Urtuk: The Desolation

I can't tell you how happy this one fact made me. If you can hit an enemy, you will do damage to it. If you have armor you will block at least one attack with that armor. If you attack from behind with an ally flanking the enemy you will get a critical hit. None of this 99% chance to hit 'missed' aggravation! I love the aesthetics and ideas of games like X-Com and Darkest Dungeon (both of which this game heavily draws from in terms of aesthetics and gameplay) but those games infuriate me when it comes down to not so much your tactics or your resource management in a pinch so much as if the dice favor you or the enemy. In Urtuk I always felt if I fouled up in a battle if was MY fault in not paying attention to equipment or placement of my units and not because at the last minute an attack missed for no reason or I got a critical hit at random from an enemy. It just feels more visceral and immediate to have your war band go hammer and tongs with the foe trading blows, accruing status effects, managing stamina to use special abilities rather than dreading to pull the trigger because the RNG forces might look on your with disfavor. Same with leveling up. It is much more rewarding to increase your abilities and raw damage output rather than increasing the invisible indicators of it you can hit something at all or just spend all day wildly swinging at the air instead of the enemy standing in front of you (looking at you Neverwinter Nights). If there is randomization here it's in the loot drops: where it should be! This is not a simple game, but it is much more accommodating than a lot of rouge-likes thankfully. You beat a battle? Everyone is healed up and ready for a new one. You can save at any point or use a single quick save if you feel like being old school. You can break down unwanted equipment into an increased chance to get bonuses from battles to come. It's all tight and definitive and fun. Wish I could rename characters and change their colors though.

Very interesting game mechanics, where you extract parts from fallen enemies, and implement them into your heroes. Plenty of possible combinations how to win this game. Pros: mechanics, graphics, gore, generated world Cons: getting repetitive after getting into second map, and some battles are not worth to complete - like massacres // maybe it will be balanced in future. If you like games like Darkest dungeon, Battle Brothers then go for it!

I'll admit, Battle Brothers is just too damn hard for me, even though I love it. This game on medium is a lot more manageable and gets right to the point, you get to gear up and upgrade smoothly with no time wasted. If you need the tactical itch scratched, then this will do real nice. I cannot wait for this to be out of early access and I am thinking about buying it on here (own on Steam) just to support the developers further. I hope for better UI and sounds for full-release, but I understand that is not every devs strong suit or within their budget.

Basically, if Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers had a child, it would be Utruk: the Desolation - a low - budget, squad - level tactical turn - based game that leans heavily on both mastering the multitude of combos between team members and using the combat area to your advantage. The world is OK, though not very captivating. Story is meaningless. Both resource management and team management are pretty basic. Tactical combat is the heart of the game and its excellent: height advantage, choke points, traps, special tiles, pits, traps, oil, acid, pushes, throws, javelins and crossbows, spearwalls, shielding, focus abilities... the list goes on. Add in mutators, items with skills, special party members, different races and you'll have a lot of fun with this system. While we're at it: the system is overwhelming as all get out and not very well explained in the descriptions. Sometimes a single attack starts 7 or 8 effects comboing off of each other and its hard to understand what exactly happens. The difficulty is significant, even easy can sometimes pose a real challenge. The game consists of 4 levels and honestly its one level too long. Combats are way too repetitive and there are plenty of them on each level, and it wears on you. There is only handful of bosses and meaningful events to break the rinse and repeat cycle of standard encounters. Overall, I think it deserves 7.5/10. It's a good, though a little tiresome game, with excellent tactical combat. I will gladly replay it sometime in the future as a different race than humans when I forget how repititive it was last time I played it.