Miasma Chronicles Review

Miasma Chronicles is a beast of a game that feels great when it is at its best and will make you want to rage quit when it is at its worst. As a spiritual successor to Mutant Year Zero, and by extension Fallout: Tactics and XCom, Miasma Chronicles holds up well, and fans of the genre should give this a close look. It eschews bringing anything new to the gameplay table in favor of using tried-and-true techniques to anchor a solid experience. I am perfectly happy with that approach since the XCom gameplay is already strong on its own, but if you are looking for new features then this won’t satisfy you.

The gameplay in Miasma Chronicles is a mix of real-time exploration through the world and turn-based tactical combat against overwhelming numbers of enemies. For much of the video game, these enemies appear on the map before you engage them, which allows you to position your squad in ideal ambush positions. This can be immensely satisfying when you spring a trap on powerful enemies, and turn a difficult battle into an easy one. Unfortunately, the game also features many battles where you are unavoidably ambushed, and forced into difficult fights. Since your enemies get to move first in these ambush scenarios, they can be quite challenging. I would consider it one thing if it was due to my own poor scouting that caused me to be in a weaker position than I anticipated (which did happen), but it’s another when the game repeatedly forces you into combat with no possible way to avoid it. It would also be okay if this happened only a few times — to really emphasize a moment of betrayal by a former ally, for instance — but these ambushes occur much more than that.

The story is where Miasma Chronicles shines, though. What starts out as a fairly run-of-the-mill post-apocalypse world quickly transforms into an engaging tale of exploration and survival. There are some fascinating areas to explore, and the slowly unraveling mysteries are satisfying. The game is very linear and directs you where you need to go at all times, so if you were hoping for an open-world adventure this will not be it. That’s not an issue for me as I prefer linear storytelling, but I know it can be a game-killer for some. That aspect does leak into combat, though, and many fights don’t really give you room for innovation. This is especially frustrating when you do what the game wants you to do, but the dice rolls just don’t go in your favor and you lose despite doing things “right”. There are some other missteps, too. The narrator outright telling you “I know what’s really going on, but I’m not going to tell you,” within the first hour of gameplay was rather head-scratching, for instance. Early on there are also some blatant instances of characters talking with you about things your characters should be intimately familiar with already, simply because the writers needed to teach them to the player. Ultimately, though, the strength of the story outweighs the smaller issues.

From a technical perspective, Miasma Chronicles is a solid package but also suffers from some strange choices by the developers The Bearded Ladies. For the PC the game is solidly optimized, and I barely encountered any technical issues. Twice characters I had positioned on upper-level areas for a careful ambush were magically teleported to the ground floor as the battles began, but that’s about the worst issue I encountered. However, there are some built-in issues that were more frustrating. The one that stands out to me the most is that audiologs can only be listened to in the menus and will instantly stop if you leave them. Banter often gets cut off when you interact with things in the world, and those conversations don’t ever seem to repeat. Banter is an important part of world-building, and I feel like I missed things as a result of this. Miasma Chronicles is also clearly built with consoles in mind and was not modified for the PC. As such, the mouse is barely used at all for anything. Coming from a background of playing XCom and the like this is very disconcerting. However, if you are a console gamer then you should find a relatively smooth control experience.

Miasma Chronicles Review Final Thoughts:

Miasma Chronicles will appeal to gamers looking for an XCom experience with a good story and solid presentation. It will not appeal to players looking for an evolution of the genre, or for those looking for an open-world experience. If you have never played an XCom-style game then this will be accessible enough, but you may want to start with Mutant Year Zero or XCom 2 to see if you like the genre. For myself, I enjoyed my time with Miasma Chronicles immensely, and will happily revisit the world if they decide to release DLC down the road.