Red Solstice 2: Survivors Critic Reviews

Red Solstice 2 is a game that requires at least another friend to deliver a decent experience. The strategic and tactical layers work, from a purely mechanical point of view, but everything is too focused on repetitive actions to keep the game fun when playing solo. The limited immersion does not help. Gamers who can get together a group of four people and manages to coordinate sessions will have a very different experience. Four humans who work together to deal with the hordes of monsters, especially on the higher difficulties, can create impressive heroic moments. Red Solstice 2 shows the limits of a solid set of gameplay mechanics but also reveals the excitement that only cooperative play can generate.

Ironward takes a couple of steps ahead in Red Solstice 2, with an interesting yet still improvable tactical experience.

Although I am convinced Red Solstice 2: Survivors will find its niche fanbase, I can’t really say the hybrid action/strategy gameplay impressed me. The single-player campaign is nice to have but it doesn’t stand out - the core experience here is definitely the multiplayer co-op.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is a worthy sequel to its predecessor. It improves and enhances some of its peculiar characteristics and stumbles upon some subtleties that perhaps denote an excessive haste and desire to go out on the market.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is an isometric and tactical TPS. It has a solid multiplayer and offers extensive customization options. Unfortunately, in single player, it tends to repeat itself.

With a focus on multiplayer, Red Solstice 2: Survivors tackles the action/tactical genre, offering up hordes of foes and beautiful presentations in the field. Where it lacks is connection with the player, bugs, and some difficulty spikes that make it infuriating.

Although the whole remains a bit generic, both in its gameplay and narration compartments, Ironward provides us with most of what he wants us to experience: a good run-down of strange creatures, alone or with friends, against the background of the survival of the human species.

Red Solstice 2 is a bleak ordeal, but it’s not without its charms. There’s a real sense of frantic desperation created as the player scrambles desperately from one mission to the next, helplessly watching the global infection meter always climbing. Whether it’s zombie biomass, sinister corporations, or environmental catastrophe, for the entirety of Red Solstice 2′s play time I was sure that we were only ever a hair’s breadth away from extermination — which only served to make fighting against it feel all the more satisfying. If the developers could ease the repetitiveness from their random mission generator, this would be one of the best successors to XCOM’s legacy, but in its current state it’s just an extremely solid squad-based RTS.

Genre mashups like Red Solstice 2: Survivors can be refreshing and revelatory, or they can feel like a poorly seamed patchwork of ideas. Red Solstice 2 has some fun elements, occasionally engaging combat and systems, and a take on the Red Planet that is familiar but not entirely unoriginal. Poorly explained mechanics, lack of personality and ultimately repetitive mission design all push back against a more thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is, at best, a slightly above-average game. For every fun aspect, such as the genuinely fun action-packed nature of the run-and-gun gameplay, there are downsides such as incredibly repetitive missions outside of the core campaign. However, you then find an excellent range of creatures and a good amount of character customisation, really boosting the game, for it to then be let down by the base and region-building feeling tacked on, and then the game is impacted by a fair few bugs. If you liked the first Red Solstice, and other similar shooters, you'll enjoy this, though arguably in shorter sessions or with other people online.

An interesting mix of strategy and real-time action dragged down by unbalanced features and a distinct lack of development time.

While the multiplayer is where Red Solstice 2: Survivors shines, fundamental design clashes, lack of single-player focus, and poor information presentation make the game a highly inconsistent experience.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is a decent game hindered by iffy AI, spiking difficulty, and a feeling of disconnect between player and game.

A niche but mostly well-presented experience, Red Solstice 2 attempts to create something entirely new by blending established genres. While its mishmash of strategy mechanics into an action game doesn’t quite hit the mark, it does provide a swathe of tense, tactical moment-to-moment gameplay and absolutely nails its occasional moments of creeping alien horror. It’s far from a strategy game at heart, and struggles to strike a balance between its complex real-time strategy mechanics and action-oriented gameplay – but for sci-fi fans who are prepared to overcome the game’s learning curve and just want to squad up and rip apart some eldritch abominations, there’ll eventually be plenty of gooey green blood to sink your grenades into.

An ambitious RTS/Twin Stick hybrid with a lot of potential and some great moments, let down by technical issues, inconsistent flow, and a lack of tutorials. One to keep an eye on if the premise appeals, but not worth diving into straight away.

If you enjoyed the first Red Solstice game, then perhaps this will be a satisfying sequel that continues the saga. But unless you got a bunch of buddies who are all itching to furiously click mutated aliens to death, you'll probably have a better time loading up another game of XCOM than trying to survive in the Martian wasteland of Red Solstice 2.

Red Solstice 2: Survivors is a game that wants to be an RTS, Twin Stick shooter and XCOM but does all three poorly. The game was clearly designed for 8 player co-op, and it plays best in that way, but the solo, single-player campaign is not worth it. The AI is troubling sometimes and the little control you have over your marines makes this a dull experience.