The Advance Edition update adds even more Prunty to the soundtrack, and I’m all for it.

Ben Prunty, who also worked on FTL, Subnautica: Below Zero, and Celeste, crafted an incredible score that succeeds at building a tense atmosphere built for war. It’s honestly as fun to lose in this game as it is to win for the sake of figuring out how to best use your mech squad. The game has a “reset turn” time travel option that acts as a mulligan for war and instantly lets me fix my mistake, but you can only use it once per level, and I almost always make the same mistake twice anyway. I keep making stupid mistakes, like placing my mechs in spots where they’re open to being slammed into a building full of civilians or shooting Vek that will pummel into an ally and cause damage. I, admittedly, am still on the training wheels of easy mode while I get the hang of things. The former game has a strict ruleset that keeps ramping up in interesting ways as the game progresses, and while the same can be said about Advance Wars, Into the Breach doubles down on its brutality with pilot permadeath. Into the Breach is for scholars, Advance Wars is for babies (sorry!). Into the Breach is chess, Advance Wars is checkers.

Earlier I compared this game to Advance Wars, but that’s not quite accurate.

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