Imagine to wake up and be a kid again. Not simply going back in time, rather being able to feel again the awe and wonder of seeing the world for the first time, but with the full consciousness of the experienced adult you are now. You would get with a friend and play a game with toy soldiers together. A joyful, simple and intelligent game that feels profoundly "yours". That game would be Squad Hammer Core.

Simple rules, fast gameplay and plenty of narrative aids to build a gripping story for your campaign as well as the characters involved in it, both your heroes and the villains. The game has plenty of "sub-systems" that help conveying the feeling of progression and growth of your abilities and at the same time let you begin with fewer things to keep track, which is a godsend for the solo gamer. This way the player doesn't feel overwhelmed by too many little options all at once, as they gets added to your "arsenal" once your pilots and staff advance in experience. This also lets the player have the time to assimilate prior mechanics and lets them feel less worried of risking to forget using the new abilities/options available. Another solitaire-game that is an absolute winner.

Disclaimer: this is not a review of the game's rules. I didn't even get to the game part because this book is just awfully presented and I grow more enraged every time I pick it up.

Chapters should be concise and focused, instead they're broken into many numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs that interrupt the flow of reading. Some fundamentals aren't explained in detail (ie: movement). Some rules are not even used in the game but explained nonetheless (ie: star powers). Some rules that could be explained in one simple sentence are broken into bullet points and examples (ie: activation roll). Tables aren't organized. The book is littered with long and repeated explanations of things that shouldn't be explained at all (ie: how to use a table and my most hated feature of all: "Here's how we do it:" is written 63 times. A rulebook is exactly that, an explanation of how things work). Several fundamental rules of the Chain Reaction system are explained backwards.

I bought this book beacuse I thought that the authors might have put more effort than in the free Chain Reaction pdf (which suffers from the same issues), and worked on the criticism towards previous products (saw complaints similar to these of mine, several times online). No chance.

I want to believe that there's a good, solid game behind the Chain Reaction system, but I might never really know because I can't get to that. The book works against my patience as a reader.