SteamWorld Heist 2's new job system lets you experiment with building your own custom classes—and you're not allowed to judge me for making a completely unfair sniper that can scrap a whole squad with one shot

The plucky robot crew of SteamWorld Heist 2 are an adaptable lot. Instead of being confined to one class, as your companions were in the first game, they're free to switch things up any time you like. Just stick a different weapon in their little metal hands and they'll change over to the appropriate "job".

A rocket launcher, for example, will turn them into a Boomer, a tough-as-nails explosives expert, while a bot with a handgun becomes an Engineer, a master of support that can deploy their own cover and heal the team.

But just because they're good at taking on new roles, doesn't mean they forget what they've learned in previous ones. They're able to carry forward their accumulated knowledge. Every time a bot completes a mission, they gain experience in their current job, unlocking new abilities, with their progress in each tracked separately. All abilities for your current job are automatically active, but they can also use a limited number of "cogs" to activate those previously learned abilities from other jobs.

This is where the strategising gets really juicy—it means you can effectively build your own classes, and because weapons and cogs can be moved around freely between missions, you can keep remixing them for whatever challenge is in front of you. That gives you brilliant freedom in your quest across Caribbea and beyond.

Things start small, when you only have a handful of cogs on each character. Perhaps getting two levels of Brawler for your Boomer so they can use the Brawler's Blast Shield ability, which reduces the damage of explosions, to protect themselves from their own splash damage. Or perhaps one level of Engineer on your shotgun-toting, up-close-and-personal Flanker, so they can lead the charge with Greased Up (bonus movement speed whenever you open a door) and keep themselves safe on the front line with Build Cover. Or one level of Sniper on your SMG-wielding Reaper to get them an aim bonus from Reticle Eyes.

But as the game goes on, you get more and more cogs to play with, through level ups, ship upgrades, and progressing through the story. Of course by then you've also got even more job levels. The result is you can start putting together some seriously wild builds in the later stages, taking advantage of synergies between the jobs that may not be obvious at first glance.

Say you want the deadliest Sniper on the steamy seas. First you get them to put in their time wielding an SMG, a handgun, and then a shotgun, to level them up as a Reaper, an Engineer, and a Flanker. Then it's time to build your arsenal. From Reaper, we can pick up Warcry (activate to gain bonus damage for a turn); from Engineer we take Amped up, which grants yet more bonus damage as long they have another bot nearby; and from Flanker we can take Backbiter (bonus damage when hitting enemies in the back) and Penetrator (activate to make shots pierce through enemies).

The result? Shots that will make the Dieselbot navy quiver in their jackboots. When the time is right, we can use the Sniper ability Power Shot and stack up its bonus damage with all the other sources we've already got. Then, use Perfect Aim to give us a full aimline for the shot, letting us put the bullet exactly where we want it. From half a map away, this eagle-eyed bot can bounce a bullet off a wall into the back of an enemy's metal cranium (for that Backbiter bonus, just in case we didn't have enough overkill already) and then, with Penetrator active, it'll just keep going, plowing through any allies queued up in front of them like a steam train. Forget one shot, one kill—that's one shot, everyone scrapped, clearing a room for their allies to charge in and grab any loot not nailed down.

And that's not even getting to my whirlwind-of-destruction Reaper, who uses Shifty from the Brawler job to gain a move after every enemy downed, combined with Harvest that grants a bonus attack each time too, allowing them to bounce around a room like John Wick taking out everyone in sight. Or my unstoppable Brawler, who combines healing every time they scrap an enemy with the Flanker's bonus speed and Boomer's health and armour bonuses to allow them to soak up round after round of enemy fire before casually waltzing up and smashing someone to bits with their hammer.

It's a blast gaining more and more freedom to experiment with the system as the game progresses—and using the results to keep up with the escalating challenge of the firm-but-fair missions. The only problem is, how am I supposed to go back to normal class systems in other strategy games and RPGs now? What do you mean, my rogue can't just switch to wizard whenever he wants and start doing sneak attack fireballs?!