I have been quite disappointed by the difference between what the game adertises and what it truly delivers. Which is a problem, considering it's a "tactical strategy" game as there are A LOT of them, and quite a number of them much better. The art style is okay, a black and white colored game which makes the few colors contrast quite a lot when they do appear. The unit's creation and customisation is decent (though nothing truly special). The game revolves around the theme of "sacrifice" and this is the first part where it kinda breaks itself : First of, the game is hard, as it borrows element of the "Roguelite" style, and thus you will fail to try again several times. The enemies hit hard and will often just OS your units, and even if they survive you can't heal them unless you sacrifice one of your own units. That in itsef isn't a big deal, the issue is : it needs to have the same level as the unit you want to heal, and THAT is a big issue. The whole game revolves around improving your own units mission after mission to try and beat the Bosses, and yet you can't do that since you have to kill half of them to keep the other half alive. Of course you can revive some of them, but it uses a very limited ressource so you can't rely on it. But that's not the worst part of the game, at least for me, and this is where I got disappointed : Combat relies a lot on "pre-planning" your turn, setting up combos between your units so you can beat the monsters without taking too much damage, the game combat is entirely designed around this, similar to playing chess... And yet you can't, and for two reasons: 1 : enemies can DODGE attacks and you cannot. 2 : enemies spawn in waves during missions, and said waves appear RANDOMLY on the map and act immediately as they spawn. You're supposed to constantly calculate and plan your moves... And yet you can't do that because of all the RNG elements ruining what could've been a very interesting playstyle.
If I had to resume the game in a single word it would be : Unfair. The game claims to be "difficult", and yet it's not. The game is ridiculously simple once you get the base mechanics. Unfortunately it's one of these numerous cases where the devs mistook "unfair" for "difficult". The enemies don't play the same game you do : Your characters have limited perk points to improve themselves, the enemies don't Your characters suffer from "fatigue" which cripple them the longer the fight goes on, the enemies don't. Your character don't have half the action points your opponents get per turn. Oh and the AI blatantly cheats as well, and since the game doesn't allow you to check your ennemies status it's basically free to do so anytime it wants as it's very hard to figure out which part comes from the monster's abilities and which comes from the game messing itself up to boost up it's "difficulty". I've seen basic bandit thugs acting 3 times in a single turn while nothing sets them apart from other basic bandit thugs, it suddenly decided it wanted to repeat his turn 2 more times for no apparent reason. If it came from special Boss-type opponents I'd have accepted it, but it wasn't, it's just some random dudes activating god-mode from time to time. On top of that, everything is RNG based. And anyone who played a tactical relying on RNG for action success can already guess how terrible that makes combat. Besides since damage is RNG based too, even if you manage to hit your opponent you have no guarantee to do any significant damage. Your characters land 1 hit out of 10 and when they manage it they strike with the power of a wet noodle, meanwhile the bandit thug casually OS your soldiers one by one without a single miss. I wish I'd have something positive to say about the game to compensate... But I genuinely don't. If you're a hardcore masochist, you'll probably like this game, but if you're anything else pass it up, it's too unfair to be enjoyable.
A game that tries to satisfy both "The witcher" fans, and the Gwen card game fans in the same game... And fails at both. 3/4 of the actual card battles don't follow Gwent rules at all, and said rules are bent by the AI all the time to the point I can't tell if it's cheating or if this consistent mess is part of the game's features. And while the story itself is quite good, it's always cut by these goddam card battles that are more annoying than fun since there is no consistency in the rules, thus no chance for you to learn them and start appreciating them. Gwent is fun as a mini-game, and this game proves that trying to make a full game out of it is a bad idea. I give 1 star for the story, it would deserve 3 but I can't objectively give more due to how often it gets interrupted for a card battle.
The game is quite nice : the atmosphere is really stressful and immersive, the plot also seems well made... unfortunately my own playthrough came to an end abruptly since one of the main story missions bugged out and thus I couldn't finish it no matter how many times I tried. And since it's a "main story" mission, I can't go further if I don't finish it first, hence why the game constantly makes me re-do it everytime I fail it. For a game with such a chilling atmosphere and well fleshed out scenario, this is the kind of incident that completely breaks both. I'd probably give a better score for the game itself, but when THIS kind of technical issue is left inside to plague it I can't possibly rate it higher than this
