Wildermyth

So I did the three chapter intro, and just finished the next five chapter set.

A granddaughter of my starting mystic from the very first campaign was my main tank at the end of the fifth chapter. Her son, so a great-grandson of my starting mystic, was a hunter but very new. The dynasty thing was neat. She was a reliable, core personality type.

The best mystic near the end of the fifth chapter was also older by the end of the run. From his starting text he had only joined for the booty, and only stayed for the other booty (the other female mystic). He got other males into very questionable side adventures throughout the story. His first love interest was no longer in the party near the end of the fifth chapter. Then, literally, on the eve of the final fight, he decided to take the reliable tank on a morning excursion to see a lovely sunrise, and she thought, well with his reputation I can see why, that he was making a move. So they ended up together right before the final fight.

As two of the older characters, they anchored the fight and not only did the wrap-up text have them living happily ever after, but the questionable mystic even reformed and found some personal peace … somewhat at least.

That’s a list of twists, and a fleshed out story line, I did not expect from this game, despite what others said. Makes me want to start the next set with the great-grandson as one of my starter characters.

Told you. This game is something special.

EG finally reviews it.

Been playing this at work. Like quite a bit about it. Always like turn based tactical combat. Nice that the enemies can become more powerful after fighting them. Card based deck with additional and stronger enemies added. At one point the enemies were given 5 different level ups but I could cancel out a few of them and had to decide on that. The Infusion thing is odd but can be powerful. Thank heavens I’m the only one here at work today!

I’m really impressed with how they integrate the storyline into the gameplay. The twists in the Thrixl campaign, and especially the battle at the end of Chapter 3, have been amazing.

Yeah, reviews mention XCOM a lot as a combat comparison. Which I haven’t played, but did buy on sale because family kept telling me the combat was right up my alley. XCOM still sits in my backlog.

I think at this point “X-com like” is shorthand for “game has a tactical combat layer,” and has very little to do with X com!

Is anyone else finding that they get one-shotted a lot in this game? I’m curious if there’s something I’m missing in terms of tactics or abilities or if it the tactical combat is just way too RNG-heavy for my tastes.

No, its quite common. Most of the enemies are very mobile and will easily bypass your tanks on most levels and can do enough damage in a single hit to smack down one of your squishies once they break through. Often there’s just nothing you can do about it, though if you’re not quite at the point where you can one shot them yourself abilities that stun, pin and (to a much lesser extent) hobble obviously go a long way to prevent this.

I found this gets less common the longer a campaign goes on as your characters can get quite tanky regardless of class. Spending LP to cancel cards in the main monster deck as often as possible can also help significantly as with a few bad draws stacked up you can end up with common enemy types suddenly hitting very hard indeed.

Are you “walling” with all of your characters?

Wow. I like this game a lot. It’s like Massive Chalice crossed with a weird fairy tale.

Finished my second campaign and mostly enjoyed it, but I ultimately abandoned the strategic map in chapter 5 (which was rapidly becoming an unwinnable morass with incursions popping up so fast there was no ability to stop/recover from them) and drove straight at the final mission (which proved oddly easy, especially in light of the fact that we were being overrun strategically).

I think I’m going to take a break now, though. The combat feels a little too arbitrary and the strategic game seems a little undercooked to me. The storytelling stuff is fantastic but is already getting repetitive 2 campaigns in, so I figure give them some time to add stuff, rebalance stuff, and for myself to forget some of what I’ve already seen. It’s definitely an enjoyable and unique game, I’m just not sure it’s fully living up to its potential yet. Here’s hoping it gets there.

FWIW there are new story elements in each campaign (both the main plot obv but also the random story bits in each area), as well as some pretty neat set pieces in the fights. You haven’t seen all of it yet.

Campaign three starts with two legacy characters and a random third, which I really enjoyed.

Funny, I actually started a legacy campaign (instead of the third story campaign) which has definitely been more interesting than just starting a new group. I guess I could have started the third story campaign and gotten something similar.

I figured out why this is so much fun. The enemies don’t have the free movement when discovered that they have in XCOM.

I have no idea where I am in the act/campaign landscape, but I’m enjoying the game a lot.

It really endears you to the characters with the story stuff, and so far I haven’t gotten tired of the mechanics, even though I’m basically doing the same thing every fight.

I do see the monsters snowballing quite a bit, so I’m excited to see how things develop, and whether I’m gonna be crushed in the late game.

I think losing some fights is supposed to happen? It adds to the character development and all. I screwed up early against some winebots, because I was chasing a forest spirit, and everyone “went down”, so now they’re crippled, or traumatized, or disgraced in some way. It adds a little bit of spice, and some cool scars!

It also means they’ll die earlier, but a lonely warlock fed them some magical pancakes that extended their lives, so it’s all good in the hood.

Exactly, same as roguelike just means permadeath, XCOM now means isometric/turnbased combat.

It’s a square tile grid, characters usually have 2 AP, attacking usually end your turn, there’re “free” actions like switching weapons, there’s permadeath (or at least permanent consequences).

So this is “Fire Emblem-like” but with 2 AP instead of 1.

Bought it for $20 on Steam last night after seeing glowing RPG of the year editorials in the latest PC Gamer mag and then finding and reading this thread.

is there a way to… zoom all the way out and see the entire tactical map during combat?