Othercide

I played this on a different platform. This game combines a number of aspects from "XCOM", "Into The Breach," and "Darkest Dungeon." -From XCOM it takes solid tactical combat with multiple types of "classes" pitted against monsters, with the ability to level and choose abilities for your "Daughters", the forces you command. It appears to have a greater variety of enemies than the orginal XCOM debuted with. -From Into The Breach it takes the telegraphed moves and careful planning to ensure your Daughters kick as much booty as possible while minimizing the damage they take, lest another need to be "sacrificed" for their sake. -And from Darkest Dungeon it takes a bleak atmosphere full of twisted and malign horrors, and a well-voiced narration. Also the ability to gain positive and negative (or both really) traits after a mission. The story, art (both the drawn pictures and models/animation), and music are all excellent from what I've played through so far, though I haven't gotten past the half-way point yet myself. The enemies are well designed, and while not all moves are telegraphed like in "Into the Breach", you can still plan around enemies actions once you know how they behave. This lets you improve as a player, but even then a sacrifice is sometimes needed, on or off the battlefield. While it's almost impossible to avoid taking any damage (particularly since many moves require health), you can, if you play wisely enough, avoid taking significant damage even from strong enemies... but if you play poorly, weak or "easy" enemies can easily overwhelm your forces and cause long-lasting problems, not just in that battle, but in every battle to follow. Map variety could be better. But the maps themselves are intriguing and detailed, like most everything in the game. The game is always Ironman, with an optional "easy" mode. You are generally expected to fail at least once before winning, and start over doing better with what you've learned and "remember."

Positives +Artstyle +Music +Tactical Gameplay Negatives -UI -Clunky unit management -Poor Storytelling Ultimately, I feel this is a good game for the right price. It's a game that doesn't reward skill as much as it does dying over and over again to get stronger buffs for your daughters. Daughters aren't visually distinct enough to convey who is who other than the limited class options you have to choose from. The striking visual style ends up serving as a detriment to item and unit management. Menus are uneccesarily clunky as are any interactions. Nothing feels intuitive examples to attack enemies you must click the box around under the enemy, you can't click on notifications to quickly go to whatever you are being notified of. Etc. It's loads of small things that add up and detract from an otherwise solid tactics combat. You can do better than this with a little looking around. I only recommend it on deep sale or to people like me who simply need to play every turn based tactics game out there.

Since some reviews here are catastrophic. Yes, this game is very hard and punishing, but that's part of the genre. If you think that Xcom has "unfair" rng and you don't know about probability calculation, then you won't enjoy this game. Xcom's rng is in the favour of the player already. So, Othercide, it's a good game, maybe 10$ more than it should be. The game can be more repetitive than said other game or similar games in the genre. There are also roguelite aspects to this game, e.g. dying over and over again until you have accumulated enough status boosts to create and revive the units with stronger starting power. The problem with this mechanic is that the game simply doesn't have enough different maps and situations. You'll see the same few maps with similar layouts over and over again. The devs should add more randomization to the maps to remove some of the repetition. If you are still interested and reading: My main reason to write this review even though I own it on console is that certain reviews state that this game doesn't reward skill and that it's rng dependent, which isn't true. This game removes the hit percentages on skills in favour of hp costs and longer wait times. This means that you can't just click on the strongest skill in your arsenal and hope to hit. You will hit but you will lose HP. That's one of the twists in this game. The other twist is that you can (and should / must) create combos with your units and skills since the game is based on a time bar that shows who can act next. Think of Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, 9. These combos (and high skill usage) can set you and / or the enemies back on the timeline and force you to wait longer until it's your turn again. That's where the "skill" lies. You can create combos through skill usage and positioning and some of these combos can instantly defeat everyone, including the hard bosses. One good setup and you can trigger one combo after the other. Give it a try!

Othercide is a rogue-lite turn based tactics game with time line manipulation being the spin that Lightbulb Crew have put on the formula. Much praise has been given to the games visuals and I'll admit that at times they can look great, but for every clean and crisp creenshot you see of this game there is another moment where the game looks hideous, muddled and not all stylish. With only black white and red, there are only so many visual elements that can be cleanly layered on top of each other or displayed next to each other before the whole thing looks unitelligable and a pure mess, this happens a lot, and it tends to happen during boss fights, the games highlight. The UI is buggy and clunky, for example some missions reuire you to extract your team. You do this by moving your unit to the extraction zone, selecting the leave command and then 'using' this leave command on the desired unit. It feels very clunky. The game is built around mutiple runs with permanent upgrades for yor daughters being unlocked with currency that you earn each run. Each battle blurs into the next, just as each era of the game and even each run blur into each other. From the first to last mission you'll be fighting the same enemies on flat, non desript black and white stages. The depressing art style does nothing but make repeat runs more depressing. Unit customisation is there but feels pontless, it isn't needed to beat the game and the traits are so buggy that it's a fools errand to try and build an ultimte team of daughters. This system is so badly implemented that playing well can earn NEGATIVE traist for your team. GoG support - This game on GoG specifically is behind ALL other versions of the game. I can only recommend this game o the most hardcore of tactics fans. If your a gamer who loves the black and white asthetic do yourself a favour and watch 300 or Sin CIty instead, there is no fun to be had here. This game is a boring, repetitive, ugly, clunky, buggy joyless grind.