Posted on: May 20, 2016

yellowpebble

Games: 389 Reviews: 22

Excellent turn-based combat

This really isn't an RPG in any meaningful sense. It's a pure tactical combat game. There's no plot to speak of, no NPCs; virtually no inventory, and the game is almost entirely linear. But it's a very good game if you're looking for tactical combat. It uses a real-time with pause system, and requires you to pay a lot of attention to what your opponents are doing and your characters' positioning. Interrupting and dealing with enemy abilities is critical. There is an interesting skill progression system where you decide in what direction to develop each character's main abilities and which to focus on first. I only really have two complaints. One is that it's not particularly well optimised; the graphics are decent but unspectacular and I experienced significant slowdown. I have a 7 year old PC with no physical graphics card, so this likely won't worry most purchasers. And it was still playable, because it was real-time with pause. The other is actually that, while I actually appreciate the streamlined nature of the game system (I'd rather play a game that does one thing well than one that does a lot of things badly), I actually think it wasn't streamlined enough. The residue of an inventory system (you can equip items of jewellery to give your characters small bonuses) is actually more annoying than interesting because it affects so little. And the game has a few very weak puzzles that don't really add much to the gameplay either.

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Posted on: July 4, 2021

Giltonnam

Verified owner

Games: 512 Reviews: 1

Not bad if you like real time tactics

The game isn't too bad overall. There are definitely some difficulty spikes strewn throughout the game but since you can respec (and excluding one section) can swap units in and out of party at will it not that big a deal. The one thing that has irked me the most is Chapter 2 drags on way too long. There are non-stop puzzles in chapter 2 that do nothing but slow down the game. They're not difficult or challenging, they're just time consuming (I counted like 15+ puzzles in just the one dungeon?) which is just a drain and really makes you wonder what they were thinking when putting it in a tactics game. There's also a ton of backtracking where you go down a level, do a few puzzles, go back up run the way you came and do new puzzles and repeat about 10 times or so for no reason (i guess you can say "lore" but really there's almost no lore/story here).

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Posted on: August 15, 2019

blazegamma

Verified owner

Games: 214 Reviews: 5

both good and bad

before anything else, I started the game going into hard difficulty, which is between normal and the hardest difficulty. There are ssome nice things in the game, like the 'pause' mechanic to plan your moves, the way the skill trees sort of branch out a bit into varied results from the same one skill, and clarity for skill descriptions that enemies have so you know what to expect, who to focus down first, which units to use to counter, etc. However there's also some sort of lackluster like mostly the same types of enemies, lack of depth for the story, and even the ssomewhat unclear ending that can be left to interpretation. I feel like there's a lot this game is missing like the core of the game is there but they didn't polish it to make it shine like it could have. I'm very up in the air about how to feel about this game, like I still want more, like It was left hanging. I like a dark fantasy-ish theme and am truly hoping to find something similar to this, with a bit more shine. I'd say it's fairly worth on at least 30% off, $20 doesn't quite cut it for me IMO.

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Posted on: May 19, 2014

Dgaart

Verified owner

Games: 601 Reviews: 3

Great Tactical Strategy RPG

I am having an absolute blast with this game. While the story is not the most epic or engrossing, I feel that this game deserves a 4.5-star rating (rounded up to 5) based solely on the combat, which is both challenging and rewarding. The game will lead you (fairly linearly) from one fight to the next. This would usually be off-putting to me, but the combat is the absolute bread and butter of this game. There are some side paths with additional fights or treasure chests. Warning: This game is HARD if you play it on 'Hard.' You will die a lot. I would regularly die a few times in a single fight before I learned the appropriate strategy to defeat the particular group of enemies. I found that Normal difficulty is quite a bit less stressful but still offers a comfortable amount of challenge and difficulty. PROS: -Combat is refreshingly challenging and requires thought and strategy. -Unique character abilities and personalities. -Good character customization through allocation of skill points. Infinite re-speccing allows for a good amount of experimentation. -Pretty nice graphics, and even looks great at 5760x1080 (Nvidia Surround) resolution. CONS: -Fairly Linear, don't expect a very open world. - Voice acting is 'meh' - While there is a story, I didn't find it very engrossing. Overall, I would highly recommend this game if you are looking for a challenging Tactical Strategy game. You may want to look elsewhere if you are seeking an open world, story-driven RPG.

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Posted on: January 19, 2019

BigCountryDrake

Verified owner

Games: 887 Reviews: 7

Beautiful & Challenging... but Redundant

First off this game is absolutely beautiful to look and listen to. It pulls you in with wonderful graphics (both scenery and use of abilities) and a nice score and voice acting (most characters at least). This game is a micromanage combat RPG (really more of a tactical combat game) with 8 characters to use (4 at a time) with a good amount of abilities w/ skill trees that allow for easy to understand and employ combos. There's a simple but effective loot and equipment aspect to the game. There's only 4 equipment slots as opposed to a dozen or so for other games. I love this because it allows you to focus on getting a few great items instead of worrying about an entire litany of items that are required to make your character effective. Combats start off very straight forward and become more and more complex as the game moves along forcing you to develop and evolve your strategy. It also forces you to know the capabilities of each character as they will be split into 2 groups of 4 from time to time and certain characters are critical to success in certain combats. It'd be wise to save a lot, as loading multiple times is probably in your future (that was a pro to me... I can understand how that'd be a negative for others.) Now for the downsides... It's extremely linear. The story seems both contrived and bland. They clumsily try to build character relationships but they too are forced and hollow. There's no real "role" playing aspect to this game unless the role is "destroy everything". It's also combat after combat for most of the game. For the most part that means that there is no replay value to this game as it will be the same song and dance unless you want to switch up your skill trees. All in all I was very pleased with this game. I don't know how many hours I spent on this game but I enjoyed every minute on it. It was a great tactical game that allowed me to kick down the door, kill the monster, loot the room, and blow off steam.

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