63 Days Review

Top-down third-person Real Time Tactics games have been a small but beloved game niche. Titles such as Commandos and Desperados are games that many grew up on and loved. The genre hasn’t seen much shakeup or super popular games in a while but still retains a large following.

63 Days is a top-down third-person stealth-based real-time tactics strategy game reminiscent of Commandos. It was developed and produced by Destructive Creations, the fantastic developers who created successful and similar games such as Ancestors Legacy and the more notable War Mongrels.

63 Days mainly follows the struggle of the Polish resistance in WWII through the eyes of five distinct characters. After a short prologue, you find yourself living through months ensuing the retreat of the Germans and the rapidly approaching Soviets. 

Without spoiling too much, 63 Days starts off with two brothers, ‘Youngster’ & ‘Lynx’; the dynamic duo is introduced through a tutorial prologue and quickly becomes likable. The prologue teaches you the basics and gives you a rough idea of the rest of 63 Days.

63 Days is split into many chapters, each being a single mission. These missions contain very large areas and long levels with missions that have staggered progression. So far, the total number of these missions is 6, and throughout the campaign, you will come to control five characters in total. You will come across Heniu, Storm, and Helga, which are separate from the two brothers. 

Your characters, dubbed ‘Heroes’ start off with certain special abilities. Such as Youngster’s knife throw, Lynx’s knockout, and Helga’s healing. In 63 Days also gain certain abilities through the game, such as in the first chapter; Youngster can find German uniforms that let him walk freely through the map and talk to soldiers, provided they aren’t officers. Some of the characters also have abilities that let them distract guards.

Despite having only 6 missions, the levels themselves are increasingly complex, large, and incredibly sprawling, each easily having 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. The game also has multiple layers of replayability with collectibles and a set of challenges on a ‘challenge’ difficulty. These collectibles are pretty well-made and immersive and aren’t just there to pad out the game.

The gameplay loop in 63 Days involves you guiding the heroes through multiple levels of enemies, sneaking by them, and taking them out when necessary. Enemies have a detection range and a meter that fills up if you go into that range. You can’t always know which enemy is looking, but you have to select a certain enemy to see their current field of view. Additionally, elements throughout the map let you hide and avoid enemies.

Naturally, enemies can find dead bodies lying around. They will become alert, moving around the map and tossing grenades, so you’ll have to hide them well. Enemies usually have multiple allies looking at them or rotating patrols that make you think about your every move and plan what you will do next.

63 Days also gives you access to a planning mode, where you can issue your characters a single order and watch them do it simultaneously. This is a very useful tool as often you will need to sync-kill enemies and set up lengthy time-dependent plans. A nifty tooltip also lets you highlight interactable objects, giving you a clear idea of what’s around you.

In 63 Days, you can also directly control characters and move them around, shooting at enemies. Turning the stealth strategy game into a shooter. Your missions will also contain some side objectives that add even more layers of difficulty to the completionists out there. 

The missions throughout 63 Days are very varied, with buildings and towers adding much verticality and depth. The objectives themselves will never make you feel bored. While the missions take you for the long haul, you will have small breaks and areas that serve as dynamic safehouses.

The characters play off each other well, except for some similarities and stale interactions. Many of the abilities mentioned earlier are too similar or, at some points, redundant. You will get some interactable map elements that let you get some sync kills or environmental kills framed as ‘accidents.’ Despite the highlighting ability, it may be too late for you to spot these, so this is a nice reward for people who notice smaller details.

63 Days struggles to find a balance between its combat and stealth, with the former being hard to play off. Despite all the individual mechanics, it starts to become less desirable when put together. You will often find yourself brute-forcing your way through the game, not by shooting your way through, no. But rather by constantly save-scumming due to the nature of the levels and gameplay. Seriously, you have to do it so often that it becomes part of the gameplay.

Heaps of enemies in an area, unintuitive controls, input lag, and some of the worst pathfinding will often find you being detected and thrown into combat. While in combat, you’ll find that your characters suffer the most from input lag. In a single-player, you can only control one of them, which leaves the other in a precarious position since all the enemies are running around. 63 Days gives you access to a limited arsenal of weapons, most of which you scavenge from dead enemies, but don’t hold your breath on getting to use them.

The enemies in 63 Days have super-aim when detected, while you seemingly hit like stormtroopers. Added to that, they lob grenades near the exact area where you are located, so hiding is sometimes off the table. This results in you having to reload saves often, which is sometimes a feature of the genre, but here, it feels grueling.

Overall, this makes the combat elements extremely undesirable, as you will most likely just die repeatedly trying to make it work. Instead of smart workaround and creative combat and stealth stages, you are often left with having to figure out solutions via trial and error. 

It feels extremely strange having to select with a right click and move with a left click. And on a controller, it gets worse. Furthermore, a lot of the core controls cannot be changed at all, making things more frustrating.

Despite this, once you get the hang of the convoluted controls, find your momentum, and get used to the save-scumming, you might just start to get into the flow. This is the stage when the game starts to become enjoyable. You are rewarded for being creative, despite how hard the game makes that to achieve. The sync kills, and actions you set up aren’t premeditated, and you feel like you are doing those.

63 Days’ graphics are generally pretty good. The campaign has mixed cutscenes with pre-rendered stills and dynamic in-engine scenes with elements that are alive. The maps remain interesting, with many little details, and all the while, the nature of the game’s location isn’t left to the imagination or dumbed down. The various artworks feel incredibly real, not in the sense that they are photorealistic but rather in how immersive and storied they are.

The grittiness and dark history of the period are on full display, and the characters don’t pull any punches. The dark humor in the game only adds to the immersion. It is refreshing to see how funny the game and characters can be at times, with meta jokes about the main characters doing all the work.

The voice acting doesn’t leave too much to be desired, with some genuinely good scenes. The characters are all varied and unique, at least in their personalities, dialogue, and characteristics. The rest of the sound design adds to the immersion by creating a tense, dark atmosphere. The music is pretty generic, but it gets the job done. 

It is safe to say that 63 Days will definitely immerse you in the world and make you care for your rag-tag militia. The campaign is well-made, both in terms of the level designs and story, with the latter being quite the ride with its aforementioned long length.

It is a little sad that the visuals and atmosphere do a less-than-stellar job, the controls and mechanics fall a bit behind, and despite all its good sides, the game misses far too often, much like your characters in combat mode.

63 Days does have its moments, especially during the sync kills or when creative solutions are the way out. The relatively overused setting of WWII gets a fresh new outlook through the contributions of the Polish Resistance, making the game genuinely interesting if you can sit through it.

Despite all the flaws, 63 Days can be pretty enjoyable. Once you get settled in, you can find yourself encountering many points in the game where you actually feel like you’re a group of people finding creative ways to hurt their oppressors. Once you get used to the mind-bogglingly bad controls, save-scumming, and un-intuitiveness of the combat system, you might just start to have fun. The game suddenly becomes way better if you can get over all that.

Overall, the game has many flaws that can eventually be smoothed over. With a great foundation and brilliant atmosphere, 63 Days is an experience of ups and downs, for the better in its story and for the worse in its gameplay. Regardless of all that, this is definitely a game for fans of the genre.