SteamWorld Heist 2 review: Getting the crew back together

SteamWorld Heist launched back in 2015, bringing players a 2D world of piracy, adventure, and turn-based tactical combat. It was an interesting venture from Thunderful, but one that it hasn’t returned to in quite a while, until now that is. SteamWorld Heist 2 has arrived, and with it comes several improvements over the original. It’s a new swashbuckling voyage to save the world from a corrupt government, and while this boat isn’t without leaks, it does make for a charming strategy RPG.

A world of withering water

SteamWorld Heist 2 returns players to a world well after Earth has blown up and is scattered in free-floating chunks in space. One such chunk features a watery sea which supplied power to steam bots for ages, but something bad is happening. The water is becoming poisoned and unusable, making fresh water sources a precious commodity. The Royal Navy, powered by diesel bots with a superiority complex to steam bots, recognizes the crisis and takes advantage to extend and strengthen its iron grip on control of the seas, and from it, the descendant of a legend rises to stand against them.

That character is Captain Leeway, and he commands a rickety submarine from which he and his crew form a rebellion against the Navy, all while trying to form his own legend that will bring him out of the shadows of his heroic mother’s accomplishments. Despite how desperate it sounds, SteamWorld Heist 2 is a very lighthearted and jovial affair. The world is lush and colorful as SteamWorld games often are, but the travel between the seas, the bars and bases you stay at, and the missions are vibrantly designed with a variety of fun characters and visuals.

Levels have taken a particular shine-up in SteamWorld Heist 2. Where they mostly used to be randomized and could be unwieldy, SteamWorld Heist 2 introduced new hand-designed levels with just a touch of variation in rooms and enemy composition to keep them from being too predictable. It’s not a perfect improvement over the first, especially on long levels, but it is enough of an improvement to make missions feel higher quality and less grindy. It’s further aided by a solid soundtrack that brings good music to the sailing, downtime, and missions. I particularly like the bar music offered by Steam Powered Giraffe, whose sea shanty game sounds top notch and infectious in its charm.

Steampunk piracy improved

Actual gameplay in SteamWorld Heist 2 gets several improvements over the original and most of the changes make for fun progression. The game is broken up between three different major segments: tactical turn-based, real-time sea exploration and combat, and team management between missions. You have a submarine that carts your crew around, but it’s pretty shoddy at first - it can’t even submerge. As you go through the game, you’ll have to contend with the Navy’s sea vessels in addition to being able to navigate rough waters. For that, you’ll need to improve your submarines with offensive, defensive, and utility upgrades, including different guns, health power-ups, boosters, and much more.

One of the few things I don’t like about the submarine overworld is that there’s no form of fast travel at all. It’s a sprawling world that’s fun to explore, but your sub doesn’t go incredibly fast, even with upgrades. At the very least, it could have been a bit better if you could teleport between rest-stops.

It’s a similar situation with mission combat and team management. Missions are handcrafted this time, though many of the basic level designs are similar to the first game in nature. You’ll go through rooms fighting the myriad of enemies inside and eventually opening up doors that reveal new segments of the map and the battles therein. The objectives have good variety, including grabbing loot, doing it in a restricted amount of turns, fighting spawning enemies and surviving for certain turns, taking down specific targets, and much more. Plus, enemy variety has taken a boost to provide more reason to have a varied team.

For your teambuilding, your characters now start in one of six classes and have a variety of specialties to them, but they can also change jobs and bring skills from their previous class to the new job they’re leveling up. This makes for hybrid builds. A Sniper can become deadly at distance, but also utilize the strong mobility of a Flanker. A Reaper can mow down enemies with bonus shots and damage and use Engineer skills to defend themselves. I’d say some classes have more utility and strength than others, but I found many of them to have some form of utility.

The only issue I had with multi-job builds is that this concept was introduced early enough in the story that I didn’t see much value in doing it upon introduction because you can’t level a character’s original job unless you’re on that class. It felt counterproductive to change in the middle of a job’s skill tree and leave benefits on the table, but it makes more sense down the line when you max out a tree. It also takes some effort to get your classes leveled to where you need them to be on harder missions and that can lead to having to play easier missions repeatedly.

Make your own legend

SteamWorld Heist 2 is an interesting return to a style Thunderful hasn’t re-explored in years, and it’s a decently polished one at that. The multi-job character progress and new upgrades to sea travel make for an improved approach to new and varied challenges throughout the game. The upgrades aren’t watertight against the issues that poked holes in the first game such as inconvenient travel and grinding. That said, if you’re looking for a solid tactical strategy game, SteamWorld Heist 2 is a charming voyage that should provide plenty of good times to fans of the SteamWorld universe.

This review is based on a PC digital copy provided by the publisher. SteamWorld Heist 2 comes out on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC on August 8, 2025.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.