Cyber Knights: Flashpoint Review

Now, turn-based strategy games are a cornerstone of the strategy genre, and when you get into the tactical level of things, games can get really complex and really fun. The biggest name in this genre stands out with XCOM, a game that combines strategic planning and tactical gameplay to give an unforgettable experience. 

While there haven't been many games that truly stood out, some of them do come close to being really good. Now, enter Cyber Knights: Flashpoint, a turn-based tactical RPG developed by Trese Brothers. This indie game is somewhat of a gem that binds in RPG elements with stealth-based gameplay and, of course, turn-based tactics & strategy. 

Set in a post-collapse future where mega-corporations and warlords carve up what's left of the world, you lead a crew of mercenaries through a web of covert operations, betrayals, and high-stakes heists. After years of development and a successful Kickstarter, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint has officially launched, and it's time to see if it lives up to the tactical ambition it promised.

To start it off, you get to create your own character, a knight. With some decent amount of customization options as well as picking skills, backgrounds, classes, and the like, you'll properly start off. You also get to customize the members of your mercenary team and switch between a few of them. 

Now, you do get somewhat bombarded with information and details, a lot of which is probably lost on you, as one doesn't really know the significance of certain abilities or traits yet. Already, the cyberpunk vibe of the game really sells itself here, and as you start, you'll get to pick between one of two start options. 

One of them is an easier 'tutorial' start that helps you begin with Cyber Knights: Flashpoint. The other is more experimental and for those already experienced with the game. The tutorial, although fairly simple, does a good job of explaining the basic mechanics and how to play the game. Like many other such games, you begin by infiltrating the mission area, where you are randomly deployed. 

From there, you must navigate through the level and complete objectives, avoiding or dealing with enemies and disarming traps and cameras. Now, unlike in XCOM, movement is determined through vectors and angles; you move an exact distance instead of moving through and to grids.

Movement options in Cyber Knights: Flashpoint are more or less split between the sneaky crouch and the fast run. And each movement costs some action points. Other than that, action points are used for pretty much everything, from using abilities to shooting the enemy.

Speaking of shooting the enemy, the first thing to notice about Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is its shooting, which really hinges on the line of sight. Owing to the genre, the line of sight of both your characters and the enemy ones is a bit unpredictable and often a bit finicky. There's a lot of quality of life involved, too, as you can see sightlines when you hover over a movement area, allowing you to plan.

There's not a lot going on in shooting, where you either hit or miss, which is modified by cover, recoil, talents, and other abilities. Unlike many other similar games, you don't die nearly instantly on being shot, and there's a lot of leeway involved in being shot and living through it. 

However, the firepower from shooting is important, and just because you and your enemies will live through being shot once, don't make your guns peashooters. Normally, though, you will rely on stealth and hiding around enemies. See, Cyber Knights, as advertised, is basically about your mercenary company going around and committing heists. 

Stealth is a slow burn here; if you are detected, it doesn't immediately alert everyone and cause all hell to break loose. Instead, the mechanic in question here is escalation, where every misstep, from tripping pressure sensors to passing through cameras, will alert the ominous sec-ai, which ticks up the escalation meter; every stage of increased escalation will result in sec-ai basically getting more paranoid, and increasing the security measures, from new guards to more cameras and more patrols.

Additionally, your enemies are pretty smart; they will investigate when soldiers you killed don't respond in a few turns, they will look around when you go through cameras, and so on. Now, you have a myriad of tools in your hands to avoid escalating things, from hacking the cameras to using character abilities to blitz past them or temporarily disable them.

The escalation pips cascade slowly and eventually give way to a never-ending array of enemies that arrive. This doesn't mean that you avoid combat, however, as you will often find yourself taking out lone guards, setting off alarms intentionally to pick off the unfortunate guard that comes to investigate, and sometimes, to just progress the mission.

Now, the catch here is that everything more or less revolves around initiative. See, it doesn't matter if you got the jump on a guard if your initiative next turn is too low, and the guard goes first anyway. Now, there are quite a few ways to manipulate initiative, but overall, tactical planning is very important. So in this front, Cyber Knights is much closer to Baldur's Gate 3 than some traditional turn-based tactics games.

The game even notes that sometimes, and really, often, it is better to hit fast and hard rather than slowly waddle around. This isn't a game of one or the other; you need to mix and match both and utilize them to their fullest, owing to many other XCOM-style games.

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint delves a lot into the whole mercenary management shtick, reminding one of games like Jagged Alliance, with characters having perks, classes, and abilities to choose from. As they level up, you can add new perks or improve existing ones. Characters have attributes such as Will, Strength, Reaction, and Tech, but what they do exactly changes based on your class.

The game also has multiclassing for the aficionados that want to min-max. There's a lot of room to grow and develop, and this makes your team highly specialized and customized. You can tailor each member to really specific needs or just make them borderline killing machines. 

Each class has a skill tree, where you get their perks, split into 3 branching sections for further specialization. Then comes cyber surgery, where you can put implants onto your mercs, improving their skills and so on.

Aside from this, the management aspect of Cyber Knights: Flashpoint involves not only a small amount of building but economics as well. You have this thing called Underworld Contacts, where you have a myriad of services that you can avail of. The contacts you have depend on your crew and encounters, and based on that, they can be friendly, unfriendly, or outright uncooperative.

As you work with them more, not only do you gain their loyalty, but also influence, which is, again, used for favors and such. Favors come in with both the combat side of things as well as the non-combat side of things. Favors are very important, giving you access to some really good items or in-combat boons.

The RPG side of things here is a bit lacking; while there are a lot of preset dynamics and relationships, you can never really interact with that much. Nor can you influence or change your goals or really do anything regarding ideology, which is sort of fair, given you basically just are a group of mercs.

Your base, while having no real upkeep, requires you to occasionally clean up rooms and refurbish them. Then, you build modules that do a myriad of things, from preventing negative traits to reducing heat, XP share, and more. 

The Leverage system in Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is easily one of its best features. It adds real strategic depth by allowing you to leverage your network of Contacts to gain mission advantages, whether by spending money or calling in favors. Different Contacts offer different perks, and doing Legwork can even unlock new ways into a mission or new options during planning. 

I'd like to see more variety in the types of bonuses, but the system is strong and has a lot of room to grow. I could even see fun twists, like getting double-crossed by a paid-off insider, leading to a follow-up mission to deal with the fallout.

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint’s gameplay, overall, is pretty fun. The AI and detection mechanics feel like a breath of fresh air, being realistic but not overwhelming. Patrols aren't on fixed, predictable loops like in so many other stealth tactics games. Rather, guards alter their course, react to suspicion, and move. Although they aren't always completely accurate, the game also provides you with prediction tools to track movement. 

However, it adds to the allure by maintaining the suspense and intrigue of the stealth gameplay. It forces you to plan, think, and maintain your flexibility. That unpredictability gives each run a lot of flavor, and I've had some hilarious mishaps where I forgot a guard I passed earlier and was caught from behind.

There are also a number of really cool quality-of-life features; notably, the Retry Turn feature is a lifesaver. Sometimes, you just mess up; maybe you forget about a patrol while you're focused on pulling off a complicated plan, or your entire squad suddenly rolls like they're cursed. Having the option to rewind a turn keeps frustration low and momentum high. It's a great addition that more tactical games should consider.

The Initiative Turn Order's ability to yield or delay actions is a further interesting attribute. It's very immersive in addition to being very helpful, particularly for stealth missions. It demonstrates a great deal of strategic depth and design refinement to be able to let someone else move first or set up a better approach mid-turn. It's the kind of minor addition that significantly enhances gameplay without drawing attention to itself.

Although Cyber Knights: Flashpoint excels in many aspects, a few things prevent it from realizing its full potential. The sec-AI’s operation during missions is one of the primary problems. Sometimes, it ramps up too quickly, frequently pressuring players to rush through stealth sections. This can feel at odds with the otherwise thoughtful patrol behavior, making missions more stressful than strategic, especially when optional objectives are tied to low alert levels.

Visually, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint doesn't actually look too bad for an indie game; the main issue stems from things looking just too generic, almost soulless, even. But that's really something that can be overlooked. The visuals certainly aren't a strong suit here, and that applies twofold to the UI.

Visual feedback during missions also has room for improvement. It's easy to overlook status effects and debuffs unless you're really looking. It would be simpler to keep track of squad conditions without having to hover over everything if there were a little more floating text or more readable iconography.

The save and load system seems awkward from a technical standpoint. The two are easily confused, which could result in unintentional reloads or overwrites. The lack of confirmation prompts or distinct UI styling doesn't help, and the inability to rebind keys makes it more frustrating than it should be.

There's real variety in how you can tackle objectives, and the mission structure keeps things interesting. The little details stand out, too. Despite its flaws, Cyber Knights: Flashpoint is still an engaging tactical experience that rewards resource management, strategic planning, and original problem-solving. 

Cyber Knights: Flashpoint's core loop is satisfying, the missions are well-designed, and the presentation is somewhat atmospheric. The design obviously took a lot of care, and although there are some noticeable flaws, they don't take away from the title's overall compelling qualities.