It's an okay idea for a game ruined by the fact that the enemy AI has flawless accuracy from across the map. Imagine playing an FPS and the enemy is a hacker with an aimbot that instantly headshots you from across the map the moment a pixel of your character is exposed. That's the enemy AI here. As soon as you start, they're all on you and they never miss a shot. What this means is strategy is irrelevant, movement is irrelevant, nothing matters except killing the enemies before your shield drops. It's literally just your stats vs theirs.
One of many games coming down the pipe that focus on 'difficulty' involving permanent character death and slow progression. The problem with this game is there aren't truly any difficult challenges to overcome. All of the battles have an obvious solution, and all of the party members have a clear role. The 'challenge' comes from the absolutely random events and artificial difficulty thrown your way though piss poor balance issues. Certain characters are useless in certain party formations, but to fix this if an enemy changes your formation takes 3-4 turns all the while each turn ends with the enemy further breaking your formation. Stronger enemies get 2-3 turns in a row to each of your turns, often stunning or disabling characters during their series of turns and locking you out of play. The random objects found while exploring have zero benefit to the player, but massive downfalls. At best you might uncover a treasure trove of gold that only benefits you slightly between missions. At worst, attempting to loot a chest could completely cripple your entire campaign. There is a good RPG buried in here, but it's covered in six feet of poorly designed random bullshit.
I bought this game on sale yesterday, not exactly expecting much. Only a few hours in and it's one of the most fun games I've played in recent years. The combat is an absolute blast, the skill tree is interesting and actually requires some prior planning, and the graphics aren't too shabby at all. I hadn't even heard of this game before the sale and I can already tell I'm going to be sinking a lot of hours into this.
