TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children

Introduction

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is what happens when a six-person Korean studio sets out to fuse XCOM's tense, fair-fight grid tactics with Final Fantasy Tactics' deep character-building systems, then keeps supporting the result for years after launch. Developed and self-published by Dandylion, it released 23 April 2020 as "Season 1" of an intentionally longer story, and now sits at NZ$35.99 with 3,453 English-language Steam reviews — Very Positive at roughly 93%. This is a review sample this review found genuinely unusual to read through: reviewers with 1,600, 4,500, even over 9,000 hours logged, describing a game they're still actively engaged with years after purchase. This review reads a substantial share of both the negative and positive samples to understand what earns that kind of long-term devotion, and what keeps it from an even higher score.

Depth that rewards thousands of hours, not just dozens

The clearest throughline in this review's positive sample is the Mastery system, and what makes the praise credible is who's giving it. A reviewer with 80,732 minutes logged — over 1,345 hours — described balancing "physical vs. ESP damage, hit chance, critical hit chance, speed" across builds that "play and feel very different to each other, even for the same class." That's not early-game enthusiasm; that's a veteran still finding the system worth engaging with deep into their relationship with the game. Content volume backs this up structurally: one reviewer reported over 100 hours from the main campaign's 47 missions across seven chapters alone, without touching any of the paid DLC content packs — an exceptional ratio for a NZ$35.99 asking price. Combat itself draws consistent, specific comparison to XCOM, with several reviewers praising fair enemy design specifically: enemies operate under the same tactical systems the player does, rather than receiving the scripted advantages that undercut the tension in weaker entries in the genre.

A developer relationship this review found no real precedent for

The single most unusual theme in this review's entire sample isn't about the game's mechanics at all — it's about the studio behind it. Multiple reviewers independently describe Dandylion personally responding to nearly every review posted, and specifically note these aren't templated, copy-pasted replies. One reviewer, with a mere 8 minutes of playtime logged at time of review, wrote: "I have never seen, ever, a review section in which the developer has responded to each and every review. On top of that, they aren't copy pasted responses." Another, with far deeper investment at over 4,164 hours logged, credited that "constant discourse between the players and the developers" with fostering real goodwill within the community. For a genre where player-developer communication often means quarterly patch notes at best, this level of direct, sustained engagement from a team of six is a genuinely distinctive finding, and it plainly shapes how forgiving this review's sample is toward the game's rougher edges elsewhere.

The translation problem, documented specifically

Set against all of that goodwill, this review's clearest and most consistently repeated complaint is translation quality, and reviewers describe it with unusual specificity rather than vague frustration. One reviewer with 320 upvotes on their review — a strong signal the community agrees — wrote plainly: "Bad Translation. Not mediocre. Bad. We're talking Zero Wing level stuff here sometimes," invoking the internet's most infamous mistranslation meme as a direct comparison point. Crucially, that reviewer specified the problem extends beyond dialogue immersion into function: skill descriptions themselves are affected, meaning the translation issue can genuinely obscure how a system actually works rather than just reading awkwardly. Another reviewer, with 4,531 hours logged — an enormous investment that makes their continued frustration notable rather than dismissible — called the translation quality bad enough to "completely break immersion." The theme summary this review drew on separately notes the situation has been improving through community translation tools, but the base game's own text remains the recurring, specific pain point in this sample.

Pacing built for a longer story than this chapter tells

The other major, credible complaint concerns pacing, and reviewers who raise it are careful to explain why rather than simply calling the game slow. A reviewer with 9,464 hours logged — among the highest playtime in the entire sample — described the pacing as "GLACIAL... Absurdly slow," directly attributing this to the game being written as only the first episode of a planned longer arc rather than a complete, self-contained story. That context matters: a slow burn intended to set up future seasons reads differently than pacing that's simply misjudged, though it's a fair question whether a player buying "Season 1" today should have to wait through a deliberately unhurried opening for content that may arrive in future entries. Related complaints about gatekept masteries requiring specific boss farms, and a progression system some reviewers describe as "turning 300 different knobs that each make a 3% difference" while a hidden, undocumented combination makes a 50% difference, point at the same underlying tension: depth this real inevitably comes with an opacity cost, and Dandylion hasn't fully solved documenting it clearly in-game.

Final Verdict

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children earns its Very Positive standing through a rare combination: a tactical system with genuine, thousands-of-hours-deep build complexity, an exceptional content-to- price ratio, and a developer relationship with its community that this review found no real precedent for elsewhere in the genre. Its translation quality is a real, specific, and well-documented weakness rather than a minor gripe, and its pacing asks real patience of players expecting a self-contained story rather than the opening chapter of something longer. For SRPG veterans willing to accept rough English text and a slow start in exchange for genuine long-term depth — and for players who want to support a small studio that has clearly earned its community's trust — this is one of the most substantial tactical RPGs available at its price point.