YMMV / Into the Breach

• Awesome Music:
  • "Region Secured", the island clear theme, is a mellow piece that comes as a relief after a tense corporate HQ battle.
  • Into the Breach, the theme for the final level, is a tense theme with a surprisingly sad undertone.
• Breather Level:
  • The Disposal Unit mission on Detritus Disposal. This mission gives you control of said Disposal Unit, a stationary unit which can launch acid anywhere on the map, instantly destroying anything on the targeted tile and all adjacent tiles. The mission balances this somewhat by giving you a larger number of Vek to deal with in the first turn, plus an objective to destroy all mountains on the map (they are always positioned such that it takes two turns to destroy them with the Disposal Unit). However, the Disposal Unit makes it trivially easy to completely wipe out the first wave of Vek no matter the difficulty, then you only need to manage the reinforcements for the next two turns while the Disposal Unit destroys the mountains, after which you can freely use the Disposal Unit to eradicate any Vek that you can't deal with yourself.
  • Armored Train missions introduced in the Advanced Edition. They work just like regular train defence missions, except the train has a level of damage reduction, allowing it to shrug off most regular Vek's attacks, and instead of getting damaged when it collides with something it instantly kills anything that happens to be standing on its path. This turns an Escort Mission into a Bodyguarding a Badass scenario, where you for the most part only need to worry about protecting the grid and to make sure not to accidentally leave your mechs on the tracks (as the train will kill those too), otherwise you can just kick back and enjoy the show.
  • Defending the Terraformer on RST tends to be relatively straightforward. While you do need to use the Terraformer in a different direction each turn to get one of the mission objectives, it will instantly level a six-square area in that direction - instantly killing everything in that area. Since you can pick the direction, this tends to mean that for the first couple of turns you can use it to wipe out whichever side has the most Vek in it, and if your team has a lot of enemy repositioning in it, you can shove Vek into the next area for removal to maximise its killing power. The area that it terraforms is also replaced with sand dune terrain, which offers plenty of opportunities to blind the Vek in it, especially if your Prime Mech has a beam weapon.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • All Vek are potentially a threat, but Scorpions are almost always a pain to deal with. Most Vek units must wait a turn before they can attack you, but webbing is a free action, so Scorpions can essentially "attack" you before your turn by restricting your move with webbing. If your squad hasn't got much mobility or the RNG didn't bless you with accessories such as boosters, it is quite easy to have a few scorpions spawn, simply web up two or more of your mechs and render you utterly helpless as half of the grid gets wiped next turn.
  • Alpha Leapers combine webbing with a heavy damage attack, high mobility and they don't suffer from poor health, the only weakness of the garden variety. This is mitigated somewhat by mech damage upgrades but they can be a nightmare to deal with.
  • Spiders on the other hand can completely overwhelm you by launching eggs into awkward to reach places. Since the Vek are most easily dealt with by reducing their numbers, having an enemy spawning them all over the place really doesn't help.
  • Advanced Edition adds Moths to the list of annoying enemies. They have an arching ranged attack that pushes its target and also pushes a Moth back, bumping it into whatever is behind them and dealing damage. Their AI loves to park them between two buildings whenever it can so they often hit two or three targets with one attack. They also have higher than average health even for their regular variants, so without upgrades you usually need more than one attack to kill them. All in all every time Moths show up things become palpably more hectic as their multiple simultaneous directions of attack can be very difficult to manage. Moths are unfair even to the Vek in that functionally Moths are a straight upgrade to a different Vek unit, Bouncer Bugs - Moths do exactly the same things as Bouncers and have the exact same stats, except they also fly and their attacks hit at range and go over obstacles instead of Bouncers' melee, and they have no drawbacks compared to Bouncers to compensate for these advantages.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Frozen Titans have a level of area denial and crowd control so potent that it trivializes many different types of objectives in the game. While the Mirror Mech is just a typical strong unit with a downside, the other two have the ability to regularly give themselves immunity while also fighting Vek, making them functionally immortal unless they get hit more than once a turn (and even then, you can have Bethany or Mafan pilot your Ice Mech, which also negates the self-freezing drawback). This ultimately makes them perfect for blocking Vek spawns on top of their pre-existing ability to prevent Vek from attacking, meaning once you gain an early lead on a map there's very little that can be done to make you lose said lead. They're also one of the squads where each unit can be self-sufficient at fighting Vek, unlike other squads where one mech is dedicated to setting up other units to deal damage.
  • Kazaaakpleth's innate 2-damage attack is much stronger than one might think when piloting mechs that lack a damaging weapons. The squads are balanced around a certain level of damage output and utility, so the additional damage can leave the Vek struggling to stay alive, much less threaten any civilian targets. This is especially true in the Blitzkrieg's Hook Mech, since its inbuilt armour covers for his inability to repair.
  • Abe Isamu piloting a mech that inflicts self damage, like the Zenith Guard's Charge Mech. His point of defense is already useful against Vek attacks, but it also nullifies any self damage that he would otherwise take from his own weapons. Because of this, he can ram Vek every turn without needing to repair himself, not to mention the body blocking potential his defense already provides normally.
  • The Advanced Edition's Technician skill can be ridiculous on self-damaging mechs or just ones that favour the front line. While the mech is still susceptible to high-damage hits from Alpha and Boss enemies, what amounts to a free repair action every turn, after fire but before enemy attacks, can be very powerful: it allows you to be much more casual about damage from your own weapons, removes a lot of the risk assessment when it comes to body-blocking a Firefly shot at grid buildings, and unlike defence, it works on any damage including bumps. A pilot with Technician can sit on a spawn point for the entire game without fear.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Diggers and especially the 4 HP Alpha Diggers attack in 4 directions and spawn 1 HP rock obstacles in all empty squares before they attack. If you rely on non-penetrating straight-fire weapons or melee their rocks can block them, plus it helps them sort-of resist forced movement unless the rocks are destroyed first.
  • Burrowers and especially Alpha Burrowers will be this if your team lacks high-damage weapons or relies on pushing. Not only can they threaten three squares, they are also immune to forced movement, and will retreat for the rest of the turn as soon as they take any damage and survives, including pushing or burn damage. This makes Alpha Burrowers take a long time to kill thanks to their 5 HP.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The game's premise of pilots in Humongous Mecha fighting insectoid Kaiju near large bodies of water, and the in-universe mechanic of time travel in order to defeat them, shows heavy inspiration from Pacific Rim and Edge of Tomorrow. Even the title itself refers to a major locale in Pacific Rim.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Bethany and Issac's backstories reveal they are both twins, but in every timeline in which one of them is born, the other twin dies in childbirth. The only way brother and sister can meet is for one to enter a timeline in which the other is living.
    • Isaac seems to also take more sorrow cake than Bethany since he had experienced the Vek's destruction of mankind on every timeline he landed. As a result, Isaac became more of The Eeyore to Beth's The Idealist since the latter had a more positive upbringing and never managed to travel more timelines than him.
  • There's something heartbreaking about seeing Camila say "I'm sorry, mother. I failed you again." when you get a game over with her in your squad.
  • Ralph Karlsson's devotion to his mission to save Earth is a mix of heroism and pure tearjerker material. Imagine watching the whole human race die countless times, fighting the same hated enemy for literally centuries...and failing every single time to save civilisation. Soul crushing. But he keeps doing it all again anyway, potentially forever. "Not this time, you Vek bastard." indeed.
  • The ending. The surviving members of your squad part for good for other timelines, as it's the only way they can escape from the exploding Renfield Bomb. They may have saved Earth in this timeline, but their work is never done as there are countless other timelines that need their help.
• That One Achievement:
  • There's several, but 'Flight Specialist' stands out: Beat the game with a custom squad consisting of three flying mechs. There are five flying mechs, and only one of them can directly damage the Vek. (Advanced Edition makes this a little easier by providing two more flying mechs with damaging weapons, plus the excellent Control Mech).
  • "Trick Shot" is a potentially hair-tearing achievement. It requires you to kill three enemies with a single shot from the Janus Cannon. Sounds simple? It's an achievement for the Frozen Titans, who have one weapon capable of moving Vek: the Janus Cannon. It's almost entirely luck based, either in finding a weapon that lets you soften up and reposition the Vek, or just having them move right into the perfect position. Although if you've got Kazaakpleth unlocked, his ability lets you soften Vek up and move them into position.
• That One Boss: While the basic Scorpion is one of the easier Vek to handle, the Leader is a whole nother beast. Not only does it web and attack all four adjacent tiles, it pushes them as well. Its AI is smart enough to use that to its advantage, and if you can't knock it away from buildings and kill it fast, it will trash your Grid in a hurry.
  • The Robot Leader is a pain in the neck if your party isn't outfitted to deal damage quickly, such as the Flame Behemoths. When it's damaged, it will put up a shield and try to repair itself; the repair can only be interrupted by immersion in water, and it restores the Robot Leader to full health, so any damage you inflict in the first turn needs to be fatal quickly or it will simply heal itself.
  • The Mosquito Leader who both smokes and webs its target before the attack, rendering your mech completely helpless, and unlike most other enemies and bosses whose attacks inflict fixed (if sometimes large) damage the Mosquito Leader's attack is an instant kill. So if your other mechs are too far away to bail out the Mosquito Leader's prey and unless it's piloted by Camilla Vera you can say goodbye to your mech, because on its own it can't escape.
• That One Level:
  • The train missions. The train only has 1 health point per car, takes up two grid spaces, and moves through the map once per turn. The size of the train makes it a huge target for the Vek, and navigating the map more difficult. Furthermore, anything in the way of the train will be destroyed (Vek or Mech), but will also damage the train. It is heavily up to luck whether you will be able to defend the train from being damaged or destroyed and successfully complete any other optional objects. And heaven forbid if it is a high threat map. The only saving grace is that you can freeze the train to both protect it and stop its movement without failing the mission.
  • Arguably also the Robot Island. It's quite common for the game to give you a bunch of robotic enemies attacking the civvies to deal with in addition to the Vek, and in some missions you will lose points for killing these robots too. This can lead to Nintendo Hard levels where you somehow have 3 mechs again 7 enemies by the second turn, all of whom are threatening utter destruction upon buildings all over the map.
  • Missions where the objective is to kill a large number of vek while also destroying two mountains. Most mountains must be damaged twice to destroy them, but killing the needed number of vek requires you spend almost every one of your moves on killing them. Few squads have the firepower to do both objectives within the turn limit.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: There is a surprising level of detail and intricacy in the setting thanks to Chris Avellone's contribution, particularly in the backstory for the pilots and their relationships to the corporate islands. All of which is essentially window dressing on an Excuse Plot with a Generic Doomsday Villain. To be fair, apparently the developers attempted to give the game more involved aspects like tech research, managing cities, multiple mech squads, and so on, but none of it worked very well, so the final game retained only the combat aspects.

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