Set 117 years after earth, The Red Solstice 2: Survivors is about the fight once everything has ended. Earth is destroyed but life still lingers and the player's goal is simple... Make it out alive and help humanity survive in this tactical top-down shooter for up to 6 players. Explore the infested Mars colony, fight the hordes of mutant creatures and contain the spreading Biomass.
The mix of a twin stick shooter with real-time strategy elements is fun and engaging. Missions are varied and the game play loop is satisfying but somewhat repetitive as you progress trying to complete each campaign. There is also co-op with up to three friends but as of writing this I didn’t get a chance to give that mode a try.
Red Solstice 2: Survivors Ultimate Edition is a content-rich package that unfortunately carries with it the problems of the past. The great underlying repetitiveness and the lack of clarity of the mechanics, combined with a really skimpy tactical compartment and a not-so-memorable storyline, lead the Ironward title to be recommended only and exclusively...
Red Solstice 2 is a game that requires at least another friend to deliver a decent experience. The strategic and tactical layers work, from a purely mechanical point of view, but everything is too focused on repetitive actions to keep the game fun when playing solo. The limited immersion does not help.
Red Solstice 2: Survivors is a good game, but one that needs work. I would love to see a Red Solstice 3 someday where Ironward leans even more heavily into squad equipment with refined resource management systems. At the end of the day, yes, that kind of just sounds like XCOM-but-a-shooter, but I can’t be the only person who thinks that’d be a good...
The Red Solstice 2: Survivors has that B-tier charm for better and for worse.
