I completely agree with Stetzwebs (very good but narrow focus) so I will only add a few thoughts that could be complementary. I bought the game at a very low price so the value for money is just unbelievable. But I guess I have to view it on the normal price basis and that's a different story. On the bright side, MC (Massive Chalice) is really an invention from my point of view. It's a story, an ambiance, a specific graphic design... I personally love the sound and music atmosphere, the combat FX. It's really neat. The first encounters with Cradles, Ruptures and Twitchers are quite striking ! There are a lot of tactical and strategic decisions that you learn to deal with. Because you plan across generations, you learn with very few hints at the beginning how to build strong and complementary bloodlines, place the right key people as scientists and trainer (they cannot be in your vanguard after that), bet on the best research (it will be long so choose wisely). However, yes, there is some frustration in the gaming process because it can become repetitive : make time go on, deal with the death of aging key people and choose new ones, deal with the few random events (not very convincing but some time funny) and wait for the next invasion for combat. I personally enjoyed understanding the long-term and short-term balance. It is impressive to see how your heroes become depleted 20 or 30 years later because of bad choices. And I stay focused probably until the fifth repetition of the game. Then comes a slight boredom because of the narrow focus mentioned by Stetzwebs. Frustating because I would see easily a richer magic research system, a less restrictive gaming environment (the world map which you have in front of you all the time) etc. Still, I would love to see more of this design team.
