Not normally a genre I am interested in, but "The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos" was so good (the best turn-based tactical RPG I have played in the past five years or more) that I will be wishlisting this.

Wow, better than Fell Seal? The screenshots did a piss-poor job of selling it since it shows no ability selection at all or menus or level-up screens or anything useful. It made it seem like this crappy ones that each character can just move and attack after in a grid with nothing interesting about it at all.

Yes. For me, it was better.

The two games have very different approaches. Fell Seal is a classic JRPG in that it has countless options (e.g. job combinations, monster recruiting, initially inaccessible chests), way more than one can experience in one straightforward run, "encouraging" you to replay the game. In Naheulbeuk, if you are reasonably meticulous, you will likely see most everything there is to see in one run (with a couple of very clearly marked exceptions) and your options will be limited throughout. I prefer the latter.

In Naheulbeuk, you have (except early on) eight companions in total and they all take part in practically every combat. You have no choice about them, except for the identity of the eighth (a one time choice that carries throughout the game and the DLCs). There are no jobs and no classes. You only control gear (much of which is equipable only by a specific character) and skill/attribute allocation (only 2 skill points and 2-6 attribute points per level). And level progression is slow, so you only reach level 10 in the base game and level 16 in the last DLC. The game's focus is first and foremost on the combat, which is very good, in my opinion. You have everything you'd normally expect to find: action points, initiative queue, action delay, opportunity attacks, half/full cover, dodge/parry, melee/ranged/healing/magic, cooldown skills and default actions, status effects, etc., etc. The one thing that is painfully missing is move undo. Attack prediction, while present and functional, could be better.

Naheubeuk got a bad reputation, I think, because it is very hard, unlike Fell Seal. And it is very hard in a manner that many dislike --- you miss very often (especially early on) because your accuracy is (initially) low. And there are additional mechanisms that make it so that even if you don't miss, you might still not hit (e.g. the enemy might dodge or parry; you might have a critical failure and hit yourself). The AI is ruthless (though not perfect) and will go out of its way to attempt to kill your weakest links (which you can exploit if you're clever). Expect to reload often (the game has save anywhere, including in battle), at least on the highest difficulty. Battles are slow and long (also something that other people tend to dislike).

Also, you really need to understand the mechanics in order to allocate the limited attribute points wisely (and, alas, not too interestingly). Many of the negative reviews betray the reviewers' less-than-ideal choices (e.g. "characters always miss", "enemies always attack first").

Naheulbeuk is also very well written and its voice acting is unbelievably good. And it is actually funny at times, an extremely rare thing in a video game, from my experience.

Still, it's by no means perfect, yet better than the competition.

If you play it, play it with the DLCs (at least Limis and Futon) as these form a direct (and seamless) continuation of the main game's story (without making the main game itself incomplete in any way). The Arenas DLC is standalone, but still enjoyable (play it last). Expect 100-150 hours for a complete run with all DLCs. You are right --- I hadn't noticed it before. The video is more representative.

I'm one of those. I will check it out for sure -- it's in the cart -- though. But I'm not a fan of games where hit rate determines everything (like the XCom games), or Regalia. I prefer games where, if there are high rates of missing, each hit/miss is less impactful rather than every-hit-matters-supremely, where a stray miss will mean "lose the stage".

Thanks for the write-up!

You are unlikely to lose a stage (I never did). The worst that could happen is that 1-4 of your characters will fall in a single turn, but regular heals can revive a character (in the two or three turns after the character falls), and you have three or four healers in your group, plus anyone can heal anyone else with a potion.

Looks like my cup of tea, thanks for being informative, posts like this are needed -> make it a review?
Wishlisted, thanks, again!

The main gripe is honestly exactly that. The game offers you like 6 or 7 attributes to put points into, but unless you dump ~60% of them into Agility on every single character (for hit chance), you are in for a suffering. Especially the Ogre and Barbarian. Not to mention Agility also increases your own dodge/parry chances. It is a perfectly valid strategy (maybe even optimal), to just dump pretty much every single attribute point you have into Agility (or whatever increases hit chance, some classes use Int or Charisma) and secure your damage output through skills and their upgrades.

Every point grants the same amount and hit/dodge/parry are all on a scale from 0-100. So every point is even more effective than the previous. This is even more amplified because there are skills that can reduce hit chance in exchange for some additional effect (more hits, extra damage etc.), so even if you have 100 accuracy, any extra points counter these penalties or debuffs from enemies that reduce hit chance.

Just get enough Courage on everyone to go first (around 16) and then dump the rest into Agility. Not much build variety or thought there.

The other minor gripe is the overreliance on crowd control. The game's name could be "CC or die".

But the game was still a lot of fun. As said, great voice acting, story, character interactions. Other than the occasionally frustrating combat where you can get unlucky streaks due to RNG (which you mitigate by pumping hit chance), a great game.

Thanks for the review !
May I ask, is there any kind of replayability for Naheubeuk ?

Theoretically, there is.

Early on, you get to pick one of three characters as your eighth team member for the entire game. The three characters are fairly different, so you could play the game three times.

Additionally, the first DLC has two factions you have to choose between, so it could be played twice.

But I don't expect many people do either. I didn't.

It's really more or of a play once game. Soon, when GOG allows one to edit reviews...

Thanks for all the precisions, it's really appreciated ! :)

Having recently completed the game just this week, I can verify that everything the above poster has said is abolutely 100% true. Get 16 courage or so on everyone, although you want to manage the ogere / dwarf to take their turns close to one another to maximize dwarf throw (which massively shifts the game in the payer's favor), and then amp agility to 16-20 for everyone. After that go all in on yoru damage stat, and take every CC option given.
Lock down enemies and win by attrition or else they will absolutely destory you. Going first is essential.

That being said. I really like the game. It's like a really crude fart joke that makes you cringe, but you end up laughing at depsite yourself.