I seldom feel compelled to write reviews of games (books are another story!), but I love the turn-based strategy genre (TBS), especially the western take, and was stoked to hear a AAA studio was going to take a shot at 1 finally. The closest comparisons to GT would be XCOM and Wasteland, but neither Firaxis nor inXile are AAA, although InXile may be now! That said, XCOM EU is in my top 10 favs all time and Wasteland 3 was a massive leap from 2 (although with far, far too many bugs).
I think the primary problem with GT is that The Coalition tried to make a TBS game that would appeal to Gears fans instead of TBS fans. This focus might be why the TBS gameplay is so stunted, while the narrative is very good. That said, I am not a Gears fan as I am not into shooters...and I'm not certain shooter fans would be into TBS games (or Gears Pop and see how that turned out); so this was a recipe for disappointment that could easily have been fixed if they sought input from actual TBS fans!!!
Pros:
Polish - game is clearly AAA from its visuals to audio to production quality. While it did crash to the dashboard several times (what game doesn't anymore) and there is some stutter issues in the load-in cutscenes, there is only 1 gamebreaking bug I have encountered and it only involves the Ironman mode as infrequently an enemy will get stuck in a glitch against a wall (or similar object) and there is no way to force the game to move passed it; alas in Ironman, you cannot abort or reload the checkpoint and the game saves after each of your turns so it's gameover (happened to me on Act 3 Chapter 6!!!).
Gameplay - the basic TBS gameplay is great. The to-hit % seem legit (unlike say XCOM where it is commonplace to miss 3 95% shots in a row) and the impacts have weight.
Narrative - the story is compelling despite me knowing almost nothing about the Gears universe; it almost makes me want to play through a Gears single-player campaign....almost.
Achievements - all but 1 (well 2) of the Achievements are straightforward and can be gotten through a couple playthroughs (game will take between 20-30 hours depending on how aggressive you are in your gameplay). I am doing my insanity run now and it's not too bad. The grubpocalypse achievement to kill 10,000 enemies is ridiculous as my average game saw me kill 1,500, so.....fml. PS, to TA, why do you have PC players writing "solutions" in the Xbox page? They have a separate PC spot and their "solutions" are almost never applicable to consoles.
Cons:
TBS CUSTOMIZATION!!!!! - before this game came out I heard The Coalition bragging about the amount of customization in the game. It's clear what they were bragging about is that you can change the color of your gear and add tattoos and scars and hairstyles....that's it; pathetic. There is no meaningful customization; each class has a weapon type that cannot be changed; almost all the gear looks identical and the character models, while they might be true to the Gears franchise, to an outsider look ridiculous; sure you can make their armor pink, but all the characters look like human heighted dwarves....it's like putting a pretty bow on a lego block! Game in this genre that does this the best is XCOM 2.
Party composition - this is where it is obvious they chose to tell a narrative instead of make a true TBS game. There are 5 classes in the game (Support, Vanguard, Sniper, Scout and Heavy), but a fixed 4 spots in your squad. To boot there are about 30 missions (about half are side missions) in the game and in almost all of them 1-4 of your party members are mandatory; forget about how YOU want to play the game, The Coalition will tell you how the game is to be played! The worst example of this is that you have your last mandatory Hero forced on you 2 missions from the end of the game and you are forced to use them in the final boss fight; again forget how you want to play the game or have played it for the first 29 hours, in this last hour, in the toughest fight, let's force you to use a class that you may never have used to date and may be wildly unsuited to the fight (my Heavy would have been the boss in the finale, but Gears lore and all that).
Leveling - Once again because of the narrative focus leveling is an odd thing. Most missions provide 250 XP + 50 XP per individual kill to the participating squadmate, but because they need for certain characters to fight in certain boss fights they force level some characters so they are not underleveled (which, I am sure is why leveling is such a grind as I have yet to be able to make a character level 8 even with them getting 90% of the kills).
Loot - horrible, just horrible. Firstly, more than 1/2 the loot is utter garbage, with perks such as "don't shoot for 1 round and get a 5% chance to get +10% critical hit chance on your first shot in the next round" and "after a successful hit get a 5% chance to fire again". To boot, all the loot is RNG; there is no stores like in XCOM or Wasteland so you can customize your characters your way, you're stuck with what you find even if it isn't for a class type you use or are forced to use. I have literally deleted more "legendary" weapon mods than I have equipped because they are useless and simply clutter up the inventory screen at base!
There are a few more minor gripes, but that's the jest. If The Coalition makes a GT 2, and I hope they do, for gods-sake hire a true TBS fan that can help you fit your narrative into an actual good TBS game.
Rating 5.5/6 out of 10.
3.0