aThe best place to start with Tactical Breach Wizards, a game that relies heavily on glimpses into the future, is a little further down the line. Let’s start with the fact that this special ops tour of magical mystery is the most important turn-based tactics game since the classic XCOM 2. Its blend of inventive, flexible puzzles and highly entertaining writing is enough to warrant active play on anyone’s console. But what makes the game worthy of Special Arcane Service is how boldly it critiques the murky morality of military-themed games.

In Tactical Breach Wizards you take command of a ragtag team of witch detectives, necromancers, time-manipulating wizards and druid hitmen and use your team’s diverse abilities to overcome escalating tactical siege scenarios. A typical level requires you to break into and enter a room, neutralize six enemies, seal a door to stop reinforcements, and reach a computer that will open a passage to the next room.

This is a simplified example of the format where you don’t have to worry about base management or higher layers of strategy. Instead, it focuses on creatively using magical powers to resolve scenarios as cleanly as possible. Jen, a freelance storm witch, casts lightning spells that can push people away without causing damage and knock out enemies by pushing them into objects or out of windows. Zan, a naval seer, can foresee events a second ahead, allowing him to roughly predict how his enemies will attack, but also to set up ambushes or give his teammates extra actions. Combining powers to maximize efficiency is a key tactic, for example, using Zan’s time boost ability to have Zan use his lightning power twice.

Each room you enter introduces a new ability, enemy, or idea that increases the challenge and your ability to face it. For example, you can recruit the necromancer Dessa to kill people and resurrect them to heal them, or place interdimensional portals in your walls to push through enemies and eliminate them quickly.

Tactical Breach Wizards wants to maximize the puzzle potential by having you move lots of small enemies around a room. But unlike XCOM, it doesn’t extend lateral thinking with brute force. Most scenarios are relatively easy to solve, as you can undo decisions you made on any given turn. However, each stage also has bonus objectives, such as completing a stage without taking any damage at all. Rather than punishing mistakes and killing your allies, Tactical Breach Wizards gently guides you towards excellence.

This more tolerant attitude is also reflected in the game’s themes. Tactical Breach Wizards is never a serious game – evidenced by objectives like “jump through the Pyromancer’s window” and the fact that Zan’s “assault rifle” is a machine gun frame with a wizard’s wand rather than a barrel – but it does treat its characters and the problems they face seriously. One of my favorite bits is the heartfelt exchange that happens every time the team gathers to breach another door. Not only is it a great joke, but the conversation that follows is also incredibly witty and offers great insight into each wizard’s inner life.

But the game’s most impressive trick is how it spins a truly intriguing spy thriller out of its ridiculous concept, while refusing to abide by the uncomfortable ethics of modern military games. The team is made up of rebels and outcasts rather than government-sanctioned wizards, and their enemies are enforcers of a religious dictatorship and people hired by private military companies (plus a traffic warlock called Steve). Even when facing these foes, the team only follows non-lethal rules of engagement. You might wonder how they can do this when people are constantly being kicked out of windows, and the answer is simple: they’re wizards.

This is a nearly perfectly balanced game, with nothing wasted. do not have A wicked ode to turn-based tactics, it embraces the genre’s creative puzzles while rejecting its worst excesses. In Tactical Breach Wizards you can see into the future, raise the dead and smash windows with a witch’s broomstick, but the most powerful magic of all is empathy.