Depth of Extinction on Xbox

Depth of Extinction is a turn-based tactical RPG which allows you to explore a sunken world and build your own story.

The premise is unique. In a flooded future world rife with violence, rumours of killer machines have spread far and wide. As a number of factions emerge – violently vying for power – you become the sole defender of humanity’s last standing government.

The game boasts the ability to create the ultimate squad from 10 different character classes including the brand new SABOTEUR. You can outfit your team with 115 different weapons, armour, and items to fight 30+ unique enemies from 5 factions. Make use of every tactical advantage by positioning your team in ambushes and then get the kill with stealth.

Gameplay 

You start your journey as an unknown member of a squad who enters a facility looking for salvage. In a strange turn of events, you meet a friendly robot that tells you to find a scrambler device which has been broken up into pieces. This is the only device that can stop the upcoming robot invasion that will shortly take place. After this brief discussion, you are then attacked, and have to retreat to your home base. Here command tells you that its up to you to find the pieces and to get to it, so with a rag tail band of a crew, that’s exactly what you do.

Thus your mission begins and you then spend a small proportion of time navigating to locations which will entail the bulk of the turn-based gameplay. Navigation is made up of you spending fuel in order to move your way across a series of map nodes, before you hit your final objective. 

Nodes contain mission based enemies, rewarding treasures, shops and even extra unlockable’s that have been crafted around little individual stories, that help sell this apocalyptic world. Either way there is a lot of potentially dangerous choices to make and in turn, unforeseen consequences coming your way, thus making your story unique.

So when you do finally get into the combat, this is where the ‘’Xcom’’ like aspect starts. Like most turn based tactical rpg’s, cover is life, and you’re almost always outnumbered and if you get hit from enemy fire, it hurts a lot. With these games its all about placing your team carefully whilst taking full advantage of the layout and using your people to the best of their abilities. Weighing up those percentage shots whilst carefully managing your action points is a stable for this genre. To bring something new to the table, the developers have added in a stealth mechanic, a follow the leader option and a variety of unique items like revive with 1% health. Your crew even fully heal after every engagement, however, don’t be fooled into thinking this is easy!

The enemy AI is truly ruthless and have no problem engaging if they think your weak or holding back if you seem to get the upper hand. In a moments notice I could be on the attack and in charge, only then to find myself wiped out by a few mis-steps thus forcing me to draft in new rookies, replace their gear and fill extra squad slots with expensive mercenaries. Speaking of your crew, like XCOM you can customize your crew anyway you like, even down to their abilities, name and looks. This itself means its hits even harder when you do loose a crew member you have been crafting in the perfect way you want them.

Being a turn-based tactical rpg on console can be hit or miss. This is mostly down to how the controls are done, as these games favour mouse and keyboard. Unfortunately there is no support for said feature, however, I can say that the controller implementation has been done very well. The control system feels smooth and snappy which is exactly what you want in this sort of game. That being said I have come across some issues where the game froze for afew moments, a number of times. This was mostly when the enemy ai was trying to work out its next move, now whilst not a major issue, this can break the fluid of combat.

Overall I found this game super fun and addictive to play. The plethora of different objectives, each with their own selection of web like individual missions, kept me wanting to explore, even if my fuel wouldn’t allow me to do so.

Graphics

This is where the games art style may be a bit hit or miss for some players. For me, this is a throwback to the old 16-bit era that’s basic style, maybe a bit too basic for the more modern day player. For me personally, whilst this is not as vibrant or crisp as some 16bit games being released, it does the job. I would however, like the option to zoom in more than allowed when in combat, just to see those gory deaths in action.

Level design is based on randomly generated tactical maps which keeps things fresh and ensures that your always entering somewhere visually new, within that nodes ‘’zone’’. Most maps are small in size with enough cover and enemies to help make combat engaging, and not make the combat into long grindy bouts. This works well as you can just jump in and out of the game and still progress at a pace you like. One area i really like is the HUD display as this isn't cluttered and gives you a clear indication of what's happening allowing you to focus on your next  move. 

Sound

The sound is really well done with the title of the music highlighted prior to every combat on the loading screen. The music is superb, as it blast out this retro synth-wave at you ensuring that you are eager to progress forward. Explosions, general hits from various weapons and the overall mood is also done very well and combat generally sells the skirmish narrative. 

Now there is limited voice acting in the game, as the developers have chosen to tell the pretty good story via text. What you do get is generally your crew saying a variety of catchy phrases over and over again when moving as per your request. Regardless this doesn’t hinder the experience at all and listening to the games music through a nice pair of gaming headphones, for me, was the best experience.

Verdict

This leads me onto the rating of the game:-

Now I rate games in order of, avoid, on sale, great purchase and must own. My rating for Depth of Extinction is a "Great Purchase".

Here is a game where the phase, ‘game play over visuals’’ is spot on. Regardless of what you may think of the visual choice, the game play is really where it hits the nail on the head.

The game is currently priced on Xbox at £12.49 or approx $15, and depending on skill and patience would give you about 20-30 hours worth of game play to potentially clear the story. With the potential different paths available, this opens the games replay ability and could easily net you another 30 odd or so hours.

Whilst some maybe put of by the old-school graphics, what is here is a very good turn based tactical RPG with hours of solid content in a choose our own path world.