Before I bought the game, I carefully researched what I would be getting myself into. I heard that it was heavily influenced by Into the Breach, the boardgame Gloomhaven, and that it was split into separate levels. That sounded like a perfect fit for both me and my wife, and boy I wasn't wrong. I have been having an absolute blast with this, and my wife actually finished it within 3 days, bingeing it while barely taking any breaks. As a tactical boardgamey game it is absolutely great. If you play carefully and thoughtfully, the normal difficulty will provide a nice challenge. The gap between easy and normal difficulty is a bit too large, but in my opinion easy is a bit too easy, and normal is a bit too hard to be called 'normal' for most players. So it could do with some tweaking there, or an extra difficulty mode in between. It is not a true RPG in the sense that you have dialogue options or real choices elsewhere, but the writing is serviceable and actually pretty funny in places. All in all, I think there is nothing quite like this, so bonus points for innovation, and I would really enjoy more games that refine on this mixture of different design concepts. Well done Ctrl Alt Ninja, you've got a winning design here: 5 stars. Now if only people actually understood what they were buying before getting into it expecting a full fledged RPG. I'd argue this is their own fault for not doing a little research, but perhaps a small change in marketing strategy wouldn't be such a bad idea if the idea for a sequel comes up.
