SteamWorld Heist 2 Review

If there’s one concept that’s infinitely more invigorating in a video game than in real life, it’s taking on multiple quests at once. This is SteamWorld Heist 2’s biggest innovation—its hard-working robot heroes can now freely switch between different roles on the battlefield, combining the skills unlocked in each. While there are only six quests, the number of different possible combinations is impressive, especially compared to the first game’s fixed classes. It’s a sign of a sequel that builds on its predecessor in almost every way—and stands out as the most ambitious SteamWorld game to date.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it’s been merrily rolling along for nearly a decade now, dipping its toes into a variety of genres in compact but charming adventures. SteamWorld Dig and its sequel were, for example, sort of mining platformers, while SteamWorld Quest was a sort of deck-building RPG. They have a polished and compelling pace that makes them consistently fun, if a bit featherlight.

The original SteamWorld Heist was easily the most impressive of the bunch—a turn-based tactical RPG set in 2D battlefields that cleverly added a twist to the mix by allowing you to manually aim and deflect bullets so you could pull off crazy shots and even shoot people’s hats to steal for your own wardrobe. Heist 2 takes that great core combat and expands on it, adding a world to explore, more progression and gear for your crew, a more fleshed-out story, and just a lot more combat to blast your way through.

You’ll play as the wonderfully named Leeway Krakenbane, a slightly tormented pirate captain who struggles for fame in the shadow of his mother, a revered heroine. (She killed the Kraken.) Gathering a colorful crew, he sets out to find the source of “The Rust,” a mysterious force polluting the world’s waters.

Your journey through the world itself — which is essentially the 18th century Caribbean, but with steampunk robots instead of humans — plays out very much like a featherlight metroidvania. Piloting a petite submarine, you can scavenge for loot and secrets, battle enemy ships, and gain abilities that allow you to access modern areas, such as the ability to smash through rock barriers or dive into deeper water.

While it helps convey a sense of greater adventure, it has to be said that none of this exploration is particularly fun. The submarine itself steers like a wobbly shopping cart, which makes the real-time ship battles feel particularly clunky, and it travels slowly enough that the lack of brisk travel is jarring.

But really, all of this is just filler between the real meat of the game, which is the missions scattered around the map. Each one is a separate combat scenario, usually centered around stealing critical loot as quickly as possible before making your way to the extraction point, while an ever-growing alarm threatens to overwhelm you with summoned reinforcements.

Nerves of steel

Battles are tense and engaging, always on the edge of losing control, while also providing plenty of opportunities to show off eye-popping skill combos. Manual aiming adds a wonderful layer of uncertainty that feels like the percentage-based dexterity of XCOM—like that game, you can dial in the most perfect turn possible, only to have an accidental shot suddenly throw you off course.

That may sound irritating, but the game is forgiving enough that adapting to disaster is fun and satisfying rather than frustrating. And of course, it can always go the other way—sometimes you pull off a seemingly impossible trick shot, deflecting a bullet into the back of an enemy’s head to achieve a miraculous victory. It’s the scarce turn-based strategy game that’s engaging without being just plain stiff (though there are a wide range of difficulty levels to suit the situation).

These messy battles really do evoke the feeling of a ragtag group of outsiders fighting over loot while The Man’s forces advance on them. The game plays to this in its narrative – your enemies are arrogant tyrants like the colonial Dieselbots or a fanatical religious order that demands that metal be turned into bone, while your gang is full of charming scoundrels and outsiders who are simply looking for a purpose.

It’s up to you to find them for this purpose via the job system. Bots simply change roles based on their weapon — equip a shotgun and you’re a Flanker, for example, while a rocket launcher would make you a Boomer (an explosives expert, not a Gen Z character). No matter what job a crewmate currently has, they can employ all of the skills in that job, but they can also spend a circumscribed number of points (“gears”) to activate skills unlocked in other jobs.

It’s a elementary but surprisingly indulgent system, and while some of the combinations are obvious, there are plenty of unexpected ones that make experimenting rewarding. It’s effortless to see, for example, that the extra health and armor gained from a few levels in Brawler are beneficial to Boomer, who can get caught in his own explosions. But Brawlers can also gain the ability to move after an attack — apply this to Reaper, who can attack in circles until he kills his targets and becomes a whirlwind of destruction.

At first, with only a few cogs per bot, you can’t stretch these combinations very far, but the game is generous, giving you more and more to play with as you progress. By the end, you probably have too many of them – it became arduous for me to keep track of what purpose I was actually serving with each of my then-large crew, many of whom could activate almost every useful thing they’d ever unlocked, regardless of their current role – but there’s an undeniable pleasure in seeing how absurd things can get when you have all the toys at your disposal.

No pairs

It’s a long journey to get to this point, though. The game clocks in at an effortless 30 hours, more if you grind through the levels of quests and gear. That may not seem like a lot, but it’s more than twice as long as any previous SteamWorld game, and it actually feels like some of the series’ grit has been lost as a result.

The missions are impressive in their variety, each allowing for a different number of bots and offering different objectives and enemies, and the game does a good job of finding ways to encourage you to rotate your crew rather than play the same alpha squad over and over again. But in the second half of the adventure, things start to feel a bit relentless for such a featherlight and ultimately not very deep strategy style, and the rather forgettable story is full of long digressions and false climaxes that muddy the pacing.

The final area is particularly glaring — what should probably be a compact jaunt to the final boss is instead stretched out into its own biome, lasting over 5 hours with a long macguffin quest and frustratingly threatening exploration. I think I’d rather be left wanting more than wishing it had been a little less.

I usually praise ambition, but in SteamWorld’s case it seems that restraint has always been part of the series’ USP. It’s not something that should be a turn-off – Heist 2’s combat and progression are brilliantly evolved over the previous game, and provide a really acute but accessible strategic experience, and those looking for maximum value will find a more substantial offering to be praised. But for me it’s stiff to shake the feeling that this still impressive machine would run even smoother if it had fewer bells and whistles.