One-inch Tactics

~CAN YOU TRUST THIS REVIEW?~ So, I had purchased the quite good Vestaria Saga here on Steam, and was looking for the fantastic OST for the game rather than the dinky-dooders one as DLC here, and a found full 3 Disk one from LILT Records. As I added it to my cart, I saw LILT also did the Power Dolls Resonance AST, which I grumpily never purchased it because I prefer the MIDI originals to the Jazzy Arrangements here, but I was in a good mood and bought it too. Turns out there's a second disk to Resonance with FM and MIDI versions of the tracks, I made it to Track 3, (FM) ALTERNATIVE WALLS, before being like "I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE" and ran to my computer to look for Mecha games on Steam. The first one I opened a new tab for was One Inch Tactics, which I was like "Tabletop Mechs? Yep!". All the reviews were like "Power Dolls! Power Dolls!" and I thought that was a bit unreasonable until I scrolled up and saw the developer. I may have then sneezed and bought this, and a few other Mech games. Now as I sit here holding my Power Dolls OVA, listening to my Resonance AST, can you be certain the following review is in any way trustable? You must decide for yourself. ~ This easily slides into my top 5 tactics games of all time. Outside of the Miniature presentation, and jazzy soundtrack, which you can decide for yourself if it’s is up your alley, the game has a great breadth of tactical gameplay. The crux of it comes down to controlling vision in Fog-Of-War and utilizing camouflage to maximize defense. It can be a little vague to understand that you have vision on target, but not enough to fire on them, but it helps that the CPU isn’t a GBA Advance Wars Cheating buttblaster. Rarely is your mission "Kill All Enemies", but rather a variety of actual objectives with parameter and margins of success/failure; escort supply lines, destroy enemy ammunition depots, steal prototypes, etc. This combined with limited ammo, creates tense tactical choices, “do I hide, or do I take out one more enemy?”. There is nothing cooler than seeing enemy reinforcements, and deciding nope, then shooting smoke grenades to conserve ammo, and make a rapid b-line to the exfil point. This is how all Fog-Of-War should play, period. It's both your biggest danger, and your most powerful tool. Oh, and when the mission is "Kill All Enemies"? It’s a every bullet spent, forced into close combat, cheeks clenched tightly together, total fire fight. The game doesn’t fully explain everything it’s doing, but it’s 10,000% worth it. Best thing I ever bought on Steam good. P.S. I always meant to get my DOS copy PD1 going on my Steam Deck, that's now less of an option, and more of an imperative. P.P.S. Real One Inch Tactics minis and game set when?

POWER DOLLS POWER DOLLS POWER DOLLS POWER DOLLS This is effectively a modernized bite-sized version of the original Power DoLLS 1. When I say bite-sized, I mean the individual missions are much shorter, at least initially. I'd love a modern-software version of PD1 that keeps all the old art, but this'll do! :)

The presentation is a little lackluster, but I appreciate the studio returning to the Power Dolls series, and hope to see more in the future. One-Inch Tactics is definitely a more simplified version of its predecessors, but it does at least attempt to recapture some of the spark of the originals. The fog of war mechanics and timed artillery strikes are all there, but it'd have been nice to also bring back the air drops and air support. Over-all this feels somewhat amateurish, but it's a generally good experience. The user interface is a little clunky at times, but in a way that's hard to nail down, and there's a not much by way of sound effects, animations, and the voice acting that made the first game in the series stand out is wholly absent. I hope to see more from the series in the future with, but with a little extra polish. edit - devs get bonus points for adding an additional mini-campaign post launch, for free.