I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’ve done a lot of RTS games in the past so I knew I wouldn’t mind whatever kind of system it would be. I waited until the game would be released on the Xbox (my laptop wouldn’t be able to handle to handle the PC version), so it was tricky avoiding any spoilers but I managed to avoid most. I truly have been entertained from this game: playing against the locust, good storyline, the number of adjustments you can make and building up your own squad is just great. I’m glad I had a week off, because it was really addicting to finish the story line. I have a lot of fun playing this game. It also takes some guts to build a single player game and I haven’t seen any features like a store. I’m not much of a gamer any more like I was in the past, but I feel like this is something that nowadays is rarely done so my compliments for that. With OP5 now in Gears 5, Tactics has taken a back seat for me but I will surely play it for some extended time again in the foreseeable future.
Not that I have no criticism though: although they’re few there are some bugs, the side missions are basically all the same and quickly dull and the progression of the story doesn’t keep pace with the levelling of your squad members. Eventually you’re more or less forced to get rid of some to maintain high level teams and because the end boss fight is quite intense you need to invest time in the protagonists as well, which is a serious disadvantage for the other characters. Story wise, it also seems weird that so much time is being spend in Vasgar while you never meet anyone from Vasgar and/or the UIR. You’d think that, despite that Vasgar had fallen, there would still be some pockets of local residents around - as you see in the campaign of Gears 5.
But my judgement would be that I think TC has done a great job on this one and that I hope that they will keep on releasing games like this. Continue the main storyline with Gears 5-6-7 etc., while introduce more story and content via side-games like these. These games will never be the ‘main’ game, but they will be a valuable addition.