You are Albus, a Troubleshooter tasked with putting together a team to stop the crime wave that is plaguing Valhalla.
TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is an SRPG, a strategy role-playing game. If you are familiar with the X-Com games, you should feel at home in TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children.
TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is a solid game with some flaws here and there. It took me around 155 hours to finish the campaign, so I got a lot of value for my money. You will too if you complete the game. If you are going to see everything, I think it will take around 200 hours. That is a lot of entertainment for your hard earned cash.
TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children has a much deeper and more complex character customization system than the X-COM games, minus the base building system in the X-COM games that wins over this game. There is also crafting here, but I didn’t spend much time on it since it would have made the game much longer.
You level up your characters by doing missions and using the complicated and deep character customization system. You can also choose how they react under combat, which is crucial. There are many things you need to spend a lot of time to understand, and I didn’t understand it all even after 80 hours.
If you want to play a game like TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children but lack the patience to spend time learning the system, building up your character, and developing effective team synergy, you will face problems towards the end of the game when it gets harder. The synergy between your teammates is crucial so that they work together when the enemies outnumber you, which happens often.
I liked TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children even more than the X-COM games because it has a decent story and a much deeper and more complex character customization system. However, some problems shouldn’t have been a problem.
The biggest issue with the game is that some levels feel broken and are too long. Some take 2-3 hours to complete, and even with a few checkpoints, it isn’t enough towards the end of the game. Some maps take 40-50 minutes to complete, but the further in the game you get, the more enemies show up, making it hard to progress. It’s best to complete most of the missions before level 40.
You should not just focus on the campaign missions; you should also pick all of the side missions that are usually harder than the campaign missions. However, after level 43 or so, some missions are incredibly challenging, so I focused on completing the campaign to finish the game.
The last campaign mission almost drove me insane. It’s a long mission without checkpoints, so I had to try it five or six times before I finally beat it. It took me around 10-12 hours. This map is frustrating because of how powerful the enemy snipers are. If you kill the boss too early, the remaining enemies will try to kill your six allies, and you have to chase after them while they continue to attack your allies. Losing all six allies means restarting the level. This is a really great game, but some levels are unfair and the game never prepares you for them. I have to deduct a point because of this.
The story is decent, but the characters are a little childish. Some characters are written better than others. It’s like watching a family-friendly anime show. I liked the art style and the score, and it’s impressive how much the small team behind the game achieved with the extremely complex character customization system. You should support a team like this that offers a lot of entertainment for a small amount of money.
The team behind TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is working on a sequel, and I hope they make a shorter and tighter game that allows for manual saves or more checkpoints. Also, the levels should be shorter and not overwhelm you with too many enemies, forcing us to wait 2-3 minutes for the next turn. It is incredibly frustrating.