The Lamplighters League Review (Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, & Xbox Cloud Gaming)

In its own unique way, The Lamplighters League sets out to create something special in the gaming world. The game infuses real-time stealth with turn-based combat – two genres that work surprisingly well here. Recently released Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew considered, though, that The Lamplighters League may have bitten more than it can chew on the real-time stealth tactics front. 

However, for what it lacks, including a shockingly buggy performance, the game makes up for it abundantly well, thanks to an excellently compelling pulp adventure romp designed to soothe gamers’ hearts and minds all the way through. For all intents and purposes, here’s The Lamplighters League review to help get you off the fence and land on the side where your heart pleases the most.

Pulpy to a Tee

The official Lamplighters League has been scorched off the face of the earth. Meanwhile, three houses have risen, each with unique, diabolical plans to take over the world. We don’t want that, and so “the best of the worst,” as The Lamplighters League puts it, are called upon to stop the houses from enacting their selfish agenda and potentially save the 1930s alternate world from impending doom.

There’s a neat story here, whimsical at times, yet maintaining a decent latch onto your nerve endings. They navigate through the plot with deliberate and studious actions, each performance reflecting a depth of understanding of their respective roles. The soundtrack seamlessly intertwines with the narrative, evoking the historically rich and adventurous orchestral tones reminiscent of iconic films such as “The Mummy” and “Indiana Jones,” thereby adding a spicy, exhilarating layer to the tales. And knitting it all together into an exciting globe-trotting 20-hour or so adventure across multiple locales all around the world.

Visually, the game looks divine – sometimes too perfect. Your team of scoundrels and misfits sneaks, steals, and shoots their way through moonlit cobbled streets. They weave in and out of tropical hideouts, arid deserts, vine-ridden temples, industrial complexes, snowy highlands, etc., all distinctly vibrant in their unique ways. However, the art style’s end result is a “too clean” canvas that barely gets dirt on its sleeve, even amid the chaotic shootouts and exploding oil rigs often highlighting the climax of missions.

Speaking of Missions

Your job is to hop from one mission to the next, each designed to slow down the three houses’ apocalyptic plans for Earth. There’s a doomsday clock that ticks closer to doom with each failed or skipped mission. The closer doomsday gets, the more tenacious enemy types show up. And when the clock strikes midnight (when time runs out, I mean), it’s game over.

Each mission has unique enemy types, depending on the villain archetype you’re currently fighting. It could be House Nicastro, aka squid worshippers sworn to resurrect their eldritch god. Or, House Strum, which wields Egyptian magic in the pursuit of obtaining immortality and controlling fiery mummies. Lastly, House Marteau is primed to enslave ghosts to exploit capitalism and use weird science for profit. Together, they form the Banished Court.

Missions vary from critical to non-critical missions, all taking place on a worldwide map. Some may randomize enemy placements and map designs, while others take a more heavy narrative approach with higher stakes and occult mayhem. You have side missions, too, also procedurally generated at times, that all pay off with upgrades and loot. 

These come in handy, especially when your doomsday clock dances too close to doom. Missions will grow more challenging. The pressure to make tough decisions will take their toll on you. Chills will run down the spine, especially when “game over” slapped onto the screen begins to linger a little too surreal. 

Decisions. Decisions.

In the long run, choosing missions carefully goes a long way to cultivating significant progress. However, with the missions often involving 30-minute short raids to 90-minute big heists and battles, your most crucial decision tends to come down to which agents to take on field missions. 

The Lamplighters League provides 10 agents to pick from, each having unique skills and abilities. They each fall into three classes: bruisers, saboteurs, and sneaks, who, in the grand scheme of things, can take down multiple targets, infiltrate inaccessible places, and advance through stages unseen, respectively. 

Then comes the planning and execution process, where you’ll often engage in freeform exploration, making maximum use of stealth to sneak past guards, and only engage in turn-based combat when you’re spotted. You can use all sorts of tactical stealth infiltration skills to get by unnoticed. For instance, you can pick locks, smash through walls, climb vines, launch oil rig explosions, and so on. 

Unfortunately, The Lamplighters League simply isn’t intricate and in-depth enough to come up with elaborate, diabolical, sneaky stealth tactics – certainly not nearly as clever as Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew’s level design. Enemy AI isn’t as fluid as one would hope, with your expectations for their behavior often unmet. It’s so easy to get spotted, thanks to aggressive enemy view cones. It wound up making the whole tip-toe strain fruitless and more of a tactical advantage for combat.

Combat is Where it Shines 

Thankfully, combat is where The Lamplighters League’s gameplay shines brightest. The sooner you engage in fights, the faster pacing and adrenaline flow begin to spike. All thanks to each character’s well-defined and in-depth customization. These seamlessly blend into a perfect symphony, switching between hiding, evading, attacking, and Recon Mode.

The turn-based combat isn’t XCOM, but it's something tangible that quickly grows on you as you slip nicely into a chaotic rhythm of raids and heists. You can pick up cards that drastically upscale a character’s wildly distinct skills. For instance, an upgrade could mean rewarding a previously melee sharpshooter with ranged damage that changes your approach to missions. 

Change does happen every so often – and it’s refreshingly good. It’s flexible enough to allow simultaneous attacks and an overlap of your teammates’ actions. You can use Recon Mode to chain combos, not just of individual characters but of the whole squad. Watching your intricate combat plans unfold is divine, especially when you integrate cooldowns perfectly.

It’s also grand that enemy types are plentiful and generously distributed. You can play an entire playthrough and still leave out more elemental monsters and sci-fi mercenaries you’re yet to fight against. Tie in the stress system that can apply to both parties. For yours, you may lose a soldier, which, with few squad mates, can leave you dangerously vulnerable to attack. But for enemies, it means instant kills without spending extra AP. Of course, making sure your team is well-rested and medicated goes a long way to stay alive.

Not There Yet

Unfortunately – I know, too soon – all the chaos tends to get in the way of a clear view of what’s happening. It’s funny because the same chaos is where the fun lies. Rigging puddles with electric charges or setting oil rigs ablaze and then taking advantage of its obscuring smoke can lead to pretty intense tactical scenarios. However, the camera angle can be awkward enough to obstruct obstacles from full view or show combat close-ups from obscured angles. Not to mention glitchy transitions from real-time to turn-based modes. 

Also, the missions tend to grow a tad too repetitive. It’s the kind of damage too simple and similar-level designs can cause. Being prone to backtracking certainly doesn’t help the situation. As well as, the levels lacking verticality would often force two-dimensional navigation of your surroundings. Some rampantly reported bugs have surfaced as well, from unstable frame rates to stuttering screens. The question is, is the good worth the bad?

Verdict

The Lamplighters League does get plenty of gameplay and design right. It’s hardly a wanky game anyone would be quick to throw in the trash bin. For starters, the game takes the bold step to synergize stealth tactics and turn-based action into one. Many have failed to do so or chose to focus on one over the other. As history has proven, bold steps can go either way. For The Lamplighters League, developer Harebrained Schemes end up taking two steps forward and one step back.

Plot-wise, The Lamplighters League does a decent job. Its acting and performance are top-notch, with distinct charismatic characters keeping you busy throughout your story-based playthroughs. Visually, the game uses a charming pulpy art style that dutifully remains a sight for sore eyes. The same goes for the turn-based combat half of the gameplay, which culminates in a beautiful synchrony of diverse and fluid action. 

But on the stealth tactics front, The Lamplighters League takes a massive nose dive. The level design is too simple to inspire clever maneuvers undetected. While there are a few environmental traps, they are hardly diverse enough to hold fast and steady throughout. When you consider the overall glitchy experience and obscure camera angles, The Lamplighters League‘s best efforts quickly tumble down the drain. However, all hope isn’t lost on this one. In fact, real-time tactics fanatics will have a blast, especially once the technical issues are ironed out.