I both like and hate Door Kickers 2. It’s a great strategy game… where I can’t beat the tutorial missions because it is hard as hell. You put a squad of men together and go raid compounds to kill terrorists and rescue hostages. It is pretty nifty and well put together. I can’t really fault it for that. What I can fault is the unbalanced difficulty. You see, the first Door Kickers was a bit more forgiving. I seem to remember you could make mistakes and not have to restart the entire mission, just redo the section over again. Here you don’t get that luxury. I think its best to show you a video of a raid that ended because I put a guy in the wrong place looking the wrong direction. Opps.
In the map above, there are two ways into the compound, the way I took, or the grated gate with ten dudes behind it on the other side. That way would require a flash bang and rushing in and praying. There’s two ways of play, active directing and planning. Planning is drawing paths and choose where to look and what to do at points. The problem with planning is when you have the dudes go through with it, your enemies could be anywhere. They’re not all that stupid. I find active directing a bit easier in Door Kickers 2 at points as you can change strategy on the fly.
Outside Gaming has an article that summarizes the difficulty of Door Kickers 2 as follows:
The game doesn’t pull punches. Mistakes are often punished harshly, but rarely do players feel the game is unfair. Failure usually comes down to a lapse in strategy, not random chance.
I’m not necessarily sure that’s true with Door Kickers 2. I’ve opened doors quietly and a dude is standing behind there. Sometimes, the dude isn’t there, why, who knows? But it is true mistakes are punished harshly, that I can agree on. In the end, Door Kickers 2 is pure tactical fun. Just remember that you can’t fail, or its back to the start. Good Luck! This gets a Your Mileage May Vary with an eight back-end score.
Overall: Door Kickers 2 is a great tactical game that is not for the faint of heart. Mistakes are punished, and punished harshly.
Verdict: YMMV
| Release Date | 2/10/25 |
| Cost | $24.99 |
| Publisher | Kill House Games |
P.S. I don’t review many strategy games, but try Unicorn Overlord.
Game received for free from the publisher.
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