I was hoping this would be something like Fire Emblem for PC or maybe FF Tactics with modern graphics. This is not that. This game seems to have a decent enough foundation, but needed LOTS more time to be polished up, and refined.

I barely got out of the tutorial section of the campaign before the issues became apparent. I requested a refund, but got denied because I made the mistake of trying to tough through the issues past the 2 hour mark, to see if the game would pick up steam...

TLDR: Mom, can we have Fire emblem? Mom: We have Fire Emblem at home. Fire Emblem at home:


I first tried the campaign on HARD mode, but didn't manage to get past the second combat scenario. Even using the game's UNDO mechanic to rewind out of bad positioning and sub-optimal turns, I wasn't able to finish it without losing a character. Just a skill issue? Maybe. Maybe if I had spent a few more hours, I would have found the perfect series of turns that resulted in killing the enemy commander without losing a unit, but then that doesn't fill me with any hope that the game would improve.

When the game punishes you THIS HARD, and THIS EARLY, without giving you the various tools to plan an attack, things like classes, equipment, formations, synergies, etc. I have no reason to believe it would somehow become easier when I'm able to tweak all these things to get the most out of my team.


Part of why combat is so difficult, even on normal difficulty, is that your character can't move past an enemy character, which they call zone of control or "ZOC". In theory, this is good because it's more realistic, and makes positioning of units even more important. In practice, this is a terrible idea, especially when coupled with the maps in this game that have multiple obstacles and thickets everywhere, traversing the battlefield becomes such a chore that you feel exhausted just closing the gap to engage the enemy.


Points 1 & 2 are terrible design choices, in isolation, HOWEVER, consider this. Monsters in this game, just as in other similar games, are multi-tile units where a couple of the tiles are considered "weak points". That's fine enough, except that the weakness tiles are determined at random, AND the weakness (sword, axe, bow, magic) is also randomized. On top of this, you need to hit the same tile multiple times in a single round in order to break it and get a guaranteed crit, which is nearly impossible due to the positioning and movement issues mentioned above.

Example: you need to kill a monster with about 4x HP of a typical enemy. It has two weakness tiles, front left (sword) and front right (spell). So you approach the monster, hit him with a spell on the spell tile, hit him with a sword on the sword tile. Then you try to position another sword unit on the side to chain attack the sword tile, it works, AND THE MONSTER ROTATES, ruining all your attempts to position units to take advantage of the tiles. No problem, eventually, after attacking with a bunch of units, you end your turn... AND THE TILES SHUFFLE so you can start moving units again to match the right weapons with the right tiles. Except, all the units that are in melee range can't move because of the zone of control of the enemy. Oh yeah, and the tile types shuffle as well, so if you had a bunch of swords and spellcasters up close, too bad, you now need axes and archers to attack the new weaknesses.

[h1]Summary[/h1] I was hoping this would be something like Fire Emblem for PC or maybe FF Tactics with modern graphics. [b]This is not that.[/b] This game seems to have a decent enough foundation, but needed LOTS more time to be polished up, and refined. I barely got out of the tutorial section of the campaign before the issues became apparent. I requested a refund, but got denied because I made the mistake of trying to tough through the issues past the 2 hour mark, to see if the game would pick up steam... [b]TLDR: Mom, can we have Fire emblem? Mom: We have Fire Emblem at home. Fire Emblem at home:[/b] [h1]Combat[/h1] I first tried the campaign on HARD mode, but didn't manage to get past the second combat scenario. Even using the game's UNDO mechanic to rewind out of bad positioning and sub-optimal turns, I wasn't able to finish it without losing a character. Just a skill issue? Maybe. Maybe if I had spent a few more hours, I would have found the perfect series of turns that resulted in killing the enemy commander without losing a unit, but then that doesn't fill me with any hope that the game would improve. When the game punishes you THIS HARD, and THIS EARLY, without giving you the various tools to plan an attack, things like classes, equipment, formations, synergies, etc. I have no reason to believe it would somehow become easier when I'm able to tweak all these things to get the most out of my team. [h1]Movement[/h1] Part of why combat is so difficult, even on normal difficulty, is that your character can't move past an enemy character, which they call zone of control or "ZOC". In theory, this is good because it's more realistic, and makes positioning of units even more important. In practice, this is a terrible idea, especially when coupled with the maps in this game that have multiple obstacles and thickets everywhere, traversing the battlefield becomes such a chore that you feel exhausted just closing the gap to engage the enemy. [h1]Monsters[/h1] Points 1 & 2 are terrible design choices, in isolation, HOWEVER, consider this. Monsters in this game, just as in other similar games, are multi-tile units where a couple of the tiles are considered "weak points". That's fine enough, except that the weakness tiles are determined at random, AND the weakness (sword, axe, bow, magic) is also randomized. On top of this, you need to hit the same tile multiple times in a single round in order to break it and get a guaranteed crit, which is nearly impossible due to the positioning and movement issues mentioned above. Example: you need to kill a monster with about 4x HP of a typical enemy. It has two weakness tiles, front left (sword) and front right (spell). So you approach the monster, hit him with a spell on the spell tile, hit him with a sword on the sword tile. Then you try to position another sword unit on the side to chain attack the sword tile, it works, AND THE MONSTER ROTATES, ruining all your attempts to position units to take advantage of the tiles. No problem, eventually, after attacking with a bunch of units, you end your turn... AND THE TILES SHUFFLE so you can start moving units again to match the right weapons with the right tiles. Except, all the units that are in melee range can't move because of the zone of control of the enemy. Oh yeah, and the tile types shuffle as well, so if you had a bunch of swords and spellcasters up close, too bad, you now need axes and archers to attack the new weaknesses. [h1]Do yourself a favor and skip this garbage[/h1]