Platform(s): PC
Genre: Turn-Based Tactics Strategy

Indonesian developer Toge Productions is back and this time they’re venturing into a new genre (for them) with Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue. It’s a mecha turn-based tactics strategy RPG set in an alternate timeline in the 1970s during an era of conflict in Southeast Asia. The gist of the story involves controlling a squad of mecha pilots through an overworld looking like the jungles of Southeast Asia.

War-Torn SEA

Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue is the Prologue chapter of the game, featuring the opening of the story. If you rush through it, you could complete it in less than one hour. If you take your time to explore the overworld map and visit every possible location, it could potentially take around two or more hours. This is a great appetizer for what to expect from the eventual full game, whenever it will be released sometime in the future.

Since it’s a mecha game, yes, you can customize each mecha (the mechas are called Kriegs), swap parts and equip different weapons. It will feel familiar if you’ve ever played other mecha franchises like Front Mission or Armored Core. Since this is the Prologue, there are not many available options yet when it comes to optimizations, but that could change in the full game. We only get a taste of this in the Prologue, which is understandable considering that the Prologue serves as more of an introduction to its gameplay mechanics.

The gameplay is very XCOM-like, where moving your mechas on the grid-based levels or taking any action will require Action Points. Each mecha has primary, secondary and sometimes even tertiary weapons, including physical melee ones, bombarding missiles and the usual firearms such as machine guns and sniper rifles. The core gameplay loop is that you’ll move your units through the levels, find where the enemies are (and hope to God that you don’t get ambushed), and attack. Seeing as this is an XCOM-like, Overwatch is always your best friend and a must to survive. For those unfamiliar with the term, Overwatch is a blanket term to put units on standby to automatically attack enemies who come into their line of sight in between turns.

So far, what little I’ve seen of the world and timeline of the game makes it all an allegory harkening back to when most of Southeast Asia was under colonial occupation. The premise is basically what if the colonial era never really ended? There are also Indonesian-specific cultural elements like calling the temples ‘candi’. What impressed me most about the game is that it doesn’t hold back or shy away from depicting war crimes, massacres and genocide. There are even elements of prejudice and racism, such as the characters calling others by using slurs.

Another highlight of Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue is the retro low-poly visuals for the mechas, which evoke the memory of similar graphics from the PS1 era. This will surely tickle the nostalgia of those who grew up playing games like the original Front Mission games, which is clearly a big inspiration for Toge Productions in making this game. It’s also impressive how Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue features full voice acting, including local names like Su-Ling Chan and others.

One of the only flaws of Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue is that you can’t save scum and can only rely on autosave. Save scumming is an essential accessibility option for tactical strategy games like these, so hopefully the full game will feature manual saves and save scumming. Just like XCOM, Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue also isn’t an easy game, it’s quite intense and hard, especially since there’s a difficulty spike in the final mission of the prologue that took me by surprise. Since the game doesn’t feature manual saves, I had to restart the whole chapter to prepare myself better for that last mission.

Mighty Mechs

Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue is an engrossing introduction to this new world of an alternate version of Southeast Asia and mechas, so this demo is a decent appetizer and a small taste for what’s to come. I look forward to more content like this from Toge Productions shortly and I can’t wait to eventually play the full game.

FINAL SCORE: 80/100

Review copy provided by the publisher. It will launch for PC on 18 July 2024.