bring into the final mission. Super interesting… What’s even worse is that the game is littered with repetitive side missions, which contributes nothing to the story, and which cannot be skipped! The only reason they are in the game, is to bloat the campaign length; which without them, would have been less than 20 hours on experienced, around 15 in normal mode. Let’s call it a draw. 6. Customization No comment necessary. +1 for XCOM, even without mods. 7. Combat Point number 4 again comes to play here. i) XCOM 2 had a cool mechanic called concealment, where scouts can actually scan the area, while others can position themselves for the perfect ambush. In gears, scouts have a cloak mechanic, but it only lasts one turn, and you are revealed the next turn anyway (An upgraded version extends it, but that requires skill point). Also, despite not having line of sight, both you and enemies magically know what others are doing, so no ambush. ii) In XCOM, Throughout the campaign, you will constantly be unlocking stuff (Different grenades, medkits, different ammo, utility items etc.) which ensures there is a steady stream of progress, and because new enemy types start showing up constantly, these tools become essential parts of your arsenal, forcing you to adapt. For example, at the beginning you will stick to grenade spamming, and melee attacks, but later your focus will shift to bluescreen rounds, AP ammo, Shedder ammo,mimic beacons etc. In Gears however, it’s a different story. Grenades Spamming and Overwatch camping is the most efficient way to victory, from the beginning to the end. In fact, an assault scout with zero grenade cooldown pretty much trivializes the game. And despite the Gears series having a wide array of arsenal, you can only equip 1 weapon on soldiers. So, 5 class can only equip 5 weapons. Why? Why can’t my soldiers use flashbangs, or smokes? Where is markza Rifle? Gorgon smg? Boltok Pistol? Why can’t they use hammeburst? Come to think of it, why aren’t there any new weapons? iii) The only thing that adds some variation to combat, are the loot and skill points you get from levelling up. But, XP is far too low. By the end of the game, none of your heroes will even reach level 7, while the cap is 10. The only way to reach level 10 is hours and hours of pointless grinding in veteran mode (Unlocked after campaign), which has no real incentive. iv) The AI is nothing to write home about. But let’s be real, neither was Xcom’s’. In gears, there have been countless instances, where upon flanking my soldiers, instead of taking a shot, drone went into overwatch. Which does not make much sense. So, another +1 for Xcom. 8. Soundtrack I had found XCOM 2 soundtrack to be pretty average. Gears tracks were also the standard battle heavy ambience from other entries in the franchise. However, XCOM 2 redeemed itself by offering tracks from XCOM EW and the Classis UFO defense for free (In the expansion), which were far far better. So, another +1 for XCOM There you have it, out of 8 categories, Xcom won 6 and Gears won 1. So, whenever another idiot claims this game to be superior to xcom, you will know it isn’t so. There is a reason why at the time of writing this review, Gears tactics has a player count of 1450, while xcom 2, a 4 year old game has 9450. Hell, even Xcom: chimera squad has 3862. Go play that instead, if you are done with Xcom 2. It’s a buggy, unbalanced mess yes; but it’s at least fun. Gears tactics isn’t. It’s just lazy. And is definitely not worst 60$.Show moreShow less

33.6 hours at review296 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

04/29/2020

TL;DR: If you don't own XCOM2. WTF is wrong with you? Play that already! If you do own XCOM2, this game will satisfy your STBS itch. However, I hope the following information in my review helps you to make a more sound decision. First off, and I'm sure this seems repetitive to most while obvious to others; but if for some odd reason you have never played XCOM 2 (I love XCOM 1 but it is dated by this point compared to the sequel), then NO, do not play Gears Tactics. At 60 bucks, when you could have a far superior STBS for 15 or less by purchasing XCOM 2, you would be doing yourself a disservice getting Gears Tactics. This review is for those of us whom have poured hundreds of hours into XCOM 2 and its DLCs (excluding the recently released Chimera Squad). If you've already familiarized yourself with XCOM 2, then proceed without concern for being lost... Let me address the elephant in the room. This game is so much like XCOM 2 that in many ways it almost feels like a third party developed side campaign with a Gears of War facelift. I'm going to describe (from what little I've played of it, < 6 hours at this juncture) only what is DIFFERENT from XCOM 2, since I feel that list is much shorter. Hell, even the damn select-the-team-arsenal-and-watch-them-make-a-badass-walk-to-the-deployment-vehicle screen is identical to XCOM2. Moving on. DIFFERENT: No base building. I don't need to give my opinion on this. You either can decide if you enjoyed the base building aspect of XCOM2 or preferred or could do without it. Yet if you're someone who is deeply wounded by this feature missing, then now you know it is a fact that will await you with this game. As a consequence to a lack of base building, you also don't develop new weapons nor technologies. This isn't a total wash though. The way you acquire new gear is during missions. There are scattered crates to be collected if you can plan accordingly. These collectibles are tallied at the end of your mission as proverbial loot crates. Don't worry, there is absolutely no buy-in nor virtual currency required for purchasing more crates. The only way you can acquire these bad boys is via your missions. There doesn't -- at least early on but I could find myself mistaken later so I'll reserve any hard judgment -- seem to exist any forward progress towards earning advanced weaponry within the game. Instead, those crates I mentioned earlier contain various attachable upgrade augments. This seems like a boring comparison to the likes of being able to eventually wield an alien technology plasma rifle such as the likes of XCOM2. Speaking of upgrades, these are available for many different pieces of weaponry and armor. That's not a bad thing. It offers a decent scale of variety, at least early on. Their offered attributes are impressively diverse too. Even the boots can provide a combination of health and dodge upgrades simultaneously. Weapons and skills are unlimited but with cooldowns. This includes grenades which everybody is always equipped with by default (types vary depending on chosen loadout.) This is awesome because you can focus more on when you want to use a grenade instead of if you will use up quantifiable resources you have for those grenades. I enjoy it. On the topic of grenades. The frag type is menacingly satisfying. Grenades on XCOM2 can do high damage and provide a tactical advantage when extinguishing enemy cover, but overall they are limited and eventually underpowered once more powerful ordnance is introduced. With Gears Tactics, frag grenades are a drop kick wrapped in an uppercut. They can take out closely packed squads of weaker opponents at once and instill devastating structural cover damage. They're also instrumental for prematurely closing sink holes where waves of enemies spawn from whenever these tunnels manifest. Not surprisingly, grenade cooldowns are notoriously lengthy. Yet these baddies deserve their grace periods and the wait can be reduced if you choose to allot skill tree points into the necessary path or equip certain gear. The skill tree is expansive. I'm not seeing any particular game changer gut punch option within the various paths available. Yet there are plenty of options to choose from and no choice locks out any others. The latter fact makes it possible to grab everything you prefer for that character without regret. Hell, you even have an option -- when met under certain yet easily attainable conditions -- to remap your skill tree points. Overwatch... I know. Overwatch isn't a unique concept from XCOM2. BUT! It is far more effective in Gears Tactics. I found myself using overwatch in XCOM2 when I either wasn't sure an opponent would abruptly appear or I didn't have a better strategic move from the distance my character was at. Sure, overwatch could be used for more than that but the reasons I brought up satisfied most instances for its effective purpose. With Gears Tactics, I actually encounter a 60:40 split in favor of using overwatch. It is that damn effective. Not only are your chances of hitting enemies higher (they will likely move from cover when triggered and have to get within a manually decided range before your character will fire, thus ensuring a higher strike probability), but successful hits also stop opponents dead in their tracks, preventing them from reaching cover! I can't express how effective of a tactic this is. How does the game compensate for such OP tactics? They throw army loads of enemies your way. A notable emphasis is placed on melee combat now. Melee can lead to insta-kills which also restore all of your projectile ammo. Downed enemies can be curb stomped to acquire extra action points. This induction sets an interesting high-risk-high-reward dynamic. Kill your opponent instantly and even get an extended turn out of it. Yet now you may be exposed to devastating reprisal if the maneuver was poorly calculated. That's it! Thanks for reading. Enjoy the game if you do play it.Show moreShow less

5.2 hours at review192 people found this helpful

Not recommendedSteam player

04/29/2020

When the game released in 2020 I bought it for the full $60 and decided that because of the limited strategic aspect, lazy gear system, and lack of replayability, that this game wasn't worth $60 and that I'd come back at a lower price. Well I bought it now for around $30 so here's a new review. The short of it, the game is still not worth it. Not even close and here's why. The Good: - The game runs really smoothly. - The graphics are pretty damn great. Especially for a tactics game. - The lack of a grid (although this does cause issues in gameplay) That's it. That's all the good. Now the bad. The Bad: - Units that are positioned safely, and the game tells you that you can use an action safely, will move into enemy overwatch cones in their actions (like grenade throwing and such) which then activates the overwatch. No way to tell which way they'll step to perform their actions. - The gear mechanics are complete trash. Find loot crates in each mission. Hope you roll good loot that you need. Repeat. Got old garbage gear? Delete. No selling/scrapping mechanic. No inventory system to see all of what you have at once. Just about the laziest gear system in a game I've seen in a long time. - No overworld strategy. Click mission title. Do mission. Between some main missions you get "side missions" to do. No strategy though. Just click them. Do them. Get little to no reward. No planning whatsoever. - Arbitrary difficulty modifiers. Some missions will just make it so you can't use grenades, or can't use overwatch, or your mags will have less ammo, or you can only bring 1/2 guys. Why? Just cause. There's no rhyme or reason. Just screw you. This mission has a limiter. It's boring, it's lazy, it's tedious. Built a decent Gear or even a whole squad? Nah, this game will just choose to say you can't use that stuff instead of actually balancing for good players. - Microsoft Sign-In. This is a small one for me but needs to be mentioned. You have to sign in when you first start up the game. Then it does it automatically in future plays. Annoying to have to do it, even more annoying because you need an extra account, even more annoying because the game takes way too long to boot up. Not because it's loading but because it's logging you into their garbage, unnecessary servers. - Side Missions. They're not side missions. Their playtime padders. You wanna move the story along cause you're somewhat interested? Nah. Time to do 2-3 side missions that are required. At least you get some sweet gear or new units? Nah. The gear will end up being pointless late game cause you have plenty of it so it's a waste of time and you can't get more Gears cause your roster is full. Literally just here to pad the game time and make it seem like a long game full of content. - Bugs. Glitches. Freezes. Crashes. The game is nearly a year old now and it has tons of bugs. Click somewhere to move or throw grenade? LOL. Sometimes it'll just go off by 3-6 feet and piss you off. In the ACTUAL FINAL BOSS FIGHT THAT TAKES LIKE AN HOUR TO BEAT? Well it'll freeze randomly requiring checkpoint restarts or worse, a full restart. The game is a mess. I can't tell you how many times the game stopped functioning after an enemy moved and then it didn't progress the actions further. It's garbage. It's not acceptable this far into the game being out. There ya have it. No I don't recommend the game. I nearly recommended it but the final boss fight was so glitchy and unplayable that I haven't even finished it yet. It's a joke but honestly not surprising. Microsoft games are a shadow of what they once were. It's a shame really. Gears of War is a great universe for a game like this and they royally ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up. I don't recommend this game for $60. I don't recommend it for even $10. Go play XCOM, Othercide, or some other tactics game that actually functions and has some thought behind its mechanics. This isn't the tactics game you're looking for.Show moreShow less

1.3 hours at review274 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

08/09/2022

A good but flawed game. A cross between the battle tested XCom and the gore and action of Gears of War. You feel as you are playing a Gears of War game. I did feel I was playing a Gears of War game and not XCom with a skin. The game does improve, IMO, upon the action system of XCom with a 3 AP system which can be spent doing actions in ANY order without ending the turn of a unit. Overwatch has been modified and you now set a cone where your Cog will be overwatching. Still uses % accuracy rate but seems more leniant than XCom, or I was just plain lucky. That said, you'll have to stay in closer quarter to get that accuracy up because your accuracy drop rapidly, either by distance or with obstruction. Friendly fire is possible and not just with grenade. For exemple if you set an overwatch cone with one Cog right in the middle of it, fairly good chance that Cog is gonna be hit when the overwatch is triggered. You get main missions and side missions which are mandatory. Every few main missions you are given a choice of side missions which you need to complete a certain number out of that list before proceeding. Sometimes some heroes will be banned from doing a specific mission or will be required. Some missions will include specific modifiers, positive or negative for you. Your Cog could be healed at the start of the turn, LOcust at full health could have 200% accuracy or unable to use overwatch. For each mission you get a reward for completing the mission, another reward for optional objective which could be as simple as bringing at least 1 Cog with a specific class. During mission you will find crate that can be picked up, which will reward you with new equipment. That's when the flaws start to show. First. All rewards are random. That it's all random is not that bad but the scaling of rewards is bad. Rewards are tier based being Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary. Supreme as a final tier if you are playing with newer content (free update) instead of vanilla. At the end of the story I could have optional objective reward being Rare while I had some legendary reward here and there and nothing but epic otherwise. Second. In between missions you can recruit a few more cog. You get a selection of random classes cog and they come with some equipment which can be nice in some cases but at the end of the story they were all coming with rare equipment while I was full epic and looking to transition to legendary. Also they come at a "proper" level. Which mean that at the end of the story I could recruit brand new cog at lvl 6 without even using them. This mean that you don't get too attached to your units. You just dispose of lower level one when you get higher level one. Third. Said higher level cog came with already spent skills point, up until lvl 4. Lvl 5 + they would come with spent skill point +2 skills point (lvl 5) or +4 skills point (lvl 6). Respec during the campaign is not all you can eat. You get maybe a half dozen token over the course of the campaign that can be used to respec a single unit per token, once per token. This could be viewed as a positive for some. You can make an argument over the fact that this force you to explore different skills and not simply the same one every time. Fourth. While doing side missions, each unit can be used once in a set of side mission. To be clear, you have a choice of 3 side missions and need to complete 2 to move forward. You have 8 cog. Sending 4 on one mission will make them unavailable for the second mission to do so you need to use your other 4. That's not bad per say because it force you to think about which unit you want to keep available for which mission. Once you moce forward they all return as available. The problem come from the fact that if you are not careful you can soft lock yourself. If you have 8 cog and 3 side missions to do out of 4 you need to divide these 8 cogs to do these 3 missions. If you send half your cog to a side mission and the other half to the second mission you are screwed. You don't be able to complete the third, required, side mission and will need to restart the chapter or campaign. This can also happen on main mission. Let say 2 out of 3 heroes at the time are banned from doing the mission. You only have 2 other cog and the mission require 4 member. You are screwed. The campaign AND post game is filled with such soft lock. Keep a healthy amount of non heroes cog around and NEVER dismiss any unless you have a replacement. Keep at least 12 total cog at all time, including heroes.Show moreShow less

33.6 hours at review161 people found this helpful

RecommendedSteam player

04/28/2020

Gears Tactics is very blatantly using the new X-Com games as template, but it improves on the formula in key ways (the following is the game compared to the XCOM 1 and 2 reboot titles, not Chimera Squad as I've got zero experience with it): - Overwatch is completely reworked. You choose where the unit focuses his aim and he can't do reactive fire anywhere else. This makes overwatch much less powerful than in X-Com games (and it was too powerful in those games), and it adds a new tactical element, especially since you can see where the enemies have placed their overwatches. - There's a much better system for action points. Rather than being forced to always end turns as you shoot, you can use action points on whatever action, whenever you want. - Rather than gun shots being defined by very basic rules, bullet trajectory actually matters a lot here. You can do partial hits, you can hit friendlies who are in the line of fire, and hit chance is affected a lot if the line of fire is obstructed. - The pacing of the combat is faster. There are less mini cutscenes as you run and do various actions. - Unfortunately, some annoyances in X-Com are also here. You can stand literally right next to an enemy and have a hit chance lower than 100%. As in X-Com, grenades might be a wee bit over powered. They deal a lot of damage and they're more reliable than gun shots as they always have 100% accuracy. And there is an equal focus on quantity of passive and active skills, making it easy to forget important variables in play as you do combat. Besides the tweaks to combat, the biggest difference is the structure to the campaign. X-Com has a strategy layer where you play randomly generated missions. Gears Tactics has a story-focused campaign with pre-made missions. It's less replayable, but it also means you get more varied objectives. As of this review, I played up until end of act 1 on Experienced difficulty. Experienced starts off tough, but it doesn't feel too hard once you get used to the mechanics. If you're experienced with the genre, I would not choose any difficulty lower than this. The game also feature an Ironman option, but that feels a bit out of place here since the campaign plays out the same each time. I'm not sure how long the game is, but I would easily recommend this once it goes on sale. I'm just not sure if it's worth paying full price for, especially with there being so much competition in the genre. Disclaimer: I got a review key for the game from Microsoft.Show moreShow less

6.6 hours at review153 people found this helpful

Received for free

Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.