The Lamplighters League

Review

The Lamplighters League is about to take on its most powerful enemies, an organisation of three dominant individuals and their minions known as the Banished Court. But these days, The Lamplighters League is only one person, Mr. L, instead of many of the crème de la crème of scholars and fighters. To combat this new and fearless organisation, he can only hire the best misfits and lead them into dangerous missions in an alternative world set in the 1930s.

The Lamplighters League is a strategy game that combines real-time and turn-based, and a storyline with plenty of depth developed by Harebrained Schemes and published by Paradox Interactive on the 4^th of October, 2023, on the Steam platform. The game is also available on Xbox Series X|S.

I must say that I enjoyed this title, but it has some flaws that frustrated me the more I played the game. I liked the combination of real-time and turn-based in this game at first; I remember saying to myself, “This looks super cool, I'm going to enjoy this one.”  But after the great introduction and the first few missions, it became tedious. You basically have more and more enemies and more powerful enemies within each mission; that is how the difficulty increases. On the one hand, it is good for the challenge, and on the other hand, it becomes pretty much impossible to beat the level if you are not saving constantly after each time you kill an enemy. And it takes more time than other games to save, and the loading is not the greatest either.  But let’s look at the game setting and gameplay in general first.

After finishing your first few missions, your three main characters will arrive at Mr. L's (Mr Locke’s) hideout. There, you can go to the world map, upgrade your character skills, research new goodies through the allies you rescued through your playthrough and purchase goodies for your next mission. The game is laid out on a weekly cycle, and you’ll have different types of missions on the world map. It will also show you the three different individual groups (Nicastro, Marteau and Strum). You’ll have a fair few missions to choose from weekly. The ones with Nicastro, Marteau and Strum will have heat gauges, and if you are successful, it will also demonstrate how the heat will decrease against that particular group. You’ll need to have three and sometimes four agents on these main missions. For Rescue missions for with new agents and allies, you also need three agents. For gathering information and collecting items in safehouses, one agent is what you need as long as you have enough intel points at the hideout, and these missions will be done automatically for you.

Regarding the main missions, it will start in real-time. One of the three or four characters will take the lead, but you can swap them anytime. You can also ungroup them, which is useful for searching the area for enemies and goodies. Goodies include intel folders that you need to activate one agent's mission, supplies to buy items and equipment at the hideout, aether for your allies' research, booklets of information, motes of fate cards and things like grenades, medical kits, etc. There is a reconnaissance option that you can use if you want to scroll through the level layout, but it doesn’t show you where the goodies or the enemies are. You need to have your agents close by to see goodies and enemies. As I mentioned above, as you progress through the weeks, so does the difficulty (more enemies on the map) and what you’ll start doing is to lure one enemy far enough away from the others before they are alerted of your presence so can fight (turn-based combat) that single foe instead of the entire group. Sure, you can use your character takedowns to eliminate one to three enemies at once with the Ingrid takedown, but you only have a set of two to three takedowns per character. Yes, you can recharge takedowns for one character by collecting the second wind icon on the map, but there is usually only one of those per map. Sometimes, you cannot use takedowns, as some enemies are immune to them. Enemies have an awareness diameter when you step into or on the edge of that diameter, which is light beige. The enemy will detect your presence and start to grow red outward toward its boundary. As long as you move toward where you want to be and you are still in the beige boundary, you are right, but as soon as it becomes red and one of your characters is in there, the alert will ring loud. If you haven’t been able to lure him away from the others, all the enemies will be alerted, and if there is a reinforcement tower nearby, it will become a struggle.

The other thing you need to worry about is the stress factor, although it goes both ways as it is also applied to your enemies. Each time a character gets hit, his or her stress gauge will go up, and when it’s full, your character will be penalised by an action point and will be in greater danger of being killed.  Regarding enemies, when they are fully stressed, you can utilise the execution perk to farewell them. The other point to mention is that if your characters have an impacted card with stress, their stress level will rise by one point in every turn-based combat session, further increasing the difficulty.

The layout of the levels is good, and you can use elements/items (such as water and shock mines or firebombs and petrol) in your favour to inflict damage on enemies. And if you find the cards, you can add new perks to one or two of your agents at the end of the mission. That also depends on whether you have unlocked all card spaces (maximum three) on your characters. The other point is you can upgrade a card by stacking them up if it is the same perk, of course, or by upgrading them with ink points. 

There is a good variety of enemies, and I like the mummies; as you shoot them, they ignite and explode, spreading fire around them and damaging nearby enemies.

The graphics are stunning, and the soundtrack is just brilliant. I haven’t encountered many bugs, but I don’t like to wait too long to load saved games. And I think they need to revisit the difficulty as it is now; it is very unbalanced. I enjoy the story, the depth of the characters and the dialogue between them at the hideout.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

The Lamplighters League Steam Store Page