SteamWorld Heist II review

The SteamWorld franchise has routinely merged different concepts together. While the main goal of 2013’s SteamWorld Dig: Firstful of Dirt was mining materials, your excavations generated shafts and walkways that exercised your platforming skills. Later, 2019’s SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech fused deckbuilding with a role-playing campaign, while 2023’s SteamWorld Build blended city planning with light dungeon-sim aspects.

And while the SteamWorld property could have easily coasted, delivering sequels that offered minor additions and insignificant deviations, SteamWorld Dig 2 changed the formula, eschewing the procedurally-generated levels for carefully crafted levels that tested your proficiency with metroidvania-style navigational tools. Likewise, SteamWorld Heist II builds on the foundations of its 2015 predecessor, while injecting an assortment of new ideas. If you’re a fan of turn-based strategy but don’t have the time for prolonged encounters, Heist II definitely deserves a look.

The Kraken-Killing Parent Conundrum

While Heist II is set in the same world and revisits many of the same themes of previous SteamWorld titles, playing the first game isn’t essential. As a sequel with a substantial amount of alteration, there’s a new lead character as well as a fresh setting. And although a shift from the immensity of space to a single, water-filled planet might sound reductive, Heist II is a significantly bigger outing an abundance of areas to explore and mechanics that add depth to your party members.

Although protagonist Captain Quincy Leeway doesn’t engage in combat directly, he’s undoubtedly an intriguing character. Hoping to escape from the shadow of his renowned mother, much of the game’s storyline centers on Leeway establishing his own identity. And as the one calling the shots on most missions, it’s satisfying watching him grow into a respected leader. Pleasingly, the storyline doesn’t just work on a personal level, with a corruption known as the Rust threatening the Steambots. Several factions materialize from this predicament, with some bots using diesel fuel while others are replacing parts of their body with bones.  But for better or worse, this is the Captain’s story, so don’t expect much backstory from your steamboat soldiers.

Working The Angles

Although robots swapping their hardware for organic material is certainly a fascinating premise, SteamWorld Heist II knows you’re not here for a cautionary tale. Likely, you’ll be helping Leeway and company for the gratification found in the game’s two-dimensional tactics. Here, one to five combatants cycle through movement and attack phases. Like the first Heist, your navigational cursor provides plenty of useful info, with icons and color-coding conveying if a position offers cover or is accessible with an attack-free sprint.

Once enemies descend on your position, you’ll freely aim your weapon, setting the angle of your SMG, shotgun, grenade launcher, or sniper rifle. Here, Heist II draws unlikely inspiration from Bubble Bobble. Not only do some weapons reveal a firing trajectory, but you’ll soon discover that this is a game of angles. Many environmental elements reflect your bullets, making trick shots an indispensable strategy. Can’t quite get the proper angle to nail a foe who’s crouching behind pop-up cover? Fire at the ceiling and watch the ricochet strike him from the rear. Nailing these kinds of shots always feels awesome, since your team is habitually outnumbered.

Emanating Class

While it might seem like a relatively minor inclusion, Heist II’s class system truly changes how you’ll approach most fights. Here, all characters default to one of six default classes. But by equipping a new weapon, you can get any of your robotic squad-mates to switch to a new class. Instead of starting from scratch, they can learn up to five new skills, becoming a multidisciplinary agent of death. As such, you can cultivate a Sniper with the multi-stop capability of a Reaper. Or you can give a sniper rifle to an agile Flanker, allowing them to swiftly relocate to an ideal vantage point. Best of all, if you maxed out a class, but need to revert back for a specific mission, you’ll bank the experience instead of forfeiting it.

Another interesting addition is the integration of action-driven fights on the overworld map. As you gradually ebb away the fog of war and search for equipment caches, you’ll encounter enemy vessels who will make a beeline for Captain Leeway’s submarine. What follows is a real-time naval battle between ships, where ballistics are traded, and armor levels are calculated.

Beneath the Surface

Naturally, you can upgrade your sub, prioritizing mobility or munitions, and even outfitting it with a late-game air-tank that lets you venture into new regions. Cleverly, the currency for these upgrades is Reputation, and fittingly it’s earned by completing missions for the game’s different cliques. And while you will have seen all of Heist II’s different mission types across the 30+ hour campaign, there’s an attempt at variety.

But there’s also a crack at padding the game’s playtime, with the run-up to the final boss slowing the game’s momentum and escalating the possibility of frustration. Mercifully, SteamWorld Heist II permits players to change the level of difficulty at any time, which I recommend as you lurch toward the game’s finale. Although this doesn’t spoil an otherwise engrossing experience, the decision works against all the smart additions that make this one of the better turn-based titles released across the last year.

SteamWorld Heist II was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.