In the Breach received a free kaiju-sized update last week, formally called In the Breach: Advanced Edition. It basically added an entire game on top of the existing base game, which was already one of the best tactical RPGs ever. In other words: RIP my social life.
Developed by the creators of FTL: Faster Than Light, Into the Breach is basically Pacific Rim: The Game. Giant insects threaten the planet. To fight them, you control a trio of mechs, each with unique abilities, directing them in turn-based combat around a chained battlefield. There are also roguelike systems: at the end of each race, win or lose, you could start a new one with one of your three mech pilots, who would have leveled up and gained random stat-boosting passive abilities along the way. .
In the Breach has been around the block since it first came out in 2018 for PC and Switch, but I just discovered it this year. It has absolutely subsumed my “free” game time. I’ve played more Into the Breach than 100 hour open world RPGs like Horizon Forbidden West or 100,000 hour live duty engagements like Halo Infinite. Due to its nature, the game forces you to run repeatedly. You start with a single team of three mechs. By completing various challenges, ranging from general goals like “beat the game” to team-specific tasks, you can earn coins that you can then spend to unlock new teams. It’s a dopamine ouroboros, like the best roguelikes.
Before last week, I had completed 46 of the 55 challenges in In the Breach and unlocked every gear except for the final “secret” gear (which Google tells me isn’t worth it anyway). After the launch of the advanced edition last week, there are now 70 challenges. Uh oh
These challenges are included with the Advanced Edition, which adds four new mech pilots, five new outfits, 10 new enemy types, a dozen missions, and nearly 40 new weapon types. (Here’s the full rundown , for those who want to get into the weeds.) Obviously, I have to finish each of these new challenges, which means I have to learn how each of the new gear works mechanics But so far, In the Breach has been kicking my ass to the same degree as when I first started playing.
Here are the new teams:
- There are the Bombermechs, which come with tools designed to move enemies around the battlefield.
- Cloud tokens usually prevent a unit from taking its turn. Mist Eaters are not only unaffected by clouds, they save their HP.
- Arachnophiles can turn defeated enemies into smaller, ballless mechs.
- Heat Sinkers absorb fire tokens for stat bonuses.
- Despite having the coolest name, Cataclysm is the riskiest: you can turn tiles into bottomless pits, inadvertently killing anything in there, even your own teammates.
Tellingly, the Into the Breach fan wiki currently lists “TBA” in the “strategy” section of every landing page for these teams. I’ve been playing more or less non-stop since late last week, and I’ve only finished one run with one of these yet – the Mist Eaters. (I keep getting so close in Cataclysm, only to make the wrong decision and send one of my mechs to their doom.) On the one hand, losing over and over again is maddening, especially when you’re playing a game where victory had previously been become second nature. On the other hand, this hastily steep climb makes In the Breach feel like a whole new game.
This is mostly due to the new teams, yes, but also largely due to the newly arrived enemy classes. There is an annoying whore who moves in two directions, for example; it cracks me up every time. There are three more that give stat bonuses to all of your allies, in some cases turning the tides against you into insurmountable odds. I’m still trying to make sense of the new quests, which give optional objectives on each procedurally generated map. One of them adds strong winds. (You can imagine how this increases the difficulty of Cataclysm.) I’m still figuring it all out, still combing through what’s been added, but it’s already a lot, to the point where I can sense as many combinations and possibilities as there are. they are in the base game.
Oh yeah, and the Advanced Edition scored two extra tracks from composer Ben Prunty, the same kind of deliciously crunching prog rock that punctuated the base game.
The lesson here is clear: what’s old can be new again. Developer Subset Games has marketed this release with the tagline “until the breach once more”. But I’m not sure I ever left. And at this rate, I’m not sure I ever will.