The framerate can get a little hitchy at times with things like explosions or panning across the map when multiple things are going on, but nothing that really draws from the experience.
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The change from the dark, deep blue environments of Frozen Synapse on the PC to the stark white polished steel look of Frozen Synapse Prime is stunning, especially on a handheld. For aesthetics, Frozen Synapse Prime is a welcomed change in colour palette and visuals. Even putting a group of snipers up against a group of shotgunners will put both players at disadvantages. With that in mind, each class is fairly balanced. You can set how what soldiers your opponents will use, which hopefully everyone will be nice and mirror squads so everyone can be on the same page. When creating games, you can adjust things like map size, shape, whether or not enemy soldiers will have to be in line of sight of your soldiers to be visible to the player and turn limits. The game lets you know if you have any games waiting for your turn, allows you to find games, select quick match or just create a game and take your first turn in a randomly generated map with balanced squads of up to 4v4. It’s nice to be able to create a match, take your turn, and wait for an opponent to join and take their first one too.
Frozen Synapse Prime has that feature, which is a thing I don’t think I’ve seen on the Vita before. To compare the infrastructure to another game, think the way mobile games offer the ability to come back to the game to take your turn.
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The game offers multiplayer and offline skirmish options that actually have a nice twist. It’s that level of control you can have over your soldiers that isn’t left to a dice roll like other turn based games that gives Frozen Synapse Prime its own feel of complete control over every situation. You can save a guy who was about to return fire at a sniper by telling him to ignore any enemies he sees, duck behind cover, wait for the sniper’s shot to miss and run to safety while the sniper takes the time he needs to line up the shot. You can queue up multiple pathways with different actions, such as making your guy sweep by every room for enemies as he runs through a hall. While games like X-COM: Enemy Unknown simplify the concept of turn based combat to area of effects, cover dependency and dice rolls, Frozen Synapse Prime offers a wide variety of actions each soldier can do. While enemy patterns can be understood in missions where you are protecting an area or escorting a VIP, in a straight up kill all enemies in the area type-mission, it can feel a little less dynamic. You can study these patterns post-mission as whether you lost or won, can view a replay or the game seamlessly, allowing yourself to find where you messed up or the enemy got the upper hand. The difficulty of Frozen Synapse Prime is unforgiving but fair, however I did notice that enemy AI tends to follow the same pattern every retry.
If you make a mistake it can cost you one or all of your guys. This is where you’ll see your troops kick ass and take names, or have their names taken, and you guessed it, their asses kicked. The enemy AI/player then primes their turn and an outcome is shown. You set up your troop’s movements, actions or lack thereof and end your turn, also known as “Priming” your turn. You set up your troop’s movements, Frozen Synapse Prime’s gameplay solely bases itself on committing to a plan and watching it fold out. Frozen Synapse Prime’s gameplay solely bases itself on committing to a plan and watching it fold out.