Forgotten but Unbroken – The Revenge of Martin

World War II is always a great setting for turn-based tactical games. There have been a couple over the years, like the always excellent Silent Storm series. One thing this game got over Silent Storm, beyond just being a turn-based tactical game in a similar vein, is that Forgotten but Unbroken incorporates X-com-like base management and survival mechanics in the form of collecting resources. Sounds like a potentially intriguing game, in a backdrop that certainly fits that kind of gameplay. So, does it succeed?

We are partisans
While the story is mostly about some weird multi-nation partisan group fighting for the allied side, it’s also somewhat of a revenge story (if you manage to remember that it is). It starts with Martin Hupka and his wife getting dragged out into the streets by the Germans at the start of the war. Martin and his wife get separated, with his wife presumably executed by a firing squad. This has Martin wanting for blood, which makes him join some kind of partisan/commando group with American leadership to act revenge.

One day many days later, where you, the player, takes over, Martin is on the run after a botched mission. It turns out that a group he was supposed to meet was ambushed and murdered. Eventually, he makes a daring escape after shanking a couple of Germans. Martin returns to base to report what happened, and as it is, this camp is now compromised and must be dismantled. But the fight against the Germans is far from over for him. While the American leadership must relocate, Martin is being promoted to commander, ordered to build a new camp, with fighters from all over the world to continue the harassment of the German army.

From here on, Forgotten but Unbroken starts for real, with you being handed command to establish a base of operations. You will be hiring people to fight, build important buildings to meet your needs, and feed the men under your command. The story is not much more than you getting random radio-calls with missions to accomplish, and to survive until the end of the war. There is the revenge tale too, of course. But to be honest, it was totally forgotten about until the very end when you finally meet the German officer behind the incident in the beginning that changed Martin’s life.

It’s a mess
Story wise, I found it to be total flub. The historical aspect is kinda cool – how the game makes notes of important events during the war. Yet the story about Martin, and his so-called brothers in arms comes off as extremely awkward. Which is not helped by the overly dramatic and cheesy cutscenes. There is also the problem that all these characters are extremely undercooked, making it hard to care for any of them. This part is a total waste, and should probably not have been made, considering the nature of the game.

You see, these characters are important for the narration, so they can’t die. Let me remind you: in an X-com inspired tactical game… So, instead of losing a guy or two in a mission and continuing, you are met with a game over screen when one of these dudes die. You want them in your squad too, since they are pretty good, and some of them come leveled already. At least, the initial ones. To make it worse, you also get special missions where you are only allowed to use these characters, in which you might or might not have leveled up. I had one such guy. Total crap stats, since I decided not to use him in normal missions, but now suddenly, he must tag along. Talk about a hot mess. 

Everything regarding the narration feels meandering, and frankly weird. What are we even doing out there in the forest? Am I really of any importance for the war? In my playthrough, I mostly captured small depots, and raided a camp or two. I did the harder missions at first, but then I realized it’s actually a choice. After that realization, I constantly had to ask myself: for what reason? You are never told that you have to do anything. The only thing you miss out on are reputation points with either the soviets or the western allies. And you get plenty of points already by doing easy missions. There is a minimum of loot to find too, and in the end, you just have to survive until 1945. Overall, the structure of the game is an oddity. While it gives you freedom, which is nice, there is nothing to compel you to do anything beyond the necessary resource gathering. There is no doom clock, the only required missions you need to finish is Martin’s revenge tale. I sort of felt abandoned out there in the forest, left to my devices, with no connection to the war except for the occasional mission. And then it was all over. Talk about a strange experience.

Turn-based shooting
One thing, Forgotten but Unbroken does better than the story, is the tactical gameplay. However, that is not to say it’s particularly good. There are a couple of reasons for that. The big pink elephant in the room is the use of the modern abstracted NuXcom rules and mechanics. I don’t hate these rules, since I really like Xcom 2 myself, but I’m not entirely sure if it works for a setting that is supposed to be realistic. It just feels very gamey, and at times, it’s even hard to determine how the rules are supposed to work. Occasionally, when standing behind cover that is supposed to give you full line-of-sight immunity, and protect you from bullets, you still get hit – while you can’t target the enemy standing in the same kind of cover. 

A few of the other problems is that the damage is way too low, at least when it comes to your own men. Instead of the game relying on caliber and weapons, it’s entirely reliant on perks. You would think a round from Karabiner 98k would put a man down, but no, it’s not so. It takes three shots, which is a total immersion breaker. However, you can increase the damage by gaining certain perks. For example, one perk comes with the chance of instantly killing your opponent from behind regardless of his health. The whole game is built around concepts like this, and while I don’t think it’s bad per se, it just comes off as incredibly gamey for a setting that would have benefited from being a simulation instead.

This system also has the effect of making recruits absolutely worthless, since they don’t have any perks. Their aim will be terrible, and so will the damage. Giving a newbie a good weapon in the original X-com or Xenonauts still made him deadly. Since much of his capacity comes in the form of weapon damage. Because the damage is so low here, a recruit without perks has nothing going for him, even if he manages to score a lucky hit.

What it also does is turn the game into a pure numbers thing, with you immediately being able to tell when you are screwed. If the enemy ever comes at you with superior numbers, you are most likely dead. The reason for this is the once again abstracted rules for cover and bullets, instead of providing a good simulation, like Silent Storm. Having a big machine-gun is just a larger submachine-gun that does more damage to a single target in close combat, instead of a tool of suppression. There are no heads-shot, or crippling shots, depending on where you hit your victim. It’s only dependent on perks and the RNG damage range for the weapon in use. And you can forget about grenades, because these are as rare as finding diamonds on the battlefield. It makes the combat become very boring, and start to feel awfully inauthentic after a few skirmishes. Sure, it’s snappy, yet it never immersed me, or offered any cool true dynamic situations out of the combat. 

Stealth & morale
One way Forgotten but Unbroken tries to alleviate this game-design conundrum is having a morale system. This means that every shot thrown on either side, lowers the morale of the guy being targeted. When a soldier comes under enough fire, he will break and run from cover. This goes for both you and the enemy, and while this has some effect on wounding shots and misses, it does not matter much in the end. Many soldiers you face are elite soldiers that are immune to this effect, which nullifies this mechanic. However, I’m still glad it’s in, as it makes the battles somewhat unpredictable and fluid when you battle regular Wehrmacht troopers. 

The second way the game goes about to lessen the risk of “death-by-overwhelming-force” is by having every mission start in stealth. In this mode, you can sneak around to try to take out guards silently, if you are equipped with a knife. It works fairly well, but it comes with two major issues. You can’t stab diagonally for some reason. It’s actually surprising how often a guard ends up standing in such a way, where you can’t stab him – just for him to turn around the next round and spot you. The second problem is that there is no way to move the dead bodies. Having such a big focus on stealth, but not being able to move corpses is incredibly baffling to me. When a body is spotted, the alarm is promptly called, with no way of entering stealth again.

The base
Your base starts very small, with resources being very scarce. At first, I had no idea how to get any vital supplies, as the payout from missions was almost nil – in both resources and loot like weapons and ammo. The morale was dropping fast, but then it dawned on me that the secret for success is to spam radio-requests and ask for supplies from your allies. It has a cooldown, but no other penalty, so you can ask whenever you get the chance. And you should do so, as it’s the best way to get food, medicine, weapons, and ammo for your men.

As it works, though, you don’t get any building supplies from your allies. This you will have to raid for. As soon as you have raided your first supply station, you are more or less set. Forgotten but Unbroken gave me the impression that it was going to be a brutal ordeal to survive, but after the first couple of missions you are basically done, especially in combination with you being able to pick missions. You have no reason to go on the more difficult missions that will only act as a drain on your resources, unless you really enjoy the gameplay, of course. The depot raid missions I got and did were all ranked easy to medium. So it was the tasks I took on, and that was enough to survive and maintain a good reputation with my allies. This whole aspect tried to make surviving the harsh winters as a partisan group deeply involved, but looking back on it now, it felt unfinished, with it mostly ending up as a time-waster. A game that does this kind of gameplay better is Last Train Home.

The battlefield look
When it comes to the visuals, I find that the game looks pretty good and runs well too. Even the cutscenes have a certain flair, if you don’t count the awkward acting and story. Forgotten but Unbroken actually have some features that are missing from other similar games, like having the secondary weapon show up on the back of the soldier. It’s a very nice touch that is much appreciated from an immersion viewpoint. The game is not a super-looker in any way, but the graphics are clear & crisp, and it’s easy to tell what everything is, and where you can go on the battlefield. The combat animations are also adequate, and it even got ragdolls for death! So, absolutely nothing to complain about here.

However, I got to say, having every character showing up in their nation’s uniform looks a tad goofy when in combat. Thankfully, you can buy or steal other uniforms, to eventually form some kind of cohesive look for your men.

The voice acting is unfortunately as awkward as the acting in the cutscenes. It just comes off as clumsy and odd, not exactly great for a serious drama. This can be overlooked if you really enjoy the gameplay, since these story segments are a minor thing among all the missions you will be running. 

Conclusion
Forgotten but Unbroken could have been great, but I think the abstracted Xcom-like rules for gameplay, instead of going for a simulated approach really sabotaged it. Like I said, I enjoy the modern Xcom games, so I’m not entirely biased against this type of mechanics, but I felt in this title it just didn’t work. I was demoralized when I realized that the sniper alone was the best class above everyone else, since he had plenty of action-points, good perks, and above all could hit his targets. He did the same damage, as the soldier, or sapper, but the fact he could actually nail his marks from far out, made him automatically the best guy.

Now, this is not unusual in any tactics game, having the sniper taking accurate long-shots. But in combination with the shoddy line-of-sight, and the abstracted cover system – it made it incredibly hard to close-in on any targets with a submachine-gun dude and survive the trouble. Why even bother with anything else when one guy with a rifle is so above all other tactics? Trust me, I don’t want to be too harsh on the game, as I can tell a lot of passion went into it. Yet, in the end, I was just not having fun after the first few missions. I gave it my best, and while I found some enjoyment in the stealth system, the firefights didn’t do it for me. The same goes for the base-building – seeing as it is pretty bare bones, and does not add much to the general experience. The whole package just came across as wasted potential to me. Well, see you in the next WW2 game!

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas

– Review copy provided by developer –