sunk plenty of hours into this, great casual strategy title. looking forward to more dlc. if it had a little more in the way of bells & whistles during the off week activities (like the little cutscenes in the old monster ranchers games), it'd be perfect.

If you've played Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and Darkest Dungeon, then this is the game for you. Your main character (master) improves over time as you proceed in the campaign, but in each chapter you get different monsters which are disposable. In combat almost everything is set in stone, you're not dealing with that many dice rolls, so you can calculate what is going to happen. That makes the game engaging and strategic. In base game you get 3 masters which I think is plenty to enjoy this simple yet addictive game (and in case you feel like, you can purchase DLCs). I don't find the game too easy nor too hard and I wasn't even messing around with difficulty options. Oh yeah, the game has difficulty options. And speed options. I appreciate that one a lot because Darkest Dungeon doesn't have that (you have to download a mod). It's hard for me to say any negatives about the game because I enjoy it a lot. I guess certain artifacts are a little OP, but this is singleplayer, so feel free to do whatever you want.

This roguelike starts like a fun game, until you arrive at "level" V, where the heroes can go up to level 10, and your monsters are ~lvl 2-3, so you need to grind XP for your "Master" to level up, which is bearable, but boring. "Masters" being offered through DLC is a typical cashgrab, which is a downside. The game runs stable, and the only explanation to all the reviews claiming otherwise is likely something not related to the game, or the "sour grapes" syndrome.

The game is fun. There is a lot of variety in monsters and three, freely, available masters, which is reasonable enough. The humour in the game is entertaining and there are a few events, like the hydra puking out a character, that really had me laughing. If viewed as a mind-boggling puzzle, the game can be quite entertaining. Generally, I believe its rating of 3.5 is quite accurate, and I give it 4 instead of 3 stars, just because there are a lot of single-star reviews who bash the game for receiving it for free. I do not like the fact that your creatures, even when leveled to the max, are weak and pathetic. Most times, your monsters will get to play 1 turn, and oftentimes they just get instakilled without playing. You can mitigate the damage by matching enemy attacks with the right reistences, but that gives your monsters 1, at best, 2 turns to play. Just like Darkest Dungeon it feels like a game that bullies you just because it can. For both games, the main driving point is not player entertainment, but player frustration. In plain language, you play it until you have had enough bull****, uninstall, and never look back at the game. The main character's progression is also painfully slow. After a campaign on 100% diffciculty you get one skill point to allocate. Considering that a campaing can last ove an hour, it would be good to expedite level progression a little. As I mentioned, there are three available characters, so there is no need to be stingy. If your monsters weren't made of glass, and if you could choose the layout of your dungeon, and the order in which you place the rooms, it would have been quite good. As it is now, it is just one step away from being classified as an autobattler. Go watch a few video reviews and gameplay videos and make your decision. If you like games that irritate you, this will probably be good for you. If you like games that entertain you, then go look for something else.

Groups-of-3 heros attack your dungeon, seperated into rooms where, depending on the type, you can place up to 3 of your monsters, a trap, or use spells. The unit take turns killing each other. and that right there is one of the biggest flaws. There are unit types, passives, active skills, levels, resists, weaknesses......but none of that really matters all that much. You start each "campain" with 6 monsters, and that's exactly how many you need to fill both rooms you have, and you never get more than 2. rooms for monsters. You have to decide which monsters go into which room beforhand, you can't swap during the planning phase, AND you don't know the stats of the attacking group before you actually start the round. Soooo....you have minimal influence on who is facing who until later in the campain when you got a couple more (on average 3-4), but by then you are nearly done and your monsters don't carry over into the next. Nothing you do really matters, all levels play pretty much the same, you can't really plan ahead. A boring, grindy, unbalanced mess. There were better free flash games when it was still around.