To be completely honest, I'm on the same bandwagon as those who followed the game because they knew and loved good ol' Syndicate. I got dubious at first, but after some time I decided to give it a shot.

Essentially it could be summed as this : Came for Syndicate, stayed for Satellite Reign. I got Really hooked on all the tactical aspects, the cross references and all the stuff you need to check ahead and plan before actually doing it. For that matter, I might be the type to have been using the Support's world scan ability the most, and that gave me a pretty good idea of the degree of complexity involved in the level design. There are 4 zones. Might seem short, and that's because it is. If I could have another 2 zones, I'd take em without hesitation.

The fact is, the concept works. You have a small team of experts with the potential of being ludicrously powerful near the end, but like all Elites, you'll die in a swarm if you take the wrong approach. Meanwhile, if you're particularly patient, you can go through without being spotted at any point in time, and have that sweet sensation of being a really sneaky and cunning little twerp (which you can most likely guess, I was in my playthroughs). Another great thing I enjoyed was how you can trick civilians into tripping guard patrols, wasting their times, getting them blamed for a body they happened to walk near-by and other sort of thing that make you grin because you're allowed to shift all the blame of your nasty stuff onto some completely innocent bystander that'll end up fined or shot for the transgression.

What do I reckon could use some polishing : Well pathfinding occasionally messes up. It doesn't happen often, but still regularly enough to be noticeable. Guards tend to try to go from a door to another, and simply fail to exit. Luckily, your agents have a wide array of skill to just mess with them and get them killed.
Inventory tend to be too limited, even with the Pack Mule skills available to all. But in a way it serves as much as a balancing feature as much of reinforcing the idea that you're only specializing a team of specialists further. Still, I would have liked at least more freedom in the way of weapon carrying capacity. In a similar vein, Hijacking units is very fun and actually very useful, but would be much deeper if there was a way for players to instruct the hijacked to pick up weapons, or allow them to get kitted out via the relay beacons, even if that weapons the weapon is lost when the hibjacked is freed or dead. Again within the same vein : I found that enemies not using sniper rifles was actually kind of a swing and miss : the sniper rifle handling would work Very well with a computer, since aiming is both visible to the player, and gives enough time for them to either duck for cover or run and gun the sniper. Still the possibility of having a sniper nest as an obstacles would make for a nice amount of challenge and a change of pace.

As mentionned above, I found 4 zones to be too short, even if all 4 zones were handcrafted and the systems associated with each spots were very well made indeed. The fact of the matter is, this layout wont change, which mean you atleast need a certain number to limit repetition. As an alternative, releasing a map editor and letting players create their zones might yield interesting results (even if I have no doubt it'll take a year or so for someone to make as detailed a map as the ones ingame. Ultimately, I hope the team pursues development, having additional zones available (through DLC or expansion, or via a map editor).

It's not Syndicate (Syndicate was a lot more straightforward and simple), rather it's closer to Commando, but it's pretty much the same lore and the same gameplay architecture, with a more complex and tactical system.

Do I recommend it ? Hell yeah ! The game stands on it's own, and it's a genre you simply Dont see done so often anymore.