Yup. I wasn’t going to say anything but that seems pretty clear. ;)
Innovative is Invisible Inc or Into the Breach. This sounds bog-standard, but good. I’m still dubious because the graphics are a little too Darkest Dungeony. That doesn’t mean the game is bad! But it’s a bit of a turn-off for me. Here, look at this:
Also, uh, are those supposed to be characters’ names on the left there?
I actually really like the art style! The only turn-off for me is that the environments seem pretty brown/grey and depressing. Although, I love Trials of Fire and its environments aren’t exactly verdant either.
The game has some elegant mechanics. For example, what it does with allies moving in other allies hexes.
Any tactical game of this style has to deal what to do with it, A) should it make allied soldiers ‘block’ other allies, or B) should they abstract it as if the soldiers let pass their mates always without wasting time?
On one hand, turn based games makes it very cumbersome, more of what it would be in real life, because units move in sequential order in videogames unlike RL, on the other hand, it’s a nice layer of tactics, having to take in account the unit order, their positioning and the orders you plan to do in the next turns.
In Urtuk, they chose option A, they block allies, so management of units and planning in bottlenecks of terrain can be pretty important… but there is a twist. Everyone has the ‘swap’ ability, to swap once positions with another unit, useful not only to move to positions already occupied by allies but to save wounded units. However, it’s a ability that ends turn, so you give up attacking that turn or doing any extra movement.
And a twist inside the twist: there is fairly common mutator that upgrades it so you can use Swap several times in a turn, without ending your movement or turn. So if you really want to have more flexible movement, you can ‘pay’ using a mutator slot in a few units to have it.
So in the end they don’t use A or B, but option C, that it’s somewhat in the middle.
I prioritise the Light Foot mutator above all others for the benefits of tactical flexibility and general quality of life joy. As of day 20 or so in my current campaign two of my core six have absorbed the mutation (adding it to their innate traits / abilities) and another is progressing toward absorption. I find this makes things just so much easier on the battlefield!
Me too, at least for my 3 primary melee damage dealers. I can’t imagine having to deal without it.
Anyone have an impression of how much of the map we are supposed to clear vs. finding the exit. There is the pressure of the bounty hunters. have fought them once so far.. I have fought a ton of battles so far at day 48 and have uncovered about half the map. Unless there starts being a little more variety I can see me getting some battle fatigue.
The nice thing about how they treat injuries, is that you can take on the boss with an uninjured team, get wiped and still be fine provided you take on some easy fights while recovering.
After 48 days, I think you shouldn’t have any trouble with the first boss.
Ditto. I try to get that one absorbed on my guys as soon as possible. For my javelineers and crossbow troops, I try to get the ranged support mutators as soon as possible and get them absorbed. Those are critical for ranged effectiveness. I like to put the mutator that allows you to start the battle with your ultimate skill active on my priest. That allows him to use Aegis 3 or 4 times on the first turn. Aegis is just about the best skill in the game and the more you can use it the better.
The other type of mutators I really like are the ones that restore health. I like to put one of those on my berserker. The large number of different mutators really opens up a lot of options for different kinds of tactics in battle. It’s such a great game. I like it more than Battle Brothers.
@abrandt , @Lykurgos , you folks omitted the single coolest feature of Trials of Fire: being able to import your own paper dolls. I have discovered this, and I am not using that knowledge responsibly. 8D
(Seriously, though, I’m really liking this. Thanks for the sales pitch!)
I have had a lot of value from Battle Brothers yet I think I enjoy Urtuk more. Battle Brothers delivered a fantastic sense of progress and achievement, but there was also a heck of a lot of doing nothing (whilst travelling) to endure & a strong need to grind away to improve the combat readiness of the band. Those two needs are missing from Urtuk, so I can get straight into the enjoyable combat.
@justaguy2 have you played this yet? I don’t think there are any moving enemies during free aim mode so you should hopefully enjoy it.
I definitely do.
For one, better animations.
Plus, larger battlefields.
Plus, the whole thing just feels more fluid. I am sure someone with word powers (cough Tom Chick*) would do a far better job dissecting why it just seems to work so much better.
I had never heard of Trials of Fire, yet another reason this forum should be made president.
edit: turns out I was following it on Steam, so it must have crossed my radar at some point.
The game is good, but I feel it’s a game that supposes you are going to really love it.
I say that because it’s seems you are going to play it for a long time. Almost every turn/day is a battle, you have to explore around, then at some point you get wounded, you have to heal people for several days, sending people to missions get them away for a entire week, you are attacked by bounty hunters, there are several towns you have to conquer jut to find the path to the second map, and it seems there are 4 maps to play in, which if each one supposes the same number of fights at the first map… What I’m getting by is that you better love the tactical combat here because it seems you are going to have 120 battles or more.
And that’s per campaign. There are several factions you unlock in the ‘New game’ screen so the intention here is to replay it a bunch of times, too.
I wish there was a ‘campaign length’ setting.
One downer, the UI is always the most clear, e.g. when deploying, sometimes your characters are scattered all over the place, and you have to zoom out and scan to find them. Just double clicking on the portraits doesn;t seem to do much.
Plus, I recruited an armourer, and it took me ages to figure out how to use him, because he can equip any item, whereas every other class is item locked.
Also, no way to rename characters that I can see?
And I don’t get how to use focus abilities, I have had a couple of characters now unlock “focus abilities at global level” but these don’t seem to be activeable anywhere.
Last thing, not UI as such, but my Urtuk character managed to get injured, and then die, and I was expecting the game to end, but the fight continued…
I had to leave anyway, so I quit the fight.
To rename people:
I’d like to know the uses of money, I have more than 400 already but I haven’t seen any place where it can be used. I need medicines damnit.
The thing is, in this game events are almost entirely optional. When exploring if you have an event pop up that you don’t feel ready for, you can just ignore it and move on to the next exploration site. You probably really shouldn’t fight every turn unless that just what you want to to.
In 90 hours of play, I’ve had a unit wounded maybe 2 or 3 time, max. It really isn’t that common. When it does happen, you just pop in one of your reserves. I like to keep a core of 2 or 3 reserves leveled up with my regulars. Some battles call for different troop types and it’s good to have several tactical options available.
This I agree with. It’s a lengthy campaign and the game is heavily focused on combat.
The focus abilities will show up as icons along the bottom left of your screen during battle. You can use them on any unit’s turn by clicking on them. If you have one of the mutators that makes focus abilities available on the first turn of battle, they will show up and be available to use right from the start. I like to have ones like Aegis, Critical Hit, and Duel available on turn 1 where possible.
There are several types of stores you can find in the game to spend money. You can hire mercenary units and buy powerful equipment there. You can also use money to hire units from fortresses that you’ve captured. If you need medicine, there’s a chance your healer/alchemist units will make it at a reduced cost for you automatically along the way using the ingredients that you loot. You can also make it yourself anytime on the party screen by clicking the gear icon on the right. You need to have the resources needed, it doesn’t take money.
That was my mistake, I was looking to the units!
Cheers.
My good sir, that’s going to depend of a) how good is the player and b) what difficulty is he playing.
I can assure you I already depleted my starting medicine AND the extra one I could do with my resources. :P
I just found the exit from the first map in my current play after 40 days, and having explored far less than 50% of the map. As far as I know this is truly random rather than requiring a set threshold of map exploration.
That’s very true. I’ve just been playing on normal difficulty. I hear the higher difficulties can be brutal.
I found the exit on the first act after capturing the 4th town and hadn’t explored much of the map at all. I chose to stick around and explore and get a lot stronger before moving on.
Thanks to pre-release playtime I am pretty ‘good’, probably, and in my current play, day 40, am yet to take any injuries from any regular fights. However in my first ever fortress assault I had to retreat or face a party wipe (and I am playing ironman) and this resulted in my first two injuries . . . wondering how you handle fortress assaults therefore. First time right? :-)