Playing Menace as My First Turn-Based Tactics Showed How Aggressively Bad I Am at Games, and How Fun These Can Be
This game was a Menace at first.
As someone who has tried almost all genres in the video game industry, the turn-based tactics games have always eluded me. From Final Fantasy Tactics to XCOM, the timing was never right until Menace came around, and things were brutal but fun.
In a way, Menace reshaped how I approach and play other games and tested my patience. A game built for strategic thinking and calculations before taking any action was a bit too slow for me, making it a tough game to crack.
The First Five Hours Felt Like a Giant Tutorial
In Menace, the tutorial only teaches the bare basics of actions and movement, and that’s about it. It was a tumultuous experience, bridging the gap between squad mechanics/positioning and tactics to actually finish the missions.
As someone who goes through games like a Formula 1 stock car in terms of speed, each action put me in a bad position, and it took a few times to understand how some of the mechanics work, like getting pinned or suppressed.
In Menace, you have to think about every single action point, so setting up your squad’s positioning as you go through the fog of war is crucial. Using all the action points to get to the farthest point of the movement limit was always my go-to.
I learned early to think ahead and always assume there could be an enemy nearby. Ending a turn in the middle of random enemies that show up always results in death or casualties. Now, even when prepared, it was also somewhat frantic, finding enemies with better cover or on better terrain a few times. It was tough, but this is where learning about the units, strategies, and equipping your squad comes in.
You’ll want to learn all about stats, weapons, actions, and even vehicles with proper loadouts. As someone whose only experience in turn-based tactics games is a Fire Emblem game, it was a steep learning curve with a lot of reading involved.
Eventually, I Learned the Appeal of Menace
After a few successful missions, I finally got the appeal of Menace – the RPG and customization elements. With almost an infinite number of combinations when choosing squad leaders, squad sizes, different weapons, strategists, AT launchers, and many more, my joy came from mixing and matching these setups and figuring out what works for specific missions.
Dealing with multiple factions, like aliens and pirates, adds an interesting spin and is personally nostalgic, reliving my early days of playing games like StarCraft or watching Starship Troopers in the late 90s.
While turn-based tactics might seem just a trend for those who haven’t tried one yet, it is definitely worth the experience, and Menace sure is a great starting point, in my humble opinion.
