1971 Project Helios

While the gameplay is solid, we came away more impressed with the art direction and sound design than expected. The lightly stylised, cel-shaded look works for 1971, with the organic environments looking especially nice. The sheer variety of locations is impressive, too, including an oil rig, airbase, canyon, and nomadic village. Meanwhile, the exploration music is absolutely beautiful, though the combat soundtrack gets a bit repetitive.

1971: Project Helios has a vision. Sadly, it is plagued with poor mechanics, lack of foresight, frustrating gameplay, and it ultimately falls short on executing its vision properly.

Neither within its genre nor within the current games 1971 Project Helios stands out. But still its combat, exploration and progression system serves as the basis for an interesting narrative that presents us with a post-war world of the Cold War where there are no countries, but factions within a universe with oracles, mutations, but more human than many with the same thematic. But Reco Technology got a little out of hand about the issue of programming errors with which the game came out. Errors often solvable by restarting battles or phases.

1971 Project Helios has an enjoyable plot to unravel, decent character development and challenging AI to defeat, but it's mired in murky and unclear visuals and repetitive gameplay. You're probably best off giving this one a miss.

1971: Project Helios is a video game that offers a first approach to the genre of the ideal strategy: its combat system is simple and effective, with enough variations to create diverse strategies that best suit the player's tastes.

1971 Project Helios takes tactics to a different level by forcing the player to act. Released on every major console, it is evident by the game’s end that it desires to be a continuing series. And while its a decent tactical strategy game, it’s also a bit boring because it fails to integrate its surprisingly in-depth characters and stories organically into the videogame itself. Still, the campaign was fun for what it was, and I do hope if a sequel happens, it’ll integrate more of its own story.

Unfortunately, I found it completely unappealing in every way, which isn’t great when it was surrounded by better games every time I turned on my system.

All in all, I found playing 1971 Project Helios an entertaining experience of inconsistent quality; it had moments of potential, but mostly this game strikes me as a rough diamond.

‎A fun experience, very technical and mathematical strategy by turns in combats that could tell us that we are facing the Spanish X-COM. But it's still a few steps away from becoming one.‎

No aspect of 1971 Project Helios can make it a worthwhile gaming experience. It's not too ugly and it doesn't crash too often, but if those are the only compliments a title can get, you're in deep trouble.