Recent reviews by Ekyos

Things are finally going in the right direction, thanks devs.
Keep up the good work.
Best Total War ever.

Just showing the devs appreciation for listening to their playerbase.
Keep up the good work.

Hello there. I love the game and I'm having a great time. Lots of love to the devs.
Here are some important points that could help in deciding to buy the game or not, and to give feedback to the devs.


Good points :

- Unit customization :
Each unit has a class (that can evolve and change with experience), an affinity that modifies stats, natural and learned traits, and access to multiple end game classes. No unit is exactly the same and you can spend hours in customizing every unit to perfect your squads and your strategies. Quite a rewarding feeling.

- Squad customization :
Up to nine characters per squad depending on the leadership stat of the leader (= army capacity). Several types of squads (heavy infantry, light infantry, heavy cavalry, light cavalry, flying) reflecting the units they're composed of, with the possibility to mix up several classes and types of unit and determine the type of squad you want to end up with, which will in turn determine your movement points, battle effects and some available tactics.

- Tech tree :
Very good idea and well executed. It can completely change the units you'll use and the tactics you'll employ up until late mid game, even if you generally end up unlocking everything later. The majority of the perks are meaningful, it's not just for show. You could rush magic efficiency quite early to build strong mages-centered squads, or go for the possibility to field and increase the efficiency of firearms and cannons early on for example. The 3 branches are very different from each other, with some key perks in each branch.

- Artifacts system :
Another good way to customize your squads, but loot and merchants stocks are RNG (see bad points below). You're therefore forced to do with what you have, and sometimes luck isn't on your side and you'll have to make do. But an altogether great addition to the game and another layer of customization, even more so because it takes army capacity (leadership stat) to equip an artifact. You may have to chose between equiping an artifact or adding a new unit to your squad, and that choice is important. A bit to few different artifacts for my taste though.

- Arenas :
Optional battles between chapters that are a nice addition to the game. A bit of map variety for each level would be nice (currently 4 diffculty levels with 1 map each). In order to lessen artifacts RNG, it would also be nice to let us chose our rewards after each arena completion, the quality of the rewards depending on the difficulty and the number of turns spent to complete the arena (bronze : white -> green items, silver : white -> blue items, gold : green -> violet items, platinum : blue -> orange items). To compensate, the number of rewards could be reduced (sum of gold or number of artifacts earned), or the cost of the badges from the merchants could be increased.

- Music :
Some very nice ones, some less memorable, but always in tune with what happens on screen. Big up for the main theme and the bronze arena music.

- Save system :
You can quicksave and quickload in the middle of a chapter. Good to counter unlucky RNG (again, cf bad points below), but allows save scumming. As you're not obliged to use it, it's actually quite nice to have the choice.


Average points :

- Writing :
The story and the plot are OK. Not the best, but good enough to want to know what happens next. Some very good scenes, some lacking ones, and some missing to build the world and the characters.

- Graphics :
Nice pixel art that gets the job done. I like the style, it reminds me of Fire Emblem and Golden Sun games on GBA. Less convinced by drawn character models, some are stunning (Stefan), others are horrendous (male MC), and you can get anything in between.

- Maps :
Okay tier, could have used a bit more work to make strategy more important, particularly in the use of specific tactics (ambushes), that are not important enough, even in Warlord difficulty. I like the +range and +defense from certain tiles though.

- Difficulty :
Quite well balanced. On the whole Warlord mode may be a bit too easy from the start for veteran players. Lunatic mode incoming though, should be a nice challenge. Easy mode should be a breeze, but as this game shines far more from its gameplay and customization possibilities than its story, I don't know if it's worth it. AI coding makes the game maybe a bit too cheesy for my taste (more on that below).


Bad points :

- RNG :
Too much RNG. Units stats, traits and affinities depend on RNG when you recruit them, which can become quite tedious when you want to optimize your recruitment (which is not really necessary though, so this point entirely depends on your own perfectionism). Artifacts obtention depends on RNG (crafting or a selection system would be nice). Unique mercenary spawn depends on RNG (could we unlock them differently ?). You get the point. Auto-battles are also a bit RNG in their results : a same fight could end in a lot of different ways without you having any control on the results besides which squad you sent into battle.
=> I would really like to be able to determine myself which ennemy units my own units will focus in battle. It would be magnificent if we could passively prioritize targets for each unit in each squad, like the gambit system of FF12. For exemple, making the mages in a squad focus heavily armored units, and archers focus mages or healers. Contrary to a Fire Emblem game where a unit has only one set of stats, squads are composed of a variety of different units with different stats. Allowing us (and the AI) to determine the focus of each of our units is therefore quite logical. After all, you don't want your archer to RNG target a heavily armored unit that takes no physical damage, do you ?

- AI :
Too predictable and unpredictable at the same time. The AI will nearly always target the less threatening squad, which doesn't mean a whole lot in reality, each unit having a custom threat number that can be completely irrelevant depending on the situation. An AI full cavalry squad could therefore charge into a squad of lancers because they were less threatening on paper, and completely impale themselves as a result. The use of range or melee attacks seems to be a bit unpredictable though, and I've encountered several situations where the AI suicide most of their squad in a ranged battle because they had 2 poor archers against my squad full of archers. All in all, I would prefer a more logical and adaptable AI that could take better fights, use the terrain to its advantage, retreat when needed and heal between turns...

- Character building :
Lacking. Would need some more work to really make us care about the main characters (about a dozen of them in total). Some rare moments of brilliance and some OK-developped characters, but it could be really better.

- Bonds (friendships and romances) :
The entire bond system seems a bit broken. I feel that you'll have the same conversations between the same characters at the same point of the story in every playthrough. Most of the friendship conversations are OK tier and can help you understand a bit more about the characters and their background. However, if you're interested in romance, please note that apart from special relationships highlighted during the main story, romance options are at best a bit ridiculous, and at worst very cringe-worthy, with nearly no buildup, no consequences on the story and poorly written dialogues. If you're not taking it too seriously, their ridiculousness in an otherwise somber world can be some sort of comic relief, even if unintended. Otherwise, you may be disappointed.


All in all, the good points outweigh the bad ones by a lot, and the game is more than enjoyable. If you like tactical RPG with lots of customization options, Symphony of War may be everything you're looking for or didn't know you needed.

I would have given this game a positive review were it not for the announcement of the Definitive Edition on Steam. Instead of updating the main PC game to have the same new features as the Switch version (and I would have gladly paid 15€ for a PC DE upgrade), they decided to re-release the Switch game on Steam at full price.

I want to play the DE, but as I already own 90% of it with the original game, I don't want to pay full price for it, neither do I want to play it with the Switch inferior settings. The fact that this is the only option shows how much Square Enix doesn't care about its fanbase. And it would have been simpler to develop the new Switch features for the PC version than to port the entire Switch version, so this is not a technical issue.

So basically, if you don't own any version of the game, you can wait for the Definitive Edition, taking into consideration that, ironically, the graphics of the Definitive Edition will be worse than those of the original game. If you already own the base game however, please don't fall into the trap and ignore the DE, the graphical downgrade and small improvements aren't worth paying for a full price game again.

Thanks Square Enix, nice move.