If anyone has nostalgia for Syndicate or Syndicate Wars, I recommend Satellite Reign. It's a similar real-time squad-based isometric cyberpunk game as those games. Also, Satellite Reign wasn't just influenced by Syndicate, it was made by the producer and lead programmer of Syndicate Wars.
Syndicate and Syndicate Wars were both real-time squad-based isometric games. EA published both of them. Since EA owned the rights, they decided to make a new Syndicate game in 2012. Except this time they made it a first-person shooter:
This pissed off the original programmer of Syndicate Wars so much he created a kickstarter to make his own game, following the original Syndicate style. Of course, since EA owned the name "Syndicate" he had to name it something else. He called it Satellite Reign. The kickstarter was successful and he made the game. And it's really good.
I played both the original Syndicate from bullfrog, and Satellite Reign. I have to be honest that I really didn't enjoy Satellite Reign, and loved Syndicate. Th biggest departure for me was that in the original Syndicate was the amount of micro that Satellite Reign required. Its annoying in that the original your agents are fairly autonomous, and can be basically programed to do things. Not extensively, but somewhat. In Satellite Reign, its really a pure micro game where you are alting between the agents. Honestly, I wish Satellite Reign had gone for simpler graphic and a more simple game design, but done more to give the agents some autonomy and have them be actually useful. Also, its terrible on the steam deck. I've tried playing it several times and it borders on unplayable, which is like, super a bummer because its exactly how I would want to play it.
What I want is something more true to the spirit of the original in that the Agents are actual agents and don't necessarily require you to intervene (although you can). It doesn't need crazy graphics and could be pixel art style like the original. But being able to upgrade the agents intelligence was central to the original game, and I felt like Satellite Reign was more of a sneak and shoot.
Man, I miss how sandboxy those old Bullfrog games got.
What happened to brainwashing the entire map and rolling around with a massive army of techno-zombies? Or bringing down every single building in the map? These days the only games we get that do that stuff look like lego bricks.
I mean that was my basic strat. The way you could work up from regular civilians, to security guards, to police then to other syndicate and build an army.
I'm holding hope that Streets of Rogue 2 and Brigador Killers can capture some of the same feel as the old Syndicate games