With a backdrop of nineteen whatever, a hidden society of elites seeks to rule the world, powerful magic hidden in plain sight among stories that are thought to be just fiction, and a team of puckish rogues gathered by a reclusive magnate to prevent the destruction of the world as we know it. Take this setting and toss in XCOM-style turn-based gameplay, and you’ve got The Lamplighters League, a pulp novel love letter in the form of a strategy game. If all of that sounds good to you, The Lamplighters League just might be the next game for you to check out, though with some skepticism. While it’s an exciting concept, some glaring issues prevent this title from living up to its full potential.
The Lamplighters League sees you playing as a generous handful of mercenaries under the employ of wealthy recluse Locke, the last of the aforementioned Lamplighters League. These so-called Scoundrels are tasked with preventing a dark council of wealthy and influential villains known as the Banished Court from reaching the Tower of Babel, and the source of great power at the top. Unfortunately, the Banished Court has already found the Tower, and while its location initially eludes your employer, the Banished Court needs time to prepare, giving you the ripe opportunity for sabotage and espionage in particularly scoundrelly ways.
I love the story and setting of The Lamplighters League. If you’re unfamiliar with the term pulp novel and haven’t put it together yet, you can easily compare this setting to action-adventure movies (particularly Indiana Jones or The Mummy). The Lamplighters League captures the setting and feel of their inspiration incredibly well, with excellently designed levels and some great character designs, as well as capturing the overall tone and story beats of a film or novel set in the genre.
Despite that, the acting and writing do not live up to expectations for a superfan of the genre. The voice actors deliver their lines flat and emotionless, which can really take you out of the moment you hear them talking. This issue is made more glaring with dialogue that also falls a bit flat and feels too safe when it shouldn’t be, and dreadfully quippy.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a few favorite characters, however. While they could have performed better, you’re definitely still going to fall in love with members of the cast. One of my favorites happens to be day one DLC, but I won’t hold it against her.
The Lamplighters League wants you to play the game on the stealthy side. Unfortunately, the stealth mechanics in the game are dated at best and unintuitive at worst. An example of the dated side of the stealth would be the fact that the game uses Metal Gear Solid 1-style vision circles (or cones if you’re controlling the stealth-focussed characters.) The immersion-breaking experience of walking right in front of a guard that should obviously see you, or shooting a loud firearm near a group of enemies, and getting away with it because you’re outside of their vision cone is one you’ll be dealing with a lot in this game. I have also had moments where guards have seen me for a solid 3-5 seconds, standing just in front of them, and then forgotten because I stepped outside of their circle.
On the more unintuitive side of things, you can get caught simply because the game doesn’t want to work the way you would expect it to. From characters randomly standing up from behind cover, not crouching fast enough, or cover simply not working as intended (this also happens in some firefights), you’ll both be getting caught way too easily and not getting caught when you should during your missions.
Missions, as a side, are a great length for the game in my opinion, with each one taking place on a small but highly detailed map and taking about 30-40 minutes to complete, though some of this time is due to mechanics which artificially prolong encounters.
At its core, the turn-based combat gameplay of Lamplighters League is solid, if pretty basic. Once you start to unlock skill points for your characters ( a currency that can be used freely between all characters, so there’s no character-specific grinding ) and get more interesting abilities, the game really starts to open up. For me, this was about an hour into my playthrough, aka the fourth mission I was sent on. Unfortunately, the game heavily features a hit chance mechanic, which I am on record as loathing in my turn-based games. A reload mechanic, which takes a full action, is also present which further serves to slow down the time it takes to get through combat mechanics. If you failed at the real-time stealth segments like I did, you’ll be seeing a lot of these.
While not all characters are available from the start, you’re able to freely take your favorite 3 on missions, and again there is no grinding required for leveling characters up; They don’t need to be present for you to advance them. Some characters are certainly more powerful than others, like the so-called Gentleman Djinn who carried me through many missions with his innate ability to dodge most attacks. I noticed my bruisers, or melee class of characters went down frequently in fights, but to be honest I was probably using them incorrectly.
The Final Word
The Lamplighters League is a solid, if a bit underwhelming XCOM-like that is digestable to newcomers to the genre, if not totally fulfilling to veterans. While the game features a strong setting and aesthetic, somewhat lackluster voice acting, poor dialogue writing, and tired genre-specific mechanics hold it back from its full potential. The game is far from a pass, however, and if the premise really excites you, you just might find it more enjoyable than I did.
7
The Lamplighters League was reviewed on PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! The Lamplighters League is available on Steam, Xbox, and Epic Games.
