Iratus: Lord of the Dead

Iratus is a game which seems similar to Darkest Dungeon, and that may be scary for people like me that are still listening the DD music and remembering how your 20 hours grinded character died in a single blow and you need to start the process again. But, in short: I will never play again DD (I finished it after only one 120h game, inside an eternal grind anguish), while this is the third time I'm playing Iratus, and I'm very happy with it. Let's be honest and this is the last time I will talk about DD in this review: DD has better graphics, music, and controller support. But everything else, Iratus is superior: replay value, game design, level progress, ability of recovering after a disaster, a 'bad ending' (instead letting your grind forever again), and more useful game mechanics (there was some buildings, character which were really useless in DD). I got this game in a GOG giveaway. I had some interest on it, but I was waiting for controller support before purchase. In my third run, the game doesn't become repetitive, but instead, I'm still discovering synergies and I'm planning to play a 4th and a 5th with other combinations. The difficulty is hard, but friendly and fair once you know the game mechanics. You must be willing to lose few times some of your best units. However don't worry, you will be able to aford these loses, the game provide you tools to replace few of them. While the non-combat events aren't pretty interesting, they serves a good purpose, and they are part from your strategy. I really recommend this game. I cannot give it 5 stars because the lack of controller support and the graphics and music could be better. But it's really satisfing to play it, it's like being a football team manager, but with zombies. It doesn't become boring if you get it, and it will happen as soon as you play 15-20 combats in a difficulty you can assimilate. I started on very easy, I'm now playing on hard. I plan to pick the DLC.

This game is great, seems like they've made it even more challenging after the release the other day. It was a bit short pre release but already worth the money, looking forward to completing the new levels. Thanks devs!

If you felt Darkest Dungeon's RNG was total nonsense (it is) then try this. Still challenging but more based on how well you prepare for encounters rather than having your best unit get some incurable disease and become useless... Also Stephan Weyte is more fun to listen to than Wayne June, sorry!

Can be finished in 12 hours on lowest difficulty. The gameplay on this one is fairly simply and you dont need to care about buffs and debuffs that much. I bet it will look different on the other difficulties, when you are low on ressources to level your minions up. The comments of your main guy are getting pretty annoying very fast. And they cause a hinderance because they slow down combat or block buttons on your base menue. What I like are the artworks of the minions. These are nice designs. I dislike the ending. It shows, that it is left for purchase later on. And oh, what is that: A wild dlc appears with a "new final boss" and "new ending"! It is not very effective. Got it for free. Played it on easy and delete it afterwards. Still got me a couple of hours of fun : )

Overall this game is nice to play. Story and Graphics are fitting. You can save the game, a huge + (for a rogue-like) The downside is, the abilities seems to be choosen quite poorly. There isn't really a thematic behind them like healer/supporter/dps/tank or abilites that fit the character. There aren't that many combos, at least good ones so I was stuck with my dps-assassin combo. Yeah dear developers, you had one task, make nice combos available.