63 Days REVIEW

Tactical third-person games with a top view create a unique gaming experience. They have won the hearts of many players thanks to products like Commandos and Desperados. For some time, this genre has been in the shadows, not receiving widespread recognition, but the situation has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. After the release of Desperados 3, a dozen similar projects were released, and today we will discuss one of them — the tactical game 63 Days from the Polish studio Destructive Creations.

The game tells about the struggle of the Polish resistance during World War II through the eyes of five different characters. After a short prologue, you will have to go through several months after the retreat of the Germans and the rapid advance of the Soviet troops.

The story in 63 Days begins with two brothers, Jr. and Lynx. This dynamic duo is introduced in the educational prologue and quickly arouse the sympathy of the player thanks to good jokes during dialogues, seasoned with a fair amount of cynicism.

63 Days is divided into separate missions, each of which presents a unique challenge. Huge levels with a leisurely passage and large territories include many tasks divided into thematic blocks. For example, in the first mission, the heroes need to get to a German airfield, then in the second mission they need to get to a specific hangar, from there to the runway (this is the third mission). There, turn off the searchlights to distract patrols, mine planes and leave the location with a fight (fourth and fifth missions).

Next, you will have to control five different characters during the remaining missions.

Despite the fact that there are only six missions, the levels themselves are becoming more complex and incredibly overgrown, each of which can take from 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. There will also be such tasks that you will have to complete several times if you want to collect all the achievements of the game.

The gameplay of 63 Days is that you guide the heroes through many levels with enemies, making your way past them and destroying them when necessary. Enemies have a detection range and a counter that fills up if you enter that range. The game system allows you to select a specific point on the location to find out which of the patrols sees it, and this saves you a lot of time when planning tasks.

Naturally, enemies can find corpses lying around. They will become vigilant, raise the alarm and start looking for the enemy. In general, the enemies behave much more logically and even smarter than in other similar games. Although a skill like ”attract by whistling” still makes a patrolman a dumb fool who goes to check on an obviously extraneous sound.

63 Days is struggling to find a balance between combat and stealth, and it is the former that she finds difficult to cope with. It is almost always better for you to complete a segment of the task in silence than to try to defeat the incoming enemies. But due to the peculiarities of the level and not always obvious actions, you often have to restart from the last save point. So don’t forget to save more often!

And in general, the opponents demonstrate surprisingly good sniper shooting skills even from a machine gun, but your characters often show a rather weak level of fire training. But you can pick up weapons from the bodies of enemies, and this is not often found in such games.

The graphics in 63 Days are generally pretty good, although sometimes it seems that the models lack clarity. The campaign includes mixed cut scenes with pre-rendered frames and dynamic scenes embedded in the engine.

The maps are interesting, with many small details, and at the same time the nature of the location of the game is perfectly visible in all directions and not obscured by impenetrable darkness, as sometimes happens in other games.

The black humor in the game only adds to the immersion. It’s nice to see how funny the game and the characters can be.

The voice acting is also not bad, there are really good scenes. All the characters are diverse, at least in their personalities, dialogues and characteristics. The rest of the sound design enhances the immersion, creating a tense, gloomy atmosphere. The music is ordinary, but it fulfills its task.

63 Days turned out to be a worthy representative of the genre of tactical games, and in some moments this game is played even better than the competition. But on the other hand, there are quite a few small jambs, like direct control, that blur the overall impression of the game.

But once you get the hang of it, you’ll start to enjoy the process. The game will suddenly become much better than it might seem at first glance.