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You also maintain and swap between an extremely small selection of weapons, which can get tedious when you want to change up your approach to multiple consecutive fights.Įxploration issues aside, the developer’s careful orchestration of resources and enemy encounters works reasonably well, but it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room. These limitations extend to your party as well – you only recruit a handful of characters over the course of the game, and each one only has a few useful abilities. Resources are finite in Mutant Year Zero, including the valuable items you find, the scrap and weapon parts you can use to buy and upgrade your gear, and the enemies you encounter.

While the zones are visually striking and offer a fair amount of world-building, the slow rate of movement and lack of a minimap make it a pain to thoroughly explore them – but you basically need to do it anyway.

The exploratory aspect of Mutant Year Zero doesn’t fare as well. Mutant Year Zero’s stealth combat steals the show, and while large-scale battles are fun in their own right, nothing beats the thrill of chaining together a series of stuns and silent attacks to take down a hulking brute or giant mech without alerting their comrades. Maneuvering your squad members into position and stealthily picking off single enemies when they wander away from the pack is vital for evening out the odds, and figuring out an order to systematically dispatch a collection of enemies in smaller groups can be supremely rewarding. The most unique and important aspect of Mutant Year Zero’s combat lies in when and how you choose to engage your foes. Engaging the enemy initiates turn-based combat that will be instantly familiar to XCOM fans, encouraging players to use cover, high ground, and character abilities to their advantage. Players explore these zones with a band of mutated misfits via real-time movement, and are free to sneak by enemies they encounter in the environment or ambush them. Unlike most turn-based strategy games that jump between a menu-driven home base and an endless series of discrete maps for skirmishes, Mutant Year Zero’s unique post-apocalyptic world is comprised of hand-designed maps that are all linked together via branching exits.

With a focus on world-building and exploration, Mutant Year Zero also carves out its own niche in the genre, but a limited scope and bafflingly abrupt ending mar the experience. Turn-based strategy games have enjoyed a healthy amount of experimentation the past few years, including the enemy-stomping zaniness of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and the stealthy espionage angle of The Phantom Doctrine.

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