Billed as a Fire Emblem when I spoke to the developers at PAX West but several of the levels are completely unbalanced and designed to kill your team members without you having perfect play and getting lucky with blocks and criticals. The developers introduced an undo function to "alleviate" the problem but all it functionally does for the most part is pad out the gameplay as you try to find the exact right unit placement while determining which units need to attack or defend. Essentially, do things our way or fail. Things are made worse by turn limits for battles. I don't understand why tactical game developers think adding artificial time limits to tactical games is good. It results in making decisions in antithesis of several playstyles or risk losing due to the turn limit. It is normal for tactical games to field more units than the player. When done correctly, being outnumbered is not an issue because the enemy comes at you in reasonable waves. This is not always the case in Eidolons because, on multiple maps where you are overwhelmed with enemies, they all charge you at the same time. Having to face 30 or more units at the same time is unbalanced even if all of your 10 units are "superior". They are not nearly "superior" enough to handle the 3 to 1 odds while dealing with hero unit enemies. The developers must have realized what they did because they added options to remove permadeth and turn limits. This sounds good in theory but the main problems still exist. Specific missions require you to do exactly what the developers want regardless of your play style. If you don't have your 10 units set up as specific classes, using specific skills, and using the "correct" tactics you lose. The developers seemed to have failed to realize there should be more than one way to skin a cat in tactical games. They designed some stages to destroy you if you don't follow the developers ideal playstyle instead of letting the player forge their own path to victory.
Good Dungeons and Dragons experience using the 3.5 edition ruleset. (if I remember correctly) Main game and the Underdark expansion are the two I tend to play the most. Several classes allow for replayability with multiclassing. The thing that tends to appeal to me the most is the game allows for a single player to go through the whole game and without requiring you to manage an entire party like most games in this genre. I enjoy playing those games too but sometimes I just want to play a single character that gets the job done instead of a 4-6 man party with each character having one or two specializations.
It is designed to be tried and failed in the same vein as a rouguelike. After failing, the next character gets points to increase stats or buy improved starting gear after rolling your stats on the new character. If you play enough, you will eventually have a good run and all future runs at that point will likely have similar success as the "lucky" run you just had. At the very least, you won't die as quickly in future runs as you did in earlier runs. If you are unsure of how this game plays, try the free game "Heads Will Roll: Downfall". It's free and has similar gameplay. If you enjoy that one, you will probably like this one. The major downside is the RNG with missing. Nothing feels as infuriating as seeing an 85-90 percent chance to hit and missing four or more times in a row. It will happen to you at some point. Also, the weapon skills are odd. You have a skill for polearms and another for axes/maces. I survived through the Macedonian campaign and never found any of these weapons. Maybe I'm just unlucky or just not smart enough. Turns out my character wasn't smart enough to become a senator after the last campaign.
