Meridian: Squad 22 (PC) Second Opinion Review

Meridian: Squad 22 starts off by teaching everything needed to know about how to navigate the playing field. It's remarkably simple; just left click the avatar you want to control, and right click to position them elsewhere. All this simplicity belies the bigger issues, but for how much management needs to be done here, it's nice to see how simple it all is. Of course, this is just the basic controls of moving and dropping new squad members. Combat is hardly as simplistic.

Combat requires, as one might expect, the player be able to move around the field somewhat effortlessly with their entire squad. Most of the units largely do the same things, though it seems that certain robots are more prone to strength. The easiest way to move units around the screen in unison is to draw a box over all the units desired to be moved, then issue a group command. Otherwise, the left click, right click movement is entirely too cumbersome. Of course, there are hot keys, but they aren't used often enough, and leave a lot of the work to the mouse even when they are used.

All this could be forgiven if it weren't for how absolutely boring each mission is. For instance, tutorials aren't supposed to be the most fun you have in the game, but even the first mission is especially cumbersome. Almost nothing is learned about how to excel in the combat, and instead you learn about setting up the various buildings needed. This is compounded by the fact that certain key resources, like food, are underexplained and yet absolutely dire to your success. A popular indie philosophy has been that tutorials have gotten out of control, but Meridian: Squad 22 seems to have forgotten to teach even the most basic of things.

Of course, as long as the actual enemy interaction is fair, yet challenging, this could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it's not, either. Earlier fights are often overtly simple, but very quickly enemies murder you without too much effort. Of course, research could alleviate this, but failure is the greatest enemy of all. Losing all troops sends you all the way back to the beginning of the mission, unless the checkpoint is loaded from the main menu. It's not the most annoying thing in the world, but having the checkpoints at the load screen is just another step to jump back in where you left off.

That's really the biggest issue when playing Meridian: Squad 22. Sure, RTS games use cooldowns to make gamers really consider everything, but that's just not the endgame here. Everything is slow, cumbersome, and frankly boring. Still, Meridian: Squad 22 manages to be engaging enough to perhaps see it through, but frustration is rarely rewarded, and too much is left to simply figure out. The biggest fear is that once someone dies, or gets confused, they'll simply walk away and never return. This game just doesn't do enough to prevent that from happening.