Cyber Knights: Flashpoint - XCOM/Invisible Inc/Cyberpunk 2077/Payday mashup

[jztemple2]

I decided to pick this up before the sale ended, even though it is still in early access. It is on sale for the next few hours.



This is a video of the start of the game, through selecting a character and a team, then the first of three parts of the tutorial mission. I decided to limit this video to this first part to keep down its size.

There is no commentary; the video moves along fairly quickly (again, to keep down the video size) but you can pause the video and check out what's happening on the screen.

[jztemple2]

This is the second part of the Cyber Knights Flashpoint tutorial. Again, there is no commentary, but you can pause the playback to read what's on the screen. This part introduces combat fundamentals.

[jztemple2]

This is the third and final part of the tutorial mission that introduces the gameplay of CKF. Again, there is no commentary but you can pause and read the screen.

[GreenGoo]

Don't forget to tell us what you think! That's what we're here for. We can get video anywhere.

[hepcat]

We pay you good money to help us make informed decisions on games, damn it!

[jztemple2]

Don't forget to tell us what you think! That's what we're here for. We can get video anywhere.

I wanted folks to see some of the gameplay to get a feel of what it is like. That mission was just to introduce how to move, sneak, shoot and do some other things. The second half of the tutorial (mission 1B) was an actual mission. I started making a video with commentary, but because I was learning the game there were several restarts of turns (which is part of the game system, you can restart a turn) and there was a lot of empty air as I sat thinking about what to do . So I stopped making the video.

I did finish that mission 1B and have just over two hours in the game. So far I'm happy with the structure and the gameplay, as they say it's a lot like XCOM and Cyberpunk 2077. I haven't gotten to the Invisible Inc type stuff yet. I have something going on in real life right now so I can't post more, but if you're on the fence about getting the game while it is still on sale, I think it's worth the plunge.

[jztemple2]

Well, I came here to post some more about the game before the sale was over, but sadly it must have ended at noon as it is back to full price . Nevertheless, She Who Must Be Obeyed has given me another twenty minutes of screen time before I rejoin her, so some more impressions.

I'll be talking about mission 1B, which has a better name but I don't remember it right now. The map is quite large compared to XCOM or even XCOM2, the following screenie shows only about a fifth of the whole map. This is an outdoor map, on a rooftop. There are other maps I've seen that are indoors as well.


You have a team of six with different specialties. In the image, you'll notice that several of the "knights" can be swapped out for others, but the replacement will have the same role (Hacker, Face, Soldier, etc).


You have your own Knight, which you create given it a backstory (like C2077) and attributes, etc. The screen below actually scrolls down quite a bit with a lot of options.


Here's a look at the controls and the save slots. Note the "Retry Turn" and "Restart Level" buttons.


There's also an in-game help system called the journal.


The information regarding the mission, plus info on changes during the mission, is communicated to you via dialog screens. It's pretty clever and immersive. The text in yellow is information for the player, in this case introducing the concept of Leverage.


There are loot boxes (or cabinets) on some maps. These provide tools and other items which can be useful in-mission or brought back to the safe house and stored.


Regarding the actual gameplay in mission 2A, on the hospital rooftop... well, I'm going to upload that partial video I made so you can see some gameplay with my commentary. It's rather rough but I think it gives a better idea of how the game plays than me describing it.

More later.

[GreenGoo]

I wanted folks to see some of the gameplay to get a feel of what it is like.

To be clear, I wasn't complaining. I guess I don't speak for everyone, but as for me, I'm much more interested in your thoughts on the game. I meant it as a compliment. So your followups are appreciated.

[hepcat]

jz's my gaming sherpa.

[jztemple2]

I wanted folks to see some of the gameplay to get a feel of what it is like.

To be clear, I wasn't complaining. I guess I don't speak for everyone, but as for me, I'm much more interested in your thoughts on the game. I meant it as a compliment. So your followups are appreciated.

No problem, I know you weren't complaining and I appreciate the compliment! Such responsibility...

jz's my gaming sherpa.

[jztemple2]

This is a *very rough* video with commentary of the second tutorial mission, the one on hospital rooftop. I'm providing commentary but since this is my first playthrough, I'm pausing a lot and talking to myself. It also isn't the full mission, I stopped recording part way through. But it does give an idea of the gameplay for those who are looking for some idea of how the game is played.

[Hrdina]

I've been playing Cyber Knights on-and-off over the past few months. I bought it in December. The Trese Brothers have made over 80 updates since then. The game is definitely Early Access, and they've been very communicative, and are sticking pretty close to their development roadmap. I've really enjoyed what I've seen so far, but don't want to get too deep before I start another new game after it's baked for a while.

For reference, I played countless hours of the original XCOM (aka UFO Enemy Unknown), liked the newer XCOM "OK" but didn't get far, and surprisingly bounced off Invisible, Inc after only a handful of hours.

They have a decent wiki here.

I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of their previous game, Star Traders: Frontiers. That was released in 2018 and still gets the occasional update with new content. If you like the idea of a strategy-heavy RPG about commanding a starship, you might like this one. I'm not particularly good at this game, but it's fun and I still play it.

[Dogstar]

I've also gotten a lot of mileage out of their previous game, Star Traders: Frontiers. That was released in 2018 and still gets the occasional update with new content. If you like the idea of a strategy-heavy RPG about commanding a starship, you might like this one. I'm not particularly good at this game, but it's fun and I still play it.

Just an enthusiastic endorsement of the Trese Brothers -- they don't stop working on improving their games. Star Traders got an absolute ton of updates and they listened to feedback along the way. It was ridiculous, but in the best of ways.

[jztemple2]

In the mission I'm currently playing, I've come across my first instance of matrix hacking . It is a big subsystem of the game, reminding me of the hacking in Invisible Inc. One significant different is that there is no timer rushing you through the hacking, but it is a complicated beastie. To give folks an idea of what hacking is like, I've linked in the hacking tutorial posted by the devs. It seems very intimidating, but I've done it now once actually in the game and it is doable.

[Hrdina]

Yeah, the first mission with hacking took me a few attempts.

That was before the tutorial was available, though.

[jztemple2]

I've now completed a couple more missions and have nine hours in overall. So I thought I'd share some observations and impressions...

My mention in the title of "XCOM meets Invisible Inc meets Cyberpunk 2077" misses one very important aspect of the game and I'm going to update it to include "Payday" because CKF is also a heist game. Your gang, for reasons that I won't spoil, are carrying out heists for various folks, or sometimes just for yourselves. As you develop your characters, you do so with the idea of making them better to carry out their roles they will need for a heist. Now sometimes your goals might include killing some enemy character, but so far I'm feeling like the game is centered around sneaking in, stealing something and then either sneaking out or shooting your way out.

The storylines in the game are very well developed and extensive. There is a main storyline that gives a background as to why your gang exists and why it is doing what it is doing. There are storylines for each character, both to explain where they came from and also giving context as to why certain things are going to happen to them or your whole gang. There are rival gangs, megacorporations, private military forces, doctors, and a whole list of contacts who do various things for the gang and against the gang. And each of those contacts have a whole backstory as well. For folks who like games with a lot of story to them, you'll really enjoy this.


This is a very deep game with regards to character background and development. For instance, here's "Harmless". The second image is the bottom of the center screen from the first image after I scrolled it down. The whole second image center below is her "Combat Stats and Summary of Buffs/Debuffs". Those aren't just modifiers, they might have an effect on what missions you get or maybe some favors you can call in.



Still talking about Harmless, here is her Class Training screen in the first image below. Those three diamond-ish looking things at the bottom, outlined in yellow, are her talents. The second image details each of the talents. Going back to the first screen, you can see that each talent has four smaller symbols, one on each side of the diamond. Those are modifiers to the talent. You can train and get just the basic talent, or you can use more training points and add those "buffs", modifiers to the talent. Finally you'll notice that the talent diamonds are connect to each other through smaller octagons. These are buffs to hit points or other attributes.



What this all adds up to is that each character can be finely tuned for whatever role you want them for. There are quite a number of different talents just in one class and it is possible to multi-class so you can add talents that you don't have in your specific class. You can even Respec, undo all the talent training and assign the points to different talents.

I'm stopping for now but I'll post some more observations and impressions at some point. Hopefully folks will post some questions or comments!

[Hrdina]

You have a team of six with different specialties. In the image, you'll notice that several of the "knights" can be swapped out for others, but the replacement will have the same role (Hacker, Face, Soldier, etc).

One very minor correction to this item from earlier:
Your character is the only Cyber Knight on your team. Being a CK basically means you have a very special cyber implant (a "Quantum Rider"). For lore reasons, the supply of these implants in the world is fixed, so Cyber Knights are Very Special People.

All the rest of the people on your team are mercs. They will also have implants, just not the Quantum Rider.

[jztemple2]

You have a team of six with different specialties. In the image, you'll notice that several of the "knights" can be swapped out for others, but the replacement will have the same role (Hacker, Face, Soldier, etc).

One very minor correction to this item from earlier:
Your character is the only Cyber Knight on your team. Being a CK basically means you have a very special cyber implant (a "Quantum Rider"). For lore reasons, the supply of these implants in the world is fixed, so Cyber Knights are Very Special People.

All the rest of the people on your team are mercs. They will also have implants, just not the Quantum Rider.

You're right, it took me some time to figure out that Cyber Knight was a class. The game really has a lot of depth and I have been avoiding spending a lot of time studying the wiki, instead I'm picking it up as I play.

I've completed two missions beyond the tutorials. I went to Discord to get a couple of questions answered but it was more of me just not understanding something. Hacking turns out to not be as difficult as I thought, a lot of what you need to know can be gained right from the hacking matrix screen. I'll probably do some more reading about it to get the nuances.

[Glycerine]

I picked this up during the sale and played through the tutorial. Very impressed so far, but I think I’m going to give it more time before I really try and get into it.

[jztemple2]

I did my first mission which was a pure hacking mission, no going around killing or sneaking past bad guys. I found the linked video below and the wiki article Ahab's Guide to Hacking to be a useful prep for this mission, or indeed hacking in general.



And just like they have been doing every few days since forever, the devs put out another update. This one was over 2GB and detailed in the news article Update #118: Bodyguards and VIPs

The New Boston streets have never been so dangerous - because your Knight and your mercs about to to get paid to go hunting. With Update #118, we're rolling out new proc-gen map, new proc-gen objective and new cybernetics screen with a ton of fixes and features that were previously missing, such as removing a cyber class you accidentally multi-classed.

We've hammered through a huge number of major milestones in June and July and we've got 2 more just slipping out of July into early August - Reactive Music and Hacking Tutorial are days away from landing. And now begins the late-summer content binge - let's do it!

Note the mention of a revised Hacking Tutorial. Oddly, I must have missed the current one in the game, so the video and the article linked above are still a good value.

There is a lot of cool stuff in the update, check it out.

[Hrdina]

Note the mention of a revised Hacking Tutorial. Oddly, I must have missed the current one in the game, so the video and the article linked above are still a good value.

I think the current one is the video you posted, and the revised tutorial will probably be another video, not in-game.

[jztemple2]

And just like they have been doing every few days since forever, the devs put out another update. This one was over 2GB and detailed in the news article Update #118: Bodyguards and VIPs

I haven't played this game since early August but I've been monitoring it through the Steam newsfeed. Today they released their Update #185 . These aren't trivial updates either, they are either fixing bugs, improving features or most often, adding new content. Since I'm not quite ready to join Indiana Jones on his latest adventure, I'm going to give this game some more time.

By the way, they have announced that they will be achieving full launch in Spring 2025.

Update: As of last month, the game is now fully Steam Deck verified.

[jztemple2]

Last significant discount before full release in Spring of 2025:

With the game entering it's home stretch of EA on our road to a spring 2025 release, we thought we should give wishlisters a heads up that this will be our last sale at 34%-off for quite a while.

The game has grown tremendously throughout EA and has an incredibly packed pipeline of content, final features, and launch polish coming in the new year. With over a hundred hours of playtime already available today, we think it's well worth the full price we've set for the game. Of course we all love a good Steam sale, so that's not to say you won't find be able to find Cyber Knights on sale any more; but after this sale we intend to keep it to a more modest discount up to and for some time after launch.

I know the EA journey is not for everyone, and while I do think that we offer one of the best versions of it (with a ton of opportunities for your feedback to directly shape the game), I wanted to at least make sure that those of you who have been waiting eagerly for the game to be fully ready -- but are also on a budget -- know that this is the last, best discount for a while.

But regardless of when you purchase or at what discount, please know my brother and I truly appreciate your support. Happy holidays!