63 Days Review

63 Days is an isometric real-time tactics game developed by Destructive Creations and available on Steam. I have had the opportunity to try out this title on PC, playing as characters who took part in the Polish resistance against Germany during late World War 2. I will be sharing my thoughts and opinions on the game with you.

A reflection on World War 2 and its effects on Poland.

The game does a solid job of creating the atmosphere and setting the theme. Narrating the story of post-WW1 free Poland’s first generation and their shattered dreams, the effects of war can be seen, giving the feeling of dire times that have passed and waiting ahead. Beautiful graphics paired with suitable sound design have made it easier to understand the motivation of characters in the game, gaining my attention from the very first moments. It’s worth noting that the subject of World War 2 and Poland itself was an interesting enough starting point for me, so this impression of the story can be different for everyone, as the interests of one can differ.

From the beginning of the game, it can be seen that the odds are heavily against our characters. Even in these tough times, the dialogue and storytelling show us that the characters we play and some we meet along the way are willing to do their best against their enemies without giving up, spicing it up with cutscenes in between chapters that are separate missions. I said “some” we meet along the way because there are also people who have lost hope, just looking to survive the war.

For me, it’s safe to say that one of the strong sides of this title is the atmosphere and story it created. It did a good job of getting me interested in what the story has to offer.

Isometric real-time tactics…

The game offers both stealth and loud approaches to the problems we face during the story. As it features an isometric real-time tactics gameplay, we also have access to some kind of planning mode, where we can pre-plan the actions for each character we control. The time is not completely frozen in this mode, though, but it’s flowing really slow so it shouldn’t be a problem for most of the time. We also have access to the combat mode, where we can control our players directly with a weapon in their hand, fighting off our enemies in real-time.

Remember about the possibility of going stealthy or loud? Well, I think the game prefers it more that we handle situations stealthily, because in my experience, if you don’t fight off the enemies actively after being noticed, they will throw very accurate hand grenades that result in an instant game over if you can’t run away from them. This can happen as simply as when just taking cover to reload your gun, they will not hesitate to use hand grenades.

Each character you will control has a unique ability that you can use throughout the game, so you will need to use the right skills at the right times, executing plans to get out of problematic situations. Doing so adds more depth to the gameplay, making it more fun.

Unfortunately, though, the planning mode did not work as how I thought it would most of the time. I’m not used to real-time tactics games and I haven’t played much of them, but whenever I tried the planning mode to execute a double takedown using my characters, they didn’t do their part in sync, it would be just as if I set the orders for each action in real-time. I had to do the time management myself in certain situations, as the actions taken would not be sensitive to a synced work.

These are tough times, sure, but did the game have to be this hard?

I must say that the game was very difficult in my experience despite playing in normal difficulty setting. The enemies would cover each other’s backs pretty well, making a stealth approach pretty hard to pull off. As for fighting our way through, the hand grenades I mentioned earlier caused me to fail way too many times. Sometimes my experience would turn into a quick saving and loading simulator, as I have found myself struggling with finding an opportunity to advance in the game.

As much as I wanted to see what was going to happen as I advanced further in the game, the difficulty of missions would lower my motivation to keep on going. Well, when you do manage to advance in the game using stealth options, a feeling of satisfaction hits. But this is very hard to pull off, due to the very far view distance of enemies and the reasons I have mentioned above. At the end of the day, in my opinion, the game could have been more balanced in this regard. This can be an opportunity for veteran real-time tactics gamers, however, as the difficulty of the levels did not seem impossible, it was just very hard.

I did encounter some bugs but they were nothing game-breaking. One of the bugs did cause me to lose time trying to figure out how to get out of a situation, though.

Summing it up

63 Days does a good job of attracting the player with its graphics and interesting story. The atmosphere matches the story and adds more to the gaming experience as well. However, some of its gameplay mechanics fall behind compared to what they could have been like. Considering its genre, if you do not have much of a history with real-time tactics games like me, you might want to go for the lowest difficulty setting the game offers should you decide to try it out.

If you are interested in the game, you can get it on Steam.

63 Days was reviewed using the Steam key provided by the developer and game.press.