Second Coming Demo

Aliens are usually imagined as menacing creatures that come to perform experiments on, or even worse, as actual monsters that roam the galaxy in search of new worlds to conquer and destroy. Others portray them as saviors and peaceful beings that have reached a level of sentience far above our own, which is why they find violence unnecessary. Whatever the case might be, an encounter would certainly be interesting to witness.

Second Coming is a turn-based tactics game in which you get to be a part of a very interesting story, one that aims to challenge your beliefs and really make you think about man’s place in the universe. However, you also get a healthy dose of tactics while you’re at it, so the gameplay is definitely not a letdown, especially if you are a fan of classics like XCOM and similar games.

As for the story, it all starts when an alien spaceship lands on Earth, yet instead of starting to bomb everything in sight, it announces that it’s the Messiah returning to redeem everyone. Naturally, a team of world leaders assembles and decide to send a special ops squad on the spaceship in order to investigate further. It turns out that the aliens have other plans and intentions, which is why you must act in a decisive way to settle the fate of everyone back home.

The game is not far from the classic XCOM when it comes to gameplay mechanics, which means that everything takes place in turns, including the movement throughout the missions. Each soldier gets his turn to make a few steps, and it’s also possible to interact with objects along the way in order to investigate them. As for the combat, it’s tougher than it looks at first, but don’t expect anything too complex either.

The intriguing fact about Second Coming is that you are allowed to make certain story-related decisions along the way, such as to choose peaceful resolution over combat every now and again. In fact, you can try to communicate with every alien you stumble upon, but most of them turn hostile on sight, not to mention the fact that you cannot comprehend their language.

In the end, Second Coming’s greatest quality is its originality in regards to story and gameplay, although the latter is just a combination of multiple genres. Even so, it’s nice to see something different for a change, even if the execution is rather basic.