Harebrained Schemes has previously developed games like Shadowrun and Battletech, and today they release their latest creation, “The Lamplighters League.” It’s a strategy game in the same vein as Xcom but also features an infiltration element where you can sneak around and position your characters as you wish, similar to Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden.
In recent days, reviews have started to come in, and overall, the scores aren’t extremely low, but they’re not very high either. On Opencritic, the current average score is 73/100, with 56 percent of reviewers recommending the game.
Criticism revolves around long missions that feel repetitive, as well as maps that don’t fully utilize the characters’ various abilities for maneuvering. On the other hand, the character roster and the diverse skills contributed by the different team members are being praised.
However, not all reviews are lukewarm, as there are a few that stand out with higher scores, although not reaching top ratings.
Some reviews for The Lamplighters League:
Aran Suddi, TheSixthAxis:
The Lamplighters League doesn’t quite live up to its promise and expectations. There’s a fun mix of real time exploration and turn-based combat, but it’s a step short of the best strategy games of the year – others like Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew have done it better. Given more time and more engaging narrative The Lamplighters League could have been great. It will have to settle for decent at best.
IGN:
The Lamplighter League reviewed by Jon Bolding on PC. Also available on Xbox. The Lamplighters League takes proven concepts from other tactics games and puts them together into a novel blend. It takes an unfortunate amount of time to get going, but once it does the tight, meaningful strategic layer ensures that every mission, no matter how banal, matters to your overall campaign. The superb enemy and hero design gives you great stuff to work with as you use real-time stealth takedowns to prepare for tactical fights. Sure, sometimes the partially procedurally generated maps throw up a frustrating scenario, or an ability works a bit weird, but I was more than happy to take those in stride in order to undertake a globetrotting pulp adventure in such an interesting and engaging world.
-IGN
Enemy soldiers will inexplicably turn down chances to shoot and jog away from the fight or straight into patches of fire.
Locations range from the kind of disused docks or seedy side streets that any decent noir detective would have to investigate, to secret bases in ancient ruins or jungles where you wouldn’t be surprised to bump into Indiana Jones.
Christopher Odd:
