The battles. Makes sense, it's in the title after all. They're fun. There are a good number of diverse classes and cool skills. 👍

The battles and class selections are pretty great. Story is fairly cool too.

Messing around with different builds is probably my favorite thing overall. Of course actually getting what you need to finish a build is all up to RNGesus (especially with evasion or counterattack builds since they need specific gear), but it can be satisfying to get that build working like it's supposed to.

The story has actually been engaging me way more than I expected! All the suspects and supporting characters feel well-written and believable, with just enough "I have no idea if this is the right thing to do/say" to make the dialog decisions feel consequential and tense. It wasn't really fleshed out yet when I first played in 2023, so I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I want to know what happens next.

I also love the way gladiators' personalities and habits are generated; they actually feel like people and not just a mosaic of disparate, proc-gen traits. I have a snobby cavalier who has spurned the advances of every woman in the camp, a jokester cryokineticist who loves to bake, a grumpy psy healer who can't seem to get her figure drawing quite right, and ... golems that dance. Not sure if intended, but I love it.

The battle and class mechanics of course are fantastic, too, but I wanted to give credit to some other elements that I thought were well-executed that maybe don't get as much attention.

I love the two throughlines happening, one where you're trying to conquer the tournament and another investigating the maharajah plot. I like the coliseum style game but I think it'd be interesting if jobs were more worthwhile or if you could send your lesser used units on missions before doing stuff with your main team. I actually enjoyed ensuring I had enough gold to make ends meet before upgrading equipment and restocking.

The class system is great, I built up a really powerful dodgy assassin who could one shot almost anything and a kineticist that was knocking people into holes with the help of my mentalist. I think it would be fun if multi-classing was more accessible, I really couldn't afford to lose any of my main team for a week to multi-class them.

Seeing other's tier lists is so interesting, I didn't use spriggats or cryo at all in my first run but I see the appeal of the aoe for sure.

Another thing I like is the campaign editor, I feel like there's potential there but I'll need to play more with it.

There are a lot of things I really appreciate and enjoy in this game, but I think my overall favourite part of it has been the characters and how unique they feel in a given playthrough. It's pretty fun every time I start a new run to see what new characters and personalities I'll run into. Even characters with the same personality type can end up feeling very different from each other due to the different set of lines a given personality type can have. Getting to see these characters develop their relationships with each other is likewise pretty cool, On a related note, I also really like the event that lets a character teach a close friend one of their skills to make some unique class and skill combinations (recently, I've gotten a Psy Healer that was taught Shadow Blast by a close friend, which feels awesome).

Well, you will only find me playing strategy games that are tough with many choices one has to weight before advancing, so as I played the main campaign several times, you can be certain that strategic element of the game is sound.

Investigation is also great and keeps the game fresh but nukes repetitivness as these maps and quests aren't generated and instead are handcrafted. I wish that you create another game in this style but without any hand crafted map, just soft rules that will be respected by the generator.

I also love that you keep some of the information hidden from the player, though I didn't see an impact of my axe warrior's religion besides constantly praising The Watcher. Some qualities could have more impact besides improving morale at times. Not just cook/sith/hunter/performer.

Lastly, I would suggest to add tooltips to the effects such as frozen, so it's clear it increases/decreases resistances from the beginning. Same for Prince's immunity to any form of disable but not blindness etc.

All in all, if I were writing my own game and gave up on it being RTS, I would love to come to something similar but with different UI.

Thanks for contributing your input, everyone! 🙂

Krel, there actually are tooltips for every status effect in the game already, including Frozen. Just open the character screen and move the cursor over the status effect icon in the top-left!

Originally posted by Sinister Design:

Thanks for contributing your input, everyone! 🙂

Krel, there actually are tooltips for every status effect in the game already, including Frozen. Just open the character screen and move the cursor over the status effect icon in the top-left!

That's only after you applied it. First time player may be able to figure out Barudit + Ice Mage combination right away if I could simply hover over the skill at the recruiter's.

Oh, I see-you're asking for nested tooltips. That's a level of UI hell I haven't been willing to descend into yet. Maybe someday! 😂

Honestly overall i like the fulll game, but for me, barebones of any tactical game is the combat.

Its very deep, i specially like the flank and backstab atck options. I like a lot sci fi and medieval settings in this kind of game.

The setting in this game is high fantasy , with funny yet mature history.

I like a lot the customization options.

Keep going Sinister Design, more turn based tactical quaility games are needed!

The Emergent game play aspects like events and relationships and leveling that shape your run and add to the immersion. Coupled with interesting tactical combat it makes for a compelling mix indeed.. I'd say (and I am not a stickler for graphics) but I'd say I could have sold several more friends on this title if it had better graphics and UI but for me those are quibbles and this is a really great game for the $

Gonna bump this thread with another review vid from CoffeePotato (which I regrettably neglected to shout out in the last game update)! 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ts3LxpGomU&t=1s