Too busy playing it to talk about it.
No excuse, pull an all nighter and get Smaug to make breakfast and take the kids to school.
AC I will probably grab this one. It looks too interesting and too good a price and it is from the Grimrock guys and gals.
It looks like the game has timed missions (x amount of turns to complete). If you don’t make the timer you get extra enemies spawning in and stuff like that. Since the missions also have bonus objectives required to level up your troops then, to me, this seems to be a puzzle game like Fantasy Wars.
I hate timers in turn based games and puzzle missions so I guess I’ll pass on this one for now, unfortunately.
There was an interesting discussion about “puzzle” game and THIS game by myself and ponycarnival in Tom’s stream tonight. I think I lost the argument because I plan on grabbing this very soon. But I plan on getting back to the argument over a min/maxing and random game (a la an open world rpg) versus a mission game (which strikes me as puzzly).
This game is relatively inexpensive and is by established developers – I will grab it myself and comment.
(JA2 was a bit puzzly – but it was open as well…one wonders if there is a good soft spot)
I saw it and bought it straight away.
Between this, Battle Brothers, Imperator, Thea 2…not much time for anything.
Everything else you said sounds good but I hate this. One of the joys of these kinds of tactical games is coming up with creative new ways to win the mission. Tactics on rails is not nearly as much fun. That said I’ll probably get it at some point just for the ‘everything else’ about it.
Timers aren’t so bad if they happen only once. Repeating timers where created by the Devil though.
I already got the game but haven’t played yet, so reading this makes me happy.
I grabbed this and I see it is a very smooth turn-based tactics RPG. It isn’t full featured (no customization, no open world, etc) BUT – it is very well done. I am thinking about my tactics at work on this game so you should know --that means the criminally accused have suffered a bit. Some nice upgrades, graphics and otherwise smooth gameplay. It is no DD2 but … it has a simple charm and an aggressive “ok how can I do that better?” theme.
I am trying not to say it is “puzzly” because …. To be honest even in the opening levels it gets wide open pretty fast. I like this turn based system for sure.
I’m liking it so far. It does feel puzzly, but probably because I’m trying to hit optional objectives the first time through (which I’m not really doing). I’m fine with a puzzle tactic game though, so this could be a lot of fun.
Ponycarnival should comment on “puzzly”
But My thought is as I have played… it is just difficult.
I picked this up and played half a dozen missions or so. I really like it; the characters have cool abilities and the upgrade system is also quite good. I’ve had to replay a couple of missions due to making bad decisions – it can really hurt you if you take it too slow. I really like the resource management within mission; do I spend one of my cure spells right now or do I wait for an opportunity to make the most of a focused one, and so on. I do need to get a higher damage bow, though.
Edit; Grrr, apparently the spell that lets you open chests at range doesn’t work on the one in The Placed Glade, even with a gem slotted in +1 range.
Oh my dear God yes it is.
It requires focus and concentration.
I failed the 2nd mission about 4 times, until I finally figured out that I could use focus several times on the little fireball guy if I visited the spellbooks.
And his focus bolt can multi target.
This game is basically digital Gloomhaven in a different fantasy world.
I hope the actual digital Gloomhaven is like this.
Argh, I’ve hit a mission that has an absolute bullshit amount of reinforcements spawning. As well as objectives that soak up actions. Urgh…
You guys are making it difficult to decide if I want this game. Is it the kind of game you can go grind someplace if you get to a difficult mission like @Jorn_Weines is on?
Not really. At first you have a lot of quests so you get to level up and get some of the extra gems and such. Some of the optional objectives are really hard, but now I think I might be able to do some more of them. I’m a bit into the campaign, so now I only have one or two quests I haven’t completed, and each quest seem to unlock one or two new ones.
I finished the really annoying mission on the third go; sometimes you just need to rush for the main objectives and not try to do all the optional ones and get killed by splitting up the party. There’s a lot of clever stuff you can do with the party’s combination of skills. The switch place with any character (or terrain feature, such as a barrel of dynamite) has gotten me out of many tricky situations.
I really like this so far. The quality of the humor and dialogue varies a lot, but overall it is not terrible - it just feels a bit like a lot of different tones slapped together. I like the skill, equipment and upgrade system. Based on my six hours played I would recommend it, but do look into if it is your sort of thing.
You can grind a little, but you get diminishing XP replaying missions. I don’t know if gold is reduced.
- 2nd time = -50%
- 3rd time = -75%
- 4th time = -85%
- 5th time = ?
You can also switch difficulty before any mission (though there is one achievement which requires playing through all missions only on Hard).
I’m playing on Hard, and have completed 7 missions. It is certainly hard, but really it is hard because you are trying to juggle the various objectives. Still feels somewhat like a puzzle, but certainly not in that there is only one thing you can do to finish the mission. There are random elements (chest and spellbooks) which can dramatically change the way you can do the mission.
Time limits don’t seem like a big deal. Every mission seems to get harder (even brutal) the longer you take (reinforcements showing up). I’m not a fan of time limits, but this really hasn’t bothered me in this game.
So far, still really fun.
It’s nice the game accommodates the bumblers and slow learners among us (me) by making so many of the harder mission goals optional (or replayable or however it works). ;)
Has anyone beat Ishargo Highlands? I should have bought some other equipment, I think. Also, not get an imp from one of the spellbooks and maybe hoping for dynamite from a chest.