HomeFeaturesThe Lamplighters League
The Lamplighters League might be about to rip up the XCOM rulebookMore impressions from the middle of its campaign
More impressions from the middle of its campaign
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
The rest of the RPS Treehouse might be fully engrossed inBaldur’s Gate 3at the moment, but the main thing that’s been on my mind for the last couple of weeks is stealthystrategy games. Primarily, the exceedingly excellentShadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, but also Harebrained Scheme’s upcoming turn-based tactics ‘em up,The Lamplighters League, a game I’ve been quietly looking forward to ever since it was announced earlier this year.
Specifically, I’ve been playing through a handful of missions from the middle of The Lamplighters League’s campaign, getting to grips with its full roster of agents and their unique set of skills. It continues to be just as stylish as theopening mission I played in May, but I’m not gonna lie. I’ve had quite a bit of whiplash coming straight from Shadow Gambit into this, but even if I’d arrived fresh and green, I don’t think even all my years of tactics playing and XCOM-liker-liking would have been enough to prepare me for just how gosh darn difficult it is.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
In its defence, there’s definitely an element of being chucked into the middle of the campaign cold here, and I’m 100% lacking that familiar muscle memory that would no doubt help me see better synergies between its ten-strong cast of characters. I also can’t tell you exactly which of its three difficulty modes I was playing on, as the save file that was provided to me simply comes up as ‘Custom Difficulty’ in the loading menu rather than the Explorer (new to tactics games), Adventurer (familiar with tactics games) or Survivor (veterans of tactics games) options you get when starting a new game from scratch.
Literally everything was on fire during this mission, including my agents. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
So far, so XCOM. Likewise, as you may recall from myinitial hands-off demo impressions back in March, Lamplighter missions are split into two sections. You begin in a real-time infiltration mode where you can get a feel for the map and where your objective is, and you can use your limited set of takedown attacks to take out a couple of straggler guards along the way if you’re stealthy enough. I only had two of these per agent in this preview build, so you won’t be able to stealth the whole thing. Eventually, the only option left to you will be to enter into turn-based combat.
You can use your infiltration moments to your advantage, though, splitting up your group to get them into useful positions before the action kicks off, and, hopefully, setting up the board for a quick and easy win. When I played the opening level, hunkering down behind decent cover and leaning into those years of XCOM-ing seemed to work a treat. Enemy numbers were manageable, adding a little pressure, but not too much, and so I naturally assumed that the rest of the game would follow suit.
They say to play dirty, but come on, 13 vs 3 isn’t a fair fight no matter what tactics you try and take… |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
Needless to say, this one didn’t end well either… |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
As I said, making the effort to always be moving forward did help to a degree, but even if thisishow Lamplighters should be played, I worry that taking this kind of approach also completely misses the point of it being a turn-based tactics game in the first place. If the best chance you have is to simply defend, take pot-shots and not really engaging (or at least not as much as you would in a traditional strategy game like this), then what impetus is there to try new strategies and agent combinations? It doesn’t seem conducive experimentation, as there simply isn’t the bandwidth to try anything.
God bless, you Eddie, you tried your best… |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Paradox Interactive
In short, I need to spend more time with The Lamplighters League, and especially more time with it from the beginning, and hopefully on a more agreeable difficulty setting. I’m still quietly hopeful for it ahead of its release on October 3rd, but I may also have to hold up my hands in Soulsian-like defeat if what I’ve played in this middle section of the campaign ends up being just another day in the office on its Adventurer setting. I want to believe there’s a more approachable game in here - just like the opening mission seemed to suggest - because, hey, I’m not averse to re-training my brain and trying new things! I’ll give anything a go if I know what a game expects of me. But if you go in thinking this is just another XCOM-like, you might be in for a pretty rough ride. I’ll hopefully report back soon, closer to release.
