Mutant Year Zero is probably one of the best turn-based strategy games to grace the PC screen in years. The nice mixture between free roam stealth and TBS combat adds much needed respite between skirmishes and provides a more palatable way to gain resources in a more interactive way. It does borrow a lot from and follows XCOM quite closely in terms of character outfitting and combat, but I'd confidently say the rest of it is original enough to hopefully have games comparing themselves to this in the future. Its storyline is unique, the characters are brilliant, and the gameplay is so extremely well rounded and just challenging enough to not make it frustrating or face-rolling in nature. Honestly, I loved it so much I can very much see myself continuing to play this in my free time.

In terms of negatives, I'm really scraping the barrel. Yes, the level-up system is quite basic, but so is XCOM's. Not every TBS game needs Heroes of Might and Magic levels of complexity. The most jarring aspect of the game is probably the combat camera because it sometimes takes some seriously weird angles and doesn't actually show you anything. To say this is the game's biggest flaw is probably a testament to how good the rest of it is. My other frustration came from the stealth mechanic - enemies have red circular fields of vision, which inexplicably expand by a few meters when you get close to their edges. What's the point here exactly? Why not make them that large by default or not have them expand at all? It just seemed so pointless and bizarre. My only other qualm was that the game is capped at 62 FPS in full-screen mode. So overall, not a huge deal.

More importantly, the game's characters and storyline are brilliant. The one liners didn't get excessively boring, merely endearing. The characters are all extremely well written and had some excellently defined roles and unique abilities. The mixture between storyline and gameplay was for me an utterly perfect balance, as were the free roam and battle sections. The maps in each area were particularly huge and varied and basically gave you free reign on how you wanted to stage your battle, as well as plenty of areas to scour for scrap. I liked the stealth addition and how it was implemented to make the game go from "really damn hard" to "subtly challenging", and enemies were suitably variable to push you to really expand your character's specializations. Going full guns blazing is not an option. Leveling up is a simple two-line tree for each character, as well as a single passive tree for weapons, which all serve a purposes as well as having mild customization that doesn't get too overly complicated, and they all feel very punchy and satisfying. I also love the fact that equipment alters the appearance of your characters. Dux with a top hat and sniper rifle never gets old. It's just such a solid and well-rounded game that it deserves to be in everybody's Steam Library. I was honestly very impressed at the polish and care taken to make sure everything on offer was hammered home instead of chasing numerous extra systems that wouldn't have improved the experience.