As game that relies heavily on looking to the future, Tactical Breach Wizards is the best place to start if you want to push a little further. So let’s start with the fact that this magical mystery spec ops tour is the most significant turn-based tactics game since the venerable XCOM 2. Its mix of brilliantly flexible puzzles and insanely witty text would be enough to clear it for active use on any gaming device. But what qualifies it for Special Arcane Service is how boldly it takes aim at the grim morality of military-themed games.
In Tactical Breach Wizards, you take command of a ragtag team of witch detectives, necromedics, time-manipulating wizards, and a druid assassin. You must use your squad’s versatile powers to overcome escalating tactical siege scenarios. A typical level requires you to break into a room, incapacitate half a dozen enemies, barricade doors to keep out reinforcements, and reach the computer that will open the way to the next room.
It’s a stripped-down example of the form, with no base management or higher level of strategy to worry about. Instead, the focus is on using your magical powers creatively to resolve the scenario as cleanly as possible. Jen, your freelance storm witch, casts lightning spells that do no damage but push people around, allowing you to take out enemies by knocking them into objects or shoving them out of windows. Your Navy Seer Zan can foresee events a second in the future, allowing you to generally predict how enemies will attack, but he can also set up ambushes and impose additional actions on teammates. Combining powers to maximize your efficiency is an important tactic, such as using Zan’s time push ability to allow Jen to use her lightning powers twice.
Almost every room you enter offers a new ability, enemy, or idea that increases the challenge and your ability to overcome it. For example, recruiting Dessa, the Necro-Medic, lets you heal people by killing and resurrecting them, and you can place interdimensional portals on walls that you can push enemies through and quickly eliminate.
Tactical Breach Wizards wants to squeeze every last bit of puzzle potential out of moving a bunch of little guys around a room. But unlike XCOM, your lateral thinking isn’t challenged by force. Most scenarios can be solved relatively painlessly, not least because you can undo any decision you make in a round. But there are also bonus objectives for each stage, such as completing it without taking any damage. Rather than punishing your mistakes by killing your crew, Tactical Breach Wizards gently encourages you to excel.
This more tolerant attitude is reflected in the game’s themes as well. Tactical Breach Wizards is by no means a serious game, as evidenced by objectives like “Defenestrate the Pyromancer” and the fact that Zan’s “assault rifle” is a machine gun frame with a wand instead of a barrel. But it takes its characters and the problems they face seriously. One of my favorite flourishes is how your team has heartfelt exchanges every time they team up to break down another door. Not only is this a great running gag, but the conversations that follow are extremely funny and offer great insight into the inner workings of each wizard.
But the game’s most impressive trick is how it weaves a genuinely fascinating spy thriller out of its silly concept while refusing to adhere to the queasy ethics of modern military games. Your team is made up of rebels and outcasts rather than government-hired wizards, while your enemies are enforcers of religious dictatorships or employees of private military companies (plus a traffic wizard named Steve). Even when facing these enemies, your team is beholden to exclusively nonlethal rules of engagement. If you’re wondering how they manage to do this while constantly throwing people out of windows, the answer is simple – they’re wizards.
It is a game in almost perfect balance, a slim and clearly not an ode to turn-based tactics that embraces the genre’s creative puzzles while rejecting its worst excesses. Tactical Breach Wizards lets you see the future, raise the dead, and break through windows on a witch’s broom. But through it all, empathy is its most powerful charm.
