TROUBLESHOOTER: WE MISSED

As you know, recently I love anime. And I love turn-based tactics for a very long time. And in such a situation, how could you miss Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children – a kind of anime version of XCOM? Well, it’s time to repay karmic debts.

X-Children
The future, cyberpunk, war of corporations or sects, robots on neon-filled streets, and in the midst of all this – pretty boys and girls in bright outfits and ornate hairstyles – for anime, this combination is in the order of things: remember at least “Evangelion”, “Ghost in Armor” and “Cowboy Bebop”. So the authors of Troubleshooter came up with their own variation on the topic.

Troubleshooter: We missed it for nothing
The plot, of course, is served by art in a comic style.
The game takes place in the state of Valhalla, which was created by the three superpowers after another world war as a free trade zone. But it has also become a heyday of crime, which the local police cannot cope with. Therefore, civilians were allowed to form their own self-defense units. Such “vigilantes” here are called the title “trouble shooters”. And often they are very young guys and girls with superpowers – the experiments of local scientists with previously unknown magical energy and the subsequent genetic changes among the inhabitants of Valhalla did their job.

Troubleshooter: We missed it for nothing
The streets here are almost always restless.
We are told the story of a 20-year-old young man, Albus, who, after many years of training, received an official license to create his own Troubleshooter company. At first, he has to act in splendid isolation, but gradually other boys and girls begin to join him, more or less similar to typical anime characters.

All of them – with their own quirks, funny or, conversely, emphatically pathetic and mysterious. There is, for example, the teenager Sion, who is, in fact, a purebred magician, obsessed with food and lightning, or the girl Irina, who is obsessed with martial arts and superheroes – she believes that she was born to fight crime.

Troubleshooter: We missed it for nothing
However, many people here are obsessed with food.
There are plenty of other guys who are bright in their own way, with their own stories, but the authors are in no hurry to pour them into the team, but go in a roundabout way. They hint at the relationship between them, that they have an intriguing past, but we are not dedicated to the details for a long time. Instead, they assign Albus and Zion (he is the first to join the new company of troubleshooters) the role of teenagers who look with admiration and surprise at cool heroes, sometimes asking for help, and those, condescending to them, then disappear as mysteriously as they appeared.

Troubleshooter: We missed it for nothing
Who they are, what connects them, is not really clear at first.
We are shown scenes with the participation of characters, sometimes they are even allowed to play for them, when, for example, a pretentious young man helps Albus and Sion hold back monster attacks or when they are forced to fight off bandits together. And then our heroes are left in the dark about who it was.

All this, on the one hand, intrigues and keeps you in suspense, and on the other hand, it incredibly stretches the story campaign (yes, there is also a common story that ultimately connects all the characters), which will take many tens of hours. Although if you don’t strive to go through everything at once, you won’t feel tired or oversaturated from what is happening – the characters are bright, the situations are interesting. And in general, fans of 100-episode anime sagas are used to the fact that small sizes are not worth the price here.

Periodically, we are allowed to make a local choice in the dialogues, but this does not affect the plot globally.
In the area
But what about the gameplay in Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children? It generally corresponds to the classic XCOM scheme and is divided into a conventionally strategic part and tactical turn-based battles. Why did I call the strategic part conditional? Well, because the actual strategy is still not enough. Yes, there is a base, which is located in the basement of one of the bars, but there we mainly deal with squad management and mission selection.

Here you can also meet useful comrades.
The most strategic is the selection on a separate screen of areas that the Albus company can take under its jurisdiction and protection from crime, which brings it a stable profit – all team members need to be paid regularly. To get a new district, you must first complete a sufficient number of missions and raise your reputation. In return, we will receive not only regular deductions, but also bonuses that affect both tactics and strategy. Plus, the characteristics of local residents are taken into account. For example, in one area, they willingly undertake to clean up and rake up battlefields – this increases the chances of finding something rare and useful after the battle. And in another, the locals are so vigilant that we will be more effective in tracking enemies on the mini-map.