In 2022, this game is much more stable than their other game, masters of the broken world. More units, a ton of strategic depth. Playing on the hardest difficulty will give anybody a run for their money. This is my favorite 4x series because it focuses on combat and allowing the player to make frequent strategic decisions. Resource management is fairly simple and straightforward which is a good thing compared to other 4x games. It doesn't bog the player down with complicated and tedious overworld movement, frequent swapping of heroes' armies, etc. The province exploration system removes a lot of the tedium in overworld movement present in other 4x games. The game still crashes from time to time and it is a buggy game but more people need to play this game. The one star reviews are not fair to the developers.
Recipe for the most frustrating game of all-time: 1- Make hit chances so low that your characters will be missing all the time, even with the hit-chance perks on all characters and with all characters using spears 2- Make the easiest difficulty still far too difficult for people who seek to enjoy the game casually 3- Employ permadeath 4- Make in-battle healing impossible 5- Employ a zone of control system that prevents you from effectively retreating with your injured characters 6- Never have enough contracts available that are worth the players time and effort. Let the player roam from town to town with no contracts available. 7- Make sure you can't see a mercenaries' stats before hiring him 8- Prevent the player from seeing the complete turn-order list so he can appropriately plan his moves 9- Have lots of strong enemies that can 2-shot your best guys such as Lindwurms 10- Never drop good armor naturally. Force the player to waste their time farming armor by killing enemies with knives. Let the player assume the risks of losing their characters permanently by engaging in said farming techniques. 11- Make sure the player never really has any clue what he is going to encounter in the battle ahead. Withhold this information, then punish him with injuries or casualties on a fight he had no chance of winning. 12- Make sure characters with the best backgrounds are rarely ever available or prohibitively expensive so that the player has to instead waste resources investing in sub-optimal characters. 13- Allow enemies to permanently destroy your legendary shields 14- Don't offer the player legendary items very often 15- Don't offer an in-game tutorial 16- Never explain anything or give the player tips in-game
You have to take the good with the bad. I love this game. If it didn't have any bugs, it would be one of my favorite games of all time. But the bugs cannot be ignored and they detract from the experience a lot; the bugs always CRASH the program. You might be in the middle of a tough fight you are winning and you kill an enemy but his body stays there. Whether or not you realize it, you just lost the battle and have to reload because of the bug. I've logged over 150 hours and the game has crashed or bugged to the point where I have to load at least 50 times. The fact that these bugs remain so many years after the release of the game reflects poorly on the company. Continue to develop your existing products before making new ones.
This is a phenomenal game. If you like tactical RPG's, I highly recommend it. I've put 70 hours in, some on normal, some on hard, most on epic difficulty and I am now heading to the 6th level of the tower, so I still have a ways to go to finish the game. This game has given me some of the most epic and satisfying battles I've EVER played in a tactical RPG; some battles can last for 30+ minutes and include a lot of tactical micromanagement of your characters. The game does real-time with pause right by giving players a limited number of skills and different maps to fight on. The problem with a lot of cRPG's in my opinion is that there's too much choice: too many items, too many skills, too many spells, too many characters, too much dialogue. This game follows a less-is-more approach and I found it to be just right. 4 characters to command in battle and equip is just right. The only complaint I have about the game is that I found it to be too easy. I am playing on the hardest difficulty (epic), and by the time I reached level 4 of the tower, I started intentionally handicapping myself by playing with only 3 characters because the game got too easy. Even with 3 characters, I am still winning battles too convincingly so I might have to drop down to 2. I wish the devs would make another difficulty level for the most hardcore fans. I also think that RPGlite mode should start where the regular game starts because by starting directly at the tower, the player misses a lot of important chests and equipment that can be gathered beforehand and there's a really tough boss fight coming up and your party has very little gear. Replay value is good if you are willing to get a little creative. I'm going to replay on RPGlite mode with all different characters for more variety and challenge. Thanks to the developers!
