Here is short guide to not die in Sentinels of Freedom.
Basic Survival Guide
Speed Is Everything
Essential
You must keep your speed up at all times. If the enemy catches you being "Stationary", your goose is cooked.
Make sure (every turn) this little blue guy tells you "Speedy".
To improve your speed, you must move around every turn.
ExpandedEarly on (like in the bank) you can get away with sitting and face tanking the baddies. That's what I did. Later in the game, when two dozen enemies are shooting rapid fire rocket launchers at your face, you will die.
Moving around is the single most important thing I learned. If that is the only thing you know, you can probably get through normal without much issue.
ThoughtsWithout going through all my medals and honors in the field of TBS gaming: I've seen things. And I have habits and assumptions that I make (bad habits in this game).
For instance, from my experience with XCOM I learned it is always good to draw the enemy to me, hunker down, and make alpha strikes. As a result, with this game, I spread my dudes out a little (to avoid aoes), tried to hide behind walls, spent as much as my turn attacking/ccing as possible, etc. So naturally, I had to unlearn all of that for this game.
The movement system reminds me of the mediocre BattleTech from HBS, so if you've played that game you know to always keep moving.
The Overly Complicated Resistance Mechanics 101
EssentialAbove is a single defense enemy. The green arrows represent a weakness, the red arrows represent a strength. Try to target weaknesses.
Above is a double defense enemy (my character to avoid spoilers, i guess). The enemy will always use the stronger defense to defend (red arrows if possible). Here you want to use "zaakt", or wtf ever the blue one is called (will be standard damage from horizontal dash).
Your character has a choice between two sets of defense types based on stance, but now I don't worry about it so long as I keep moving (Speed Is Everything).
ExpandedEvade has nothing to do with evading. All the different colors are too difficult to keep track of, just remember all they do is modify damage (regardless of what they are called). They are all functionally the same.
Ultimately, its about targeting enemy weaknesses. All that extra crap is exactly that: extra crap.
Player resistance (in my experience) is of small concern 99% of the time, because all that matters for player defense is SPEED.
ThoughtsFor the longest time I thought evade was supposed to help me friggen evade!
Source: https://gameplay.tips/guides/7419-sentinels-of-freedom.html