Four years ago, a domestic game studio TPP Studio with only two people quietly launched a doomsday-themed rogue-like survival game called “Homecoming” on the Steam platform. Although it was not very popular, it still left a certain reputation among rogue-like players.
Four years later, it’s still the same two people and the original TPP Studio. This time, they bring the orthodox sequel of the game series, “Homecoming 2”.
Compared to its predecessor, “Homecoming 2” has greatly expanded its plot, combat, system, and gameplay, making it more like a “ship new version of the game”. However, due to some immature flaws and numerical issues, the experience of “Homecoming 2” can be described as “half heaven, half hell”.
Unscientific “Super Guerrilla Team”
The story of this work takes the timeline back to several years ago in the first generation, still in the familiar Scalia region, still on a long journey home. However, this time we play a female college student (25 years old) who returned to China to join the resistance organization – Bainani.
The comic-style plot opening of this work is very distinctive
At the beginning of the story, Scalia, who had been under the rule of the dictator for many years, finally split into two parts of the region controlled by the government army and the resistance organization in the war. The female protagonist, who originally planned to join the resistance organization, unexpectedly landed behind the government army. Fortunately, with the help of the “Overlord Country” agent Chris, she luckily escaped (Speaking of the three words “Overlord Country” and the operation of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, well, it always feels like implying something).
Together with the tribal warrior Halisi encountered on the road, the three of them formed a guerrilla team behind enemy lines and lived a happy life of picking up garbage and catching teammates (heavy fog).
By the way, if you have played the previous work, you will find that the female lead of this work, Bai Nani, is very likely to be the final boss of the first generation (with the same name, gender, and hair color). Thinking that no matter how dominant she was in “Homecoming 2”, she could not escape the “timeline constraints” of the previous work, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad.
When I first saw the words “guerrilla behind enemy lines”, to be honest, I was “ignited”. Lyrics like “millet plus rifles” and “no guns, no cannons, the enemy made them for us” instantly lingered in my mind. But when I actually started the game, I realized that this guerrilla team was very “unscientific”.
Warning, this work includes but is not limited to the following content:
hearse drift “-
The government army’s advanced unmanned driving technology
Tribal witch doctor holding a machine gun–
This thing is much better than chanting spells.jpg
Sunset Red Gun Technique –
High EQ: Have you considered joining the Imperial Stormtroopers?
Laoba Cuisine – –
We still don’t know what the + 3 supplies found in the toilet that day were
How to build such a “distinctive” guerrilla team, gradually strengthen their own strength and ultimately overthrow the rule of the government army, is our main task. To achieve this goal, the first thing you need to understand is the game system of ” Returning Home on a Different Road 2″.
Cultivation system – ideals are full, reality is skinny
Unlike the previous “life professions”, most of the professions in this game are related to combat elements. In “Homecoming 2”, in order to adapt to the changes in the combat system, the game has designed a new career system for players, with a total of 36 career choices, different professions and different bonus schools, which can be said to be dazzling.
Many professions need to be unlocked
At the same time, the cultivation system will also be supplemented with corresponding character attribute points, which can be obtained by upgrading. There are five types: strength, agility, intelligence, physique, and willpower. Each profession has its own advantageous attributes, such as increasing intelligence can increase the healing amount of the wet nurse. These attributes can not only play a role in battles, but also increase the success rate of exploration events in peacetime.
The attribute elements of ” Homecoming 2 ” can be said to be distributed in all aspects of the game. For example, in the pinching interface, if you set it as an 80kg “tank” (punch warning), it will reduce the character’s agility attribute and increase strength and physical attributes. Strictly speaking, this is the first game that made me give up the loli body type (×).
Wow, Golden Legend
At the same time, the equipment in the game is also divided into different qualities (traditional skills). The higher the quality, the stronger the performance, and it will also have better “attribute entries”. If you want to better pass the novice exploration period, it is essential to brush out higher quality weapons.
Corresponding to character development is the base construction system. After each map exploration, players can return to the base for rest and upgrade corresponding buildings by consuming resources such as metal and wood to obtain higher benefits. For example, upgrading the command center can increase the number of combatants online, and upgrading the medical room can treat team members’ injuries.
With such rich cultivation elements, does it make garbage players sound “restless” and want to start building infrastructure immediately? At first, I thought so too, but later I realized that “ideals are full, reality is skinny”.
Whether it’s upgrading the “character attributes” in combat or strengthening the “base construction” by collecting resources, they cannot avoid the most crucial core – map exploration (mainly through the rogue-like mode, which we will explain later). However, personally, I think there are some numerical problems in the early and middle stages of the game, or it is somewhat hardcore.
The most headache-inducing thing is the “injury element” in the combat system. Perhaps to show the cruelty of war, when the character fights in the map exploration, the “injury” will be continuously stacked according to the degree of injury. The “injury” is divided into three categories: infection, trauma, and fracture. When any one of them reaches 100%, the character will die on the spot. If you are the protagonist, then your file will have to be reopened.
As players, we naturally need to avoid this situation. (Based on the “easiest difficulty”) The game arranges the following means for us –
The most direct way is to take drugs, which can directly reduce the degree of injury. However, as the battle becomes more intense, you will find that the drugs will “use less and less”. If you are unlucky, you will find that the drugs obtained after each exploration cannot even withstand the increased injuries in the battle. At that time, my mentality was collapsing.
2. Putting people into the medical room of the base is the “most common way” without the need for props. However, the actual operation is also very awkward because the medical room level is low in the early stage, and the treatment takes a lot of time; coupled with insufficient manpower, if the protagonist is put in for treatment, they cannot explore the map, and the entire team is “idle at home”, directly affecting the game rhythm.
What’s even worse is that even if I’m idle, my teammates will still eat the supplies they should eat, and the minimum difficulty level of the map will still increase over time. During the difficult years when “the landlord’s family had no surplus food”, I often felt that I was not raising a strong and strong guerrilla team, but clearly raising a few pigs (×).
3. Three shifts of combatants. Since “Homecoming 2” can capture NPCs in battles or events and “persuade” them to become teammates, why not catch a few more and take turns lying in the infirmary? Unfortunately, this method is also difficult to achieve in the early stages.
Not to mention that the maximum number of team members increases with the level of the command center, there are only 4 or 5 people in the team at the beginning. Even the task of catching people in battle itself is somewhat difficult – in order to increase the probability of catching people, it is necessary to activate the “attempt to capture” state in the battle, but this will add a serious debuff to the character (reducing output and armor), resulting in a sudden increase in combat risk. Even so, the result still depends on luck, whether or not you can successfully catch people depends entirely on luck.
The above points ultimately lead to the ideal guerrilla team: “Go out for a trip, harvest a lot, and return to the base to build happily”; in reality, the guerrilla team: “The medicine is scarce, the more they fight, the poorer they become, and they eventually die of serious injuries without treatment”.
The precision instrument originally built by the cultivation and construction system collapsed simply due to the gear of “rapid growth of injury values”. Of course, in the later stage of the game, these problems can be alleviated with the strengthening of base facilities, but how to make players persist until the later stage is the problem that the game needs to consider at present.
The solution I came up with in the end, besides using a “perfect weapon” to sneak into Europe, was to use the “revolutionary legacy” points obtained by eliminating files to enhance the initial ability and resources of the next game, in order to entrust hope to my future self.
Come on, next week’s goal is me
Wow, this is not what ” returning home on a different path”, this is clearly “RE guerrilla life from scratch”.
Rogue-like elements – rich but lacking a bit of “flavor”.
Since the previous work, the rogue-like elements have been the core playpoint of the series. This work also greatly expands the rogue-like elements of the game.
When we zoom in to the maximum viewpoint, we will find an exploration mode map with completely randomly generated resource quantity, enemy distribution, and terrain (except for the Main Task). Players can freely move around these map points through trucks and choose their own invasion plan at will.
On the road, you will randomly encounter enemy vehicles, and triggering vehicle battles is also one of the new features added to this game. You can upgrade truck components before the battle, enhance attributes such as health and firepower, and issue attack and defense commands in specific battles.
During the march, there will also be random events similar to “P Company’s Four Moes”
Pull the viewpoint down to each specific exploration map. Players can obtain resources by clicking on the icons distributed on the map with the mouse, and the results of exploring resources are also random. When clicking on the options, the event probability will be determined based on the player’s character attributes (different exploration actions correspond to different character attributes), and a “DND running group “-like judgment bar will pop up.
The judgment bars from left to right are respectively dark green (big success), light green (success), light red (failure), and deep red (big failure). As the name suggests, the better the judgment, the more resources can be obtained; the worse the judgment, the less resources can be obtained, and even the character may be injured.
The reporter who runs very fast (×)
What’s even more abundant is that “Homecoming 2” provides players with several times more side storylines to choose from than the previous game, whether it’s the connection between the guerrilla and the revolutionary army, or the story of each character along the way, or even encountering mysterious faith choices like temples. A series of random events and unfolds are spread out on a random map waiting for players to discover and choose.
Although the rogue-like aspect of “Homecoming 2” can be said to be “rich” to the extreme, (perhaps my expectations are too high), it should be noted that the game has not achieved the best in terms of rogue-like “depth”.
The complex choices are actually nothing more than numerical values at the end. In summary, it is the corresponding character values for equipment and cultivation, and the corresponding resource quantity/revolutionary army reputation for side events, lacking higher-dimensional appearances.
For example, in a random event – due to poor harvests caused by war, farmers wanted to waive this year’s land rent, but the landlord disagreed, stating that it was not their own problem and they should not be responsible for it. In the situation where everyone was “right”, the village chief handed over the trial power to the resistance organization.
And here the game gives us options A: rent-free, biased towards farmers; B, pay half and be a mediator; C, pay all, biased towards landlords; D, stop arguing, I want them all.jpg.
When I saw the option D, I was a little excited (not), so I chose option D without hesitation, looking forward to how the game would develop.
But the result was only that I got 152 yuan, the revolutionary morale dropped by 1 point, and the NPCs complained a few words. Neither did my teammates question or oppose this obviously immoral option, nor did I see the development of the “grass fork mass siege guerrilla” that I, a bystander, wanted to see. To be honest, I was a little disappointed.
These “numerical” random events and side missions may bring freshness to players at the beginning, but over time, they will become homogeneous “brush brush brush”.
Even in other aspects, there is some conflict between the character development and rogue-like elements in this work. In the plot, the female protagonist has a “saint-like” personality trait, such as actively rescuing children affected by war, but in random events, she becomes a “good person who does not take a single stitch from the masses”. Over time, it is inevitable that players will feel a sense of disconnection towards the female protagonist’s image.
Summary
For the TPP Studio with only two people, first of all, I admire their ability to incorporate so many game elements and rogue-like gameplay into “Homecoming 2”, expanding its content to several times that of the previous work.
But with the expansion of game content, what comes with it is not just “gameplay”, but also more “optimization problems”, “numerical problems”, “homogenization problems”…
Of course, I believe TPP Studio is also well aware of this, which is why “Homecoming 2” is currently in “early access mode”.
Although there are indeed some “anti- human ” operations in some system designs, such as “props wearing on the body will also occupy the warehouse grid”, but for the still in the EA stage of “Homecoming 2”, these shallow BUG and optimization problems can still be feedback and correction.
In fact, the official quickly launched an optimization patch for the warehouse grid problem, and its attitude is still commendable
Therefore, what we value more is the deep-seated “foundation content” such as the development system and rogue-like elements of the game kernel. It has all of these, and the quantity is not small. For its positioning as a domestic independent game (less than 50), it can also be considered as “promising in the future”.
If you want to support domestic products or are interested in the development system and rogue-like gameplay of this game, it is recommended to wait for subsequent optimization updates. The gaming experience will definitely be better then.
