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5 Lives Studios delivers a fantastic spiritual successor to the Syndicate series, set in a futuristic, dark and rainy cyberpunk city you’ll be controlling a squad of cybernetic agents in a corporate war

Satellite Reign (which you can buy via GOG for 26.89 Euro at the moment) is a real-time squad base game where you control four agents, much like in syndicate. It revolves around breaking into heavily guarded compounds to steal prototypes, after researching them you’ll be able to equip your agents with better gear to break into even bigger compounds to steal even more advanced prototypes, all of this to make your agents powerful enough so they’ll be able to take down the corporate overlord Steven Dengler and his company Dracogenics.

You can´t have a spiritual successor to Syndicate, without the “agent inventory/equipment” screen.

No handholding

There is a short tutorial, but after that you’re on your own in a large and intimidating city, you might find yourself saying What do I do? Where do I go? you’ll have to decide what missions to take first, what equipment to use and what strategy, the first thing you’ll want to do is complete the tutorial which includes rescuing a squad member, once you have your full squad try breaking into some of the small compounds and as you gain your first skill points, put them into Hacking and Hardwiring, they’ll things much easier for you going forward.

“Satellite Reign” are as close to a Syndicate remake as we will ever get.

Have a Plan B

And C, and D… Expect to make a lot of mistakes, especially at the beginning with the lack of skills, implants and gear. Plans will rarely go as planned if you intend to go stealth you will be spotted or if you plan to break into a compound by force there is a good chance your four man squad might find itself outnumbered. Be ready to change strategy and adapt to new situations constantly.

Don’t be fooled by the class system!

The game features four classes: Soldier, Support, Hacker and Infiltrator, but that is only the starting point for your agents, as they level up and as you acquire more technology, you can customize them to fill different roles, with the right Cloaking gear anyone can play the role of the infiltrator, or get a Proxy Hacker for one of your agents and they’ll be able to play the role of hacker as well, the option to equip any gear or implants will allow you to use your agents in many different ways.

Welcome to the cyberpunk world of “Satellite Reign”.

Fans asked for a pause feature, and 5 Lives listened

I think the tactical aspect of the game would have greatly benefited from a pause button, while the lack of pause does force you to think on your feet I’m not sure that is the way to go in squad based game where a mere missclick can cause your agents to leave their cover and become sitting ducks, recently, recently with patch 1.03 the studio improved the ability called Team Stims which give the game this slow mo effect, players will now have an option to have this skill fully unlocked from the start.

I really enjoyed the game from start to finish and I hope this is not the last we see of 5 Lives and Satellite Reign.

***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s) opinions.