SteamWorld Heist II | Review

These Steambots have stolen my heart

Jesse 'Doncabesa' Norris August 1, 2024Last Updated: August 1, 2024

0 353 5 minutes read

SteamWorld Heist II is a turn-based tactical-strategy game. You are Captain Leeway, piloting a submarine across the high seas of outer space. You’ll fight the Dieselbots and more as you attempt to discover why all of the clean water that powers your people is going bad. It’s a sequel to the excellent 2016 original, and by the end of my 20 hours or so I had fallen in love with this almost Worms-like mix of tactical movement and real-time aiming.

The Great Sea

The story begins with your captain, the son of a hero who “killed the Kraken”. The first title took place a hundred years after SteamWorld Dig when the robots had been forced into space after the destruction of Earth. Now you’re on “the great sea”, a series of bodies of water that you’ll traverse on a submarine. The story took me roughly twenty hours or so to complete on normal difficulty and did a serviceable job of upping the emotional stake as I put together a crew to face down progressively tougher enemies.

The game loop sees you start your day at a local bar which you can traverse with 2D movement as Captain Leeway, then heading out into the overworld map. There you’ll have full isometric control of your submarine. At first, it cannot dive under the water due to damage sustained in the opening cutscene. Boat controls felt great on both the controller and keyboard. There’s just enough momentum to make you feel like you’re skidding around, without ever going out of control entirely. As you skim around the map you’ll find missions with a starred difficulty system alongside potential rewards. Earning enough stars is required to progress the story so the better you do in a mission (fewer bot deaths) the faster you can progress. The main action itself shifts back to 2D with a turned-based system that should feel at home for fans of the first game or any recent tactics title (like Gears Tactics).

Tactics

Each bot in your crew has a class type that is set by their weapon of choice. A big part of the game is swapping weapons around so that you can unlock passive bonuses from each class. Running missions with a varied crew, multiple times even, helped a lot in powering up my bots for the incredibly difficult later missions. If difficulty isn’t your style there is a Story setting that makes the gameplay far easier, with no grinding required. Once you’re in a mission every move counts. Your up to 5 bots will get to go in turn with two action points each by default. Some moves are “free” and do not cost an action point, instead having limited uses and/or a long cooldown. Movement costs one action point within a certain range and two action points if you want to go as far as possible.

While your main attack will end your turn outright there are equippable weapons that can either be a free action or use one action point per use. These range from grenades to pistols, rockets, and more. You can find weaponry in loot chests or buy it at bars and various vendors around the Great Sea. Clean Water is your main currency, which can be found on the open waters or in said loot chests. For crew upgrades, you’ll need crystals that are found in the same ways and it’s a steady, satisfying progression system that opens up tons of options for how you want to outfit your crew. Each bot has two innate abilities and a specific starting setup that differentiates them from one another. As you level up class types you’ll unlock passive cogs which can stay active after you swap to another weapon/class. Having a sniper build up to five means you can get excellent aiming perks or having the big brute abilities will keep even your flaking shotgunner upright in the most heated fights thanks to the extra health pool.

Combat itself sees you moving from cover to cover, whenever possible, and then manually aiming your shots. It’s all 2D with tight walls and ceilings so you’ll have to get good at learning grenade launcher arches, sniper bullet ricochet angles, and just how you should move in each turn. There’s enough variety in the objectives that I never felt bored, despite the game’s decently long runtime. I wouldn’t be surprised if a 100% on the harder difficulties took over 30 hours. It also does a great job of giving you various carrots-on-sticks, the numbers never stop going up. As you complete missions you’ll unlock bounty points which you can spend to get new weapons, clean water, or crystals. Every character’s class level constantly goes up as you use them, you can upgrade your ship’s weapons, shields, speed, and more. It all feels great and playing on PC or Steam Deck it ran beautifully.

Sites & Sounds

SteamWorld Heist II is a good-looking, smaller-budget title. If you’ve played any SteamWorld game then you know the art style. It’s clean, vibrant, and full of heart. I played primarily on PC and Steam Deck where it ran and looked fantastic. I didn’t get to check out the Xbox version so you’ll want to see how that one runs before buying it, but I can’t imagine it’ll struggle at all. There’s nothing crazy going on here graphically, with even the clouds that fog up the sea until you approach them being a static image and not some fancy volumetric effect.

The music is done by Steam Powered Giraffe once again, and it rules. It’s light breezy jazz while you’re sailing around, exciting fight music during missions, and a delightful chorus when at the local bar. Your crew needs to rest in between missions so you’ll hit up those bars, take in the tunes, maybe buy some new gear or recruit a new member, and then rest so that everyone is ready to go tomorrow. The game never broke on me, working well as I hopped between devices and never crashing.

My main issue with the title was the regenerating enemy types that show up later on. They were not nearly as fun to fight as the main antagonists and I ended up lowering the difficulty to normal to take them head-on. It’s a Play Anywhere game on Xbox, which means you get it on console & PC if you purchase it there as well. As one of the better handheld games I’ve played that is a huge bonus.

Wrapping Things Up

SteamWorld Heist II is a delight. Brilliant tactical combat is mixed with a clever story, great music, and engaging progression. Whether you’ve played the first title or not if you’re into turn-based, strategic combat then this is one to check out.