MENACE

I went into MENACE fully expecting Overhype Studios to play it safe, reskinning Battle Brothers with plasma rifles and calling it a day. Four operations into the Wayback system's ugliest frontier worlds, I can confirm that instinct was wrong in the best possible way. This is a combined-arms, cover-based turn-based tactical RPG with a strategic management layer wrapped around it, and the sum of its parts lands closer to a proper wargame than another XCOM clone. The ground-level combat is where your spreadsheet brain will find a home. Units carry primary and secondary weapons, each configurable for regular fire or suppressing fire, plus utility slots for grenades and support equipment. Suppression is a genuine mechanic here, not a cosmetic one: pinned squads burn action points just trying to function, which means a well-timed volley can paralyze a flank long enough for your tanks or mechs to reposition and close the noose. Notably, there is no Overwatch system, so every turn demands forward momentum and deliberate risk rather than defensive turtling. The cover system runs from exposed to medium to full, terrain is destructible, and the four enemy factions (pirates, Rogue Army elements, alien Xenos, and the robotic Constructs) each demand meaningfully different approaches. Suppression, by the way, does almost nothing against Xeno swarms, so players who lean on that tactic for every engagement will get a rude lesson. Zooming out to the strategic layer, you manage your forces from the Impetus, your mobile headquarters travelling between planets. Distress calls roll in from across the Wayback system and you choose which to answer based on readiness levels, supply stocks, and faction relations. Siding with criminal networks opens up intel and black market deals; ignoring certain worlds costs you standing. Missions are grouped into multi-stage operations, each procedurally constructed, and a supply limit on deployments means you genuinely cannot throw your best loadout at every fight. Squad leaders carry unique perk trees and permanent injury risk, so losing a veteran officer mid-campaign stings in a way that reshapes your roster for the rest of the run. The workshop and blueprint system, added post-launch, lets you craft and upgrade gear from materials dropped by Construct enemies, which adds a satisfying resource loop on top of the Black Market economy. Here is the honest caveat that strategy veterans owe newcomers: the tutorial is close to useless. The game explains almost none of its interlocking systems, and the gap between what the UI shows you and what the game actually expects you to understand is wide enough to swallow a whole squad. My strong recommendation is Normal difficulty for a first run, no exceptions. Once the systems click, and they do click, the mechanical depth is genuinely rewarding. Overhype shipped ten regular updates and one major content update since launch in February 2026, and the update cadence matches the studio's track record with Battle Brothers. Weapon balance has been a community flashpoint (some players have flagged fire damage as overtuned and parts of the weapon roster as underpowered), and the endgame content is still being built out. This is Early Access in the truest sense: exceptional bones, rough edges, a development team that listens.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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