Ironcast mixes together match gameplay with turn-based combat, but doesn’t have itself quite an airtight hull.
The year 1886 was apparently quite the busy one for London, if video games are any indicator. The Order was taking out the Lycanthropic and Vampiric menace and the streets were rampant with bipedal resistance fighters going against an invading force. What a time to be alive.
“Ironcast does shoot straight and forward despite the glaring aesthetic approach and few gameplay issues.”
The latter of those oddly specific events is the backdrop for Ironcast wherein you are the pilot of your very own walking mech suit. Your chosen pilot will help The Spire retake the shinning city of the British Empire from invading French forces that are armed themselves with suits and trains. The overall plot isn’t treated as importantly as the battle-to-battle situations, creating a lengthening chain of vignettes that you choose along the way. At its core, this is less a story about London’s revival to glory and more so about your own pilot’s glorified run to victory, which works out well given how your choices influence battle so directly.
Gameplay
Matching symbols to build up meters serves as the overwhelming gameplay majority in Ironcast. Each round gives you three opportunities to match up symbols for Repair, Weapons, Cooldown, Scrap, and Energy with special abilities and between-matching actions lending quite a sense of depth to this simple set up. Each category is important in their own way, but I found Scrap (basically currency) and Repair to be the least important of the group. Still, it’s a wise move to keep that bar full in case of heavy barrage. Each action takes a certain expenditure of points from the limited meters i.e. shooting the enemy takes three ticks from your Weapon meter. If you run out and have no chains available on the board, you’re out of luck for that round. In this sense, Cooldown is king and is given a higher ceiling than the rest. Should that particular meter hit zero, your mech will begin to overheat and damage will accompany each of the few moves you have left. These are meant to be quick fights, sometimes to the detriment of the experience as the Cooldown can be utterly crippled by a bad board just a few turns in, leaving you with no real recourse but to accept death with honor.
Again, this all seems simple enough and yet feels strategically inspired. This dynamic is different from those in games such as You Must Build A Boat where you’re constantly at the mercy of a randomized tile dropper. Ironcast allows you to build and plan, even giving you the ability to attack specific sections of enemies such as their shield generators or mobility centers, decreasing their evasiveness. You can stack your shields and mobility to make yourself nearly indestructible for a turn, if you choose the correct buffs and augmentations along the way. That reserve of Repair can be used to recapture some health to targeted areas on your own mech, possibly turning the battle back in your favor. These are all factors that have to be looked over as your campaign progresses, and all of them combine to create a mechanic that, while not intensely involved, does engage you in a process you must stick to in order to win.
Replayability
Your campaign may be very, very short if you deviate too far because there are no continues or checkpoints. You find yourself blown up with your mech, the game is over. Whatever experience you gained is trickled into Commendations that allow for further unlocks of other pilots, mechs, moves, and other permanent upgrades. That loop, tight as it may be, isn’t all that gratifying as the vast majority of unlocks are for 5 percent changes in this-or-that or situational buffs. The four pilots each have their own few days to choose from a variety of missions from salvage and survival to trading and straight up battles, each of which nets you some sort of loot and augmentations for various areas. The garage area allows you to repair, purchase, and rearrange your Ironcast mech slightly but the system falls short of full customization.
Environment
Which is a fair segue into the graphical and aesthetic weakness inherent in this otherwise well-equipped title. Nothing in the game looks particularly good, and some of the dips can reach outright bad levels. The backgrounds change from one stock look at industrialized London to another without much of any movement while your mech stumbles forward and backward with frames missing and the entire process seeming massively dated. Static screens and typewriter noises deliver you orders and exposition and the music is the standard approach to this particular age. This sub-par standard encases the experience, weighing it down to the point where the strategic approach to gameplay can’t entirely carry it forward. It’s not a crippling stumble but there is nothing visually or aural that feels worthy of the Xbox One.
Ironcast does shoot straight and forward despite the glaring aesthetic approach and few gameplay issues. What you do in the strategic sense isn’t all that involved, but feels far more engaging than any other title in the matching genre. You have some measure of control over your output and attack strategies, sometimes offering the option to skirt conflict all together when played correctly. If you can look behind the visuals and issues, you’ll find a fight worth undertaking with the weight of the British Empire on your shoulders.
Final Thoughts
The score may not reflect this sentiment, but Ironcast is worth picking up for its strategic approach to a traditionally luck-based genre and the loop that keeps being fun despite the lack of substantial loot.
