Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Nov 29, 2021

  Deadlock is a starship tactical combat simulator featuring Colonial and Cylon capital and support ships, fighter and support squadrons, and munitions true to Battlestar Galactica. The full game also features basic tutorials, a survival mode, and five campaigns that tell an interesting story with intriguing subplots. Some say that the game’s tactical combat is turn-based. That is not quite right. Players do not take turns, one player after the other. Rather, gameplay is simultaneous but divided into phases. First, while the action is paused, players issue detailed orders to their fleet. Next, the game goes live for 10 seconds and players watch as their ships carry out their orders! Then, again, the action is paused and players can issue new orders, etc. This allows players to carefully choreograph fleet maneuvers for maximum video replay presentation, which is awesome, not to mention tactical advantage. Some say that the tactical combat environment is three-dimensional. Strictly speaking this is true. However, gameplay limits maneuver of capital ships to changes in yaw (turning left and right), and changes in height and depth to ascent and descent without changes to pitch (tilting up and down). Capital ships are not able to roll. So, the environment is three-dimensional but gameplay for capital ships resembles something like submarine warfare with changes in heading and changes in depth. Nevertheless, this fits very well with TV presentations of Battlestar Galactica, and is much easier and quicker to manage tactically. Players can choose to play as commanders of Colonial or Cylon fleets in the Skirmish simulator. However, players must play the basic tutorials, survival mode, and campaigns from the Colonial perspective. The interesting story and intriguing subplots therein provide players with commanders that can level up and with subtle changes in setting and with motivation to engage in tactical combat. Still, the game is not an adventure game, but a starship tactical combat simulator at heart. Season One missions do provide players with an interesting strategic level perspective of Colonial worlds and fleets, including basic resource management of political, economic, military, and scientific assets, in addition to the ever-present tactical combat. The strategic perspective changes with Season Two to a more streamlined taskforce oriented perspective. In conclusion, Deadlock is a detailed, two-phase (issue orders phase, live action phase) starship tactical combat simulator with awesome starships, beautiful scenery, and enough story to keep you motivated to engage in tactical combat for a long time. The presentation of graphics, music, and sound is awesome, and really puts you in the mood for more Battlestar Galactica!
• gamedeal user

  Jan 8, 2023

  I love BSG so this game was a must get for me. The gameplay isn't too sophisticated for a Strategy Game neither is it too simplistic, there's a nice blend in between. KEY TIP for New Campaign Players: As soon as you can, build a strong secondary fleet to always travel alongside your primary Fleet - the Daidolos. This is because whenever you move the Daidolos across the space map, more often then not it will get attacked by a randomly generated Cylon fleet - which makes you HAVE to play out the fight which after a while gets REAL repetitive because it's the same 3/4 battles recycled again and again. Any secondary fleets you have however are given the option to AUTO-SIM any Cylon attacks with win/loss probabilities in the instance of a single click - by having an escort secondary fleet alongside the Daidolos, you can save so much time by 'skipping' compulsory fights as the game gives you the option to use your secondary fleet to AUTO-SIM the attackers instead.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 19, 2023

  This game has absolutely the most gorgeous space battles of any I have ever played. There is nothing quite like the sight of thousands of tracers flying ship-to-ship at range. I often find myself sitting around to watch the autocam replay after a battle because it's just so cool. The game is very faithful to the re-imagined series, and fills out the history and mythology of the BSG universe very well. The writing and dialogue sometimes feel a little janky, but if you like the story of Galactica you won't mind at all. I enjoyed every minute of the campaigns, and there are a lot of minutes to be had there! Every piece of content is worth purchasing except for maybe not the Modern Ships pack unless it's on a deep discount. It's only usable in Skirmish (custom single-player battle), multiplayer, and the Anabasis campaign DLC (which is super cool). The gameplay is outstanding. I'm not as fond of the strategic side as I am of the tactical, but it's not complicated and you can largely phone it in on anything but Admiral and Fleet Admiral difficulty. The strategic game gets better in the later campaigns as you no longer have a map to deal with, just story and resource missions. I found that to be way more fun than constantly dealing with random Cylon fleets and balancing Quorum status. That part of the game felt unfocused and got tedious before long. In fairness, I was playing it slow and building up my fleet, and I took things way too far building way more than I ultimately needed. Tip: you can probably get away with 5-10 fleets, don't go nuts as you'll be importing all of that extra stuff forward through a few campaigns, and the board gets a little messy and eventually you lose all of it anyway. Once you're fielding fleets of 7-8k fleet points, you're ready for anything, and it only takes a handful of those to actually fight battles. The tactical fights are the BEST I've ever seen. Every fight is so visually interesting, it's just an incredibly cool experience to watch it play out. The turn-based tactics are easy to grasp but offer a lot of room to learn and grow. You will find yourself into some pretty advanced battle plans in the late game when raiders come by the dozens. The fights do get a bit formulaic and they all seem to have the same or similar "phases" to them despite the starting positions relative to each other being randomized. After awhile it becomes: raider swarm, missiles, gunship charge, missiles, missile boat charge, missiles, then lastly chase down the baseships/carriers, but to me it never gets old. It's so fun to watch it play out, and there's enough variation in the relative intensity of the battles to keep them fresh. The game is most fun when you've unlocked everything and you can pick the fights you want to have, and I see myself replaying this many many times. If you love Battlestar Galactica, why haven't you played this yet? It is the most faithful video game/tv tie-in I think I have ever played. There are so many little references for the avid fan (the design of the Artemis battlestar will look familiar to anyone who's watched the 1978 series), but they give themselves room to tell the story of the First Cylon War and keep things interesting, even though we know how it ends.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 7, 2023

  I got really into BSG: Deadlock for a while, but eventually I got fed up with it. The basics of the tactical combat would be decent, except that the game hides a lot of important information from you. Mostly this is about arcs of fire and weapon effectiveness. You can see the arcs for your own ships, but the arcs don't show limits on firing upward or downward. Online guides will tell you to get below the enemy with some ships, because some of your ships can't fire downward, and some of theirs can't either, but there's no way to tell that in-game. There's no way to tell what enemy firing arcs are, so there's no way to know that a particular Cylon ship has almost no forward firepower. The information about your ships just says they have certain kinds of guns, not how many, or how much damage they are likely to do. Weapons have vague descriptions like "low" accuracy, and there's no way to know how much more accurate that is than "very low" accuracy. Some of this information is available online, but some, like real weapon effectiveness, is just not available anywhere. Tactical combat is still kind of fun, for a while. The problem is there's really not much else to the game, and you end up playing very similar tactical battles over and over again. After about the 20th combat with more or less the same ships on both sides it gets really tedious. That's the fault of the strategic game. There's just not much too it. Mostly it's about stationing fleets on top of worlds and parking them there. This raises the planet's loyalty. When it reaches "steadfast," you move the fleet to either another faltering world, or go Cylon hunting. Cylons are always popping up more or less at random, so it's a never ending game of whack-a-mole. The only other strategic decision you make is what ships to build. You can have up to 3 in construction at any time, but you're largely limited by your income, which is a function of planetary loyalty. Which is why your fleets spend a lot of time in garrisons, to guard your income. You do unlock ship types via story missions, but the progression is slow, so you'll fight a LOT of battles with the same roster. The theme is a mixed bag. The ships and combat feel very much like 2004 Battlestar Galactica, which is great if you're a fan. The writing and the voice acting is terrible and inappropriate. Everyone acts like petulant children rather than naval officers. I couldn't bring myself to finish a single campaign, let alone replay it, or try the campaigns provided with the DLC. I really can't recommend it.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 1, 2017

  Kinda rough around the edges now, needs some balancing. Here are a few points after a little play. AI strategy can be summed up in three words - "hack and run" see #6 below. As other have said, price is too high wait for a sale. Wait for the first few patches now, this is one of those games that needs a few patches. Also this game could use a sandbox campaign because there isnt a lot of replayablility. I see DLC in our futures... 1. As the campaign progresses, you have no idea how well you are doing and you have have no idea what the goal is (hint: maybe there isnt a goal). 2. Difficulty scales poorly. One mission you fight three ships then the next mission you fight six with another wave of two that come in because the AI decided you were doing too well (at least someone knows how well I am doing, see #1 above). 3. Some missions seem un-winable. The rescue a freighter comes to mind. Even with the fastest ships I have in turbo mode it is not possible to interecpt the enemy before they destroy the ship. Balance needed. 4. 7 ships per fleet max is just bad design (this is 2017 after all, try harder). It becomes painfully obvious when you will get to a point where your old ships are useless. Since you can not concentrate your bad ships, they are doomed to die and the player is forced to grind to that end. 5. There does not seem to be an estimation of the size/power of enemy fleets until you are there beside them. Considering there are many humans live on these worlds with ships flying around, you would think someone would give the defense forces a heads up. Edit: I found out how to see the enemy strength. Is it on the campaign map maybe displayed with the enemy fleet icon? NO. Is it visable when you click on the enemy fleet? NO. It only seems visable when you open the enemy fleet sub-menu. 6. Hacking is basically an omni-direction, long range, weapon used to prop-up the AI and give it a chance. If the AI was limited to firing arcs and special weapon types, it would be too easy. Now the AI knows to hack your ships and run. Even their mid sized ships run and scatter when there is a lot of hacking going on (hint: this is the main enemy strategy for the ENTIRE game, as far as I have played. Hack and run, the end). 7. The battle maps are pretty plain despite there being a mechanic for debris. Some of the maps have one of two asteroids, but most objects are on the edges of the map and therefore worthless (decoration). The game might actually have a tactical element if there were real decisions to make. 8. There is no way to skip the cut scenes or some of the talking scenes. It is maddening to wait for them to stop talking after you have read the message while they talk. This is also bad when you start a new campaign and have to replay the tutorial with sooo much talking... 9. Because of the lack of variety between fleet intercept missions, it looks like the designers paniced and used the only tool left in their tool box - varied start locations. But since the battlemaps are just big open fields and the fleets are ALWAYS at least 3 turns distant, the start locations seem boring. Saddest of all is that the start locations are not random, per se, the enemy fleet always starts on one of your flanks and at a significant height difference. Since the fleets are always so far apart, the fleet setup before the battle is kinda worthless (there is no reason to waste your time setting up). In short there are 4 general enemy fleet spawn points - left flank, high and low, and right flank, high and low. List of lost opportunities - 1. The game is all about using a small number of big ships, but individual ships are so unimportant and disposable. If you are going to play with the limited number of ships (as if they are important), give each ship - upgrades, individual officers, and ship exp. more to come.... List of bugs? 1. I forget the name of the mission (about the 6th mission in the story line), it starts by giving you a chance to get setup before the enemy fleet jump in (there is a marker)(in the mission they intent to attack some meeting). In this mission as you fly towards the marker where the enemy will jump in, the mission will end saying something like "All marks destroyed and the Cylon transmitter is down", but I never fired a shot or even saw an enemy. I think what triggers it is that I send my fighters ahead and they trigger the end?
• gamedeal user

  Sep 5, 2017

  I've only just started progressing through the campaign of this game, but I want to put my opinion down for people who are considering picking it up while it's new. Compared to games like Star Fleet Battles, this one is on the lighter end of the complexity scale. For my own part, I find it to be just about perfect: there are some nice wrinkles in the unit and weapon loadouts that you can mix with several tactical and manuver options to approach battles how you see fit. That being said, there isn't so much that you feel overwhelmed. I can't really say how this game would come across to someone who wasn't a fan of the shows, but as a BSG lover, this game is just great. The ships are mostly original to the game (since it takes place before the shows), but they follow the design styles of the Colonial and Cylon fleets perfectly. The weapons are cannons, missiles, and fightercraft and all of them look great. The muzzle flashes reflecting on your ship's hull are nice looking and the puffs of smoke being left behind as your ship moves are a cool touch. The game is played in simultaneous double-blind turns where you and your opponent both issue orders to all ships, stations, and fighter squadrons. When everyone is ready, the orders are played out simultaneously in a short real-time action scene. After the battle, you can watch a replay of the whole match with just the action scenes. These replays are a real treat for fans of Ronald D. Moore's BSG reboot, as the developers seem to have tried to emulate the camera movements and framing of the show's space battles. If you are a fan of the show, you'll recognize some of the shots - the close (almost hull-mounted) camera following fighters or the scene of battle that suddeny pans and zooms toward an exploding ship. There is also a strategic layer where you build ships, assign them to fleets, assign COs to the fleets, and move them around the map of the twelve colonies. If you have played the modern X-Com games, you might be familiar with one of the elements of this layer - you have to keep the governments of the 12 colonies happy or they'll leave the alliance and you'll take a hit to funding. I'm not sure yet just how screwed I will be if I mess up my strategy, but I can certainly feel the pressure of having X fires to put out and X-1 buckets of water. Story-wise, I'm only a short way into the campaign, but it is solid so far. You will see a lot of familiar names, as many of the BSG characters had parents or grandparents in the military during the first war. Two of the ones you meet right off the bat are an Admiral Lucinda Caine (mother or grandmother of the Pegasus CO I assume) and Helena Agathon (relative of Helo). Dr. Cottle also appears in a younger form. As of this writing, there is no DLC for the game, but I would love to shower this game's publisher with money. There are a fairly limited number of units (though they cover all the tactical bases nicely) and I would totally buy DLC that modified skirmish and multiplayer fleet lists by colony. You can already play the Cylons, by the way. If my overwhelmingly positive opinion of this game changes after putting more time into it, I'll certainly make note of it. However, if you don't see an addendum on this post, then assume everything I said held true and that I recomend this game to people looking for a great space tactics game with a light strategy layer, especially fans of the shows.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 9, 2017

  While BSG as a series features 3 'units': The Battlestar, the Viper and the Raptor, an actual strategy game needs more meat than that. There are a handful more units, such as a scout-type corvette and a missile cruiser, but there are far too few strategies and tactics made available by them to really call combat deep. There is really only one strategy: Literally stacking broadside warships, like the Adamant. Anything else is a waste of fleet space. The AI is predictable; they rush headlong at your forces, launch an initial volley, and then break and scatter, exposing their weak sides with few guns. Your corvettes can stay in their rear and tear them apart easily; your Adamants can take the first volley head-on, then turn and broadside without their flank armor being stripped by the first strike. Your vipers absolutely cream Cylon raiders, and for the most part, are just a slight annoyance of telling them to go do something rather than an integral part of a battle. Unfortunately, the relatively shallow combat suffers from some extremely crippling bugs. Ship movement doesn't account for collision detection prior to resolving the round of combat, which means that tight formations (Like is necessary with the only valid tactic, the full broadside fleet) can very easily result in ships ramming each other and exploding instantly. Worse, or perhaps not depending on your experience, is damage calculation. Your ships have 6 armor values, for different facing sides. Damage counts the side that your ship was initially on at the beginning of a battle; I've had ships lose 30-40 HP turning into an enemy and taking 90% of the fire head-on, because the game is still dealing damage to their rear flank which has no armor, since that's the side that was exposed at the start of the battle. Left and Right armor are virtually non-existant, with a ship going straight from taking Rear armor damage to Front armor damage with their flanks being completely unscathed. If this were X-COM, it would be like a character getting flanked on the enemy's turn, and then running into full cover and still dying because you BEGAN that turn exposed rather than ending it exposed - absolutely inexcusible in a squad strategy game, and absolutely inexcusible here. This not only screws up how combat actually resolves, it severely cripples what little potential maneuverable ships like the Manticore had, further relegating the game to nothing but massed Adamant broadsides, a battle you will repeat very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very often... and get tired of very quickly. Like many others, I can't recommend it in its current state. Not only does the central gameplay fall flat, it feels so unfinished and untested that it feels like a game which was pushed out the door instead of letting it fall into development hell, which does not inspire any confidence that it will progress beyond its release state. Unless you really, really love the BSG setting, wait until it's on sale for a really great price - and even then, think 3 or 4 times before you get it. Other games have done the same style of play, much better than this.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 20, 2017

  A surprisingly enjoyable game for a small studio working with a dead franchise! The WEGO system makes this game stand out from other space strategy games and it dovetails nicely with the XCOM-styled campaign on offer. That said, this isn't a AAA game and it shows in places, with a few balance tweaks still to be made and the odd technical flaw on display. However, the devs have already released a roadmap and patches are in the works, so they're committed to further support. I've not encountered anything that severely impacted my enjoyment of the game, anyway. In summary, a must for BSG fans. As a fan of the show, I can say they've chosen a brilliant system to maintain the show's feel while also offering compelling gameplay. The one main caveat I'd suggest is that it's priced a little high, but I made the decision to support the devs in this case - they probably need it more than any AAA studio trying to sponge up my spare change. So if you're not a Galactica fan, you may want to wait for the price to come down and for a few kinks to be ironed out. But even without the fanboy hook, this game still has something unique to offer in a genre where it's rubbing shoulders with established names like Sins of a Solar Empire, Battlefleet Gothic, Stellaris, and Endless Space 2. So say we all.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 28, 2017

  I don't know where to start. And I don't like that I can't give a thumbs up AND thumbs down. But this will be a long review. First, for a game billed as a strategy game, there is but one strategy. And that is to build enough ships to make seven ship fleets to protect each of the four quadrants of your map. This is not difficult with the exception that you play on the highest of three difficulty modes. Once you figure this out, this is where my biggest problems comes into play 1) This is not a strategic game. It's a reactive game because the Cylons always have the initiative. They will attack your fleet or your planets and you simply react to the attacks - the entire campaign, until the very end. 2) The game becomes repetitive and ultimately boring. The AI becomes predictable. AI will set up the enemy ships in one of three directions relative to you, left, right and forward. Elevation of these fleets are either slightly higher, lower or even with yours. The enemy fleets are cookie cutter fleets. 3) For a game with the namesake of the most famous Battlestar in existence, you don't need a Battlestar to complete the game. And as far as I'm concerned, a Battlestar slows your fleet down. 4) The ships: A) The Manticore corvette is pretty good for very early game, but it become weak and actually uses up a space in your fleet better utilized by another ship. B) The Adamant frigate will be your workhorse and fleets of seven Adamants can be used through the campaign to the end, thereby rendering the next three ships fairly useless. C) The Ranger missile cruiser is fairly useless because of the low hitting power of its missiles, even though it will fire every other turn. The battles are short enough that you will rarely get more than 3 or 4 salvos off. The AI will focus fire this ship. D) The Minotaur gunship is not a good ship. Like the Ranger, the AI seems to focus fire this ship. And this ship really needs to get fairly close to the enemy for it to really work. And it is slow. E) The Atlas carrier carries two squadrons of Vipers, your WWII equivalent fighters. While the Adamant carries one squadron of Vipers, a Battlestar carries two squadrons and your shipyard also carries two squadrons, I never saw the need to use the Atlas. F) The Battlestar. Well, you get a taste of this ship in the second or third mission you play, which is part of the tutorial. You won't see another Battlestar for quite some time thereafter. I find the namesake of the series lackluster. It has a missle launcher and carries two squadrons of Vipers. It also uses the unique concept of FlaK. This creates a FlaK field on either side or all around the ship that will simply shred anything that comes in contact with it...including your own Vipers, missiles or ships, so one must be careful when setting off your FlaK defenses. But, the Battlestar is low. You may know the old addage saying A fleet is only as fast as its slowest ship. This is true in this case. While its maneuverability is exceptional, like the Minotaur, it simply can't keep up with the rest of the fleet. And this, from a physics POV doesn't make a lot of sense when you factor out friction and most gravity and factor in humungous engines. The ship is not that powerful in weapons, other than its Vipers. The AI will focus fire it if it doesn't have another ship such as the Ranger or Minotaur to focus first. This ship, with its guns and firing arcs should lay waste in short order any Cylon ship smaller than their large carriers. Before I wrap this review up, I'm going to say that within the first 50 hours of play, I was bored with the game. There simply isn't anything in the game that would want to make you play for hours and hours and hours. There is nothing new to unlock once you have all the ships, special weapons and whatnot. The Resource missions are all the same. And in my opinion, the campaign was much to short. But you may ask..."Why did you play 250 hours if you were bored with it?" Well, Through that time I played with the three different difficulty settings. While did this, I kept wondering if anything different or special would pop up or unlock. Maybe a hidden mission, or a once per campaign ship or something like that. But no, the game is a straight through campaign. But do I recommend the game? I'm going to say Yes. And that's only because the Devs and Slitherine say there will be added content in the future. Is it worth $40? Well, I can go to the shooting range and blow through $40 worth of ammo (depending on the gun I take) within 3 minutes. Or I can go to 2 two hour movies with my family with popcorn and drinks for $40. So I leave the question of worth up to the individual reading this review. So have fun with this game and then shelve it to wait on further content.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 10, 2017

  This is a "meh" strategy game and a fantastic tactics game. Strategic Layer: The strategic layer (that is, the map of the 12 colonies that you play over for the campaign) is a little bland and clunky. It works pretty well when you only have a few fleets wandering around, but once you have a dozen or more, plus groups flying around to replace losses or rebalance fleets, it shows its limitations. It's extremely simple - defending the colonies from Cylons keeps them happy, and happy colonies keep paying you to defend them. The mobile construction yard that you build ships out of is a fun little conceit, but I found myself leaving it in one place after the first few missions of the campaign. Tactical Layer: The tactical layer is extremely fun, and is the game's strong point. It's enjoyable to play around with all of the different ships, manuver them, try to make the best out of the strength and weaknesses of each class. This, incidentally, is why I think if you're going to buy the game, you should buy the DLC. A couple of extra ship classes may not seem like a huge deal, but the different ship classes and how you can use them in tactical combat are really the "meat" of the game's content. A handful of extra tactical options for 5 bucks is well worth it, in my opinion, as this is where the game's fun lies. Each fleet is limited to seven ships, so there are no "throwaway" units - once your fleet is deployed for battle, each of your units is important and you have to get the most out of them. This is a refreshing change of pace, contrasting with so many strategy games that involve masses of fodder on both sides. In Deadlock, when you lose a ship in a battle, just a single ship, it often really is an "oh ****" moment. My only real gripe on the tactical side is that you can't roll ships - it's annoying that if one of your ships loses armor on a side, you have to turn it instead of rolling to present an undamaged aspect. Other/Concluding Throughts: The game's biggest weakness is a lack of replayability. Though I enjoyed it, I found myself with no desire to play the campaign again once I played through it once. Some additional campaign missions to extend the expereince could bring me back to it. I may play skirmish mode here and there in the future, but unless there is story DLC or a major campaign update I don't think I'm likely to put a ton more time into this game. Unfortunately, multiplayer seems dead. However if you can talk some friends into getting the game too, you can probably get some more play out of it buy squaring off against them in multiplayer. Still, it was a fun game, and by playing the campaign very slowly (I did tons of side missions and other battles, only doing a main mission infrequently) I got 23 hours out of it. Not bad for $40 of game plus $5 of DLC in my mind.