Recent reviews by Fairlight (Honest Feng)

This game has raised the bar for RPGs.

Larian rolled a 20.

Hail to the King.

If I could give this game a 'Mixed' option rather than yes or no, I would.

This game feels is unfinished. Small selection of maps, only one game mode in matchmaking, zero sense of progression or leveling or anything, no ranking system, nothing to work towards whatsoever. Even the in game shop doesn't function yet, like a store front that just says 'Coming Soon.'

This is all for multiplayer, I haven't messed with campaign. But this isn't a finished product.

With that said, I still gave the game the thumbs up because the quality of what is actually here is superb. The explosions, the dust in the air, the bullets ricocheting off walls, the screaming soldiers and chaos - this game looks and feels like a WW2 movie and the immersion is incredible. The factions are unique and have their own playstyles and strategies, everything just feels right on. When the rest of the actual content is added, this game will be a masterpiece, but releasing it in this state in the first place is questionable.

Don't let this game's visual style put you off from trying it. The gameplay is challenging, tight, tactical, satisfying, and infuriating.

All the battles are high stakes and tense, and death is always waiting for you to make just one wrong decision. Despite the goofy art style, the game is deep, with loads of weapons and armors to choose from, multiple weapon specialties, multiple enemy factions to battle against, upgrades for your whole company, and more.

The difficulty curve is incredibly sharp; expect to die horribly on your first several runs. But once you get the hang of things, staying alive becomes a lot easier. After 300 hours of playing, I still haven't challenged all the bosses yet; there is an incredible amount of content here.

There's no voice acting in this game and quite a bit of reading to do, but the writing is high quality and often hilarious, which makes it much easier to get through the longer sections. You can skip most of the dialogue in towns if you wish, but in some challenge ares near certain bosses this may get you killed.

DLCs for the game are all good value, most notably the Warriors of the North expansion.

Highly recommend for RPG fans, hardcore strategists, or folks looking for a medieval take on XCOM.

The best game you've never heard of.

Very underrated battle mommy simulator.

Combines the best parts of Ogre Battle and Fire Emblem series.

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You move around the map in turn based battle like Fire Emblem, but you control entire squads that fight mostly with direct commands like Ogre Battle. You can change the classes, gear, traits, and element of every character, again just like ogre battle.

Map screen and terrain looks a lot like Fire Emblem or Advance Wars, as do the character sprites. Very enjoyable to look at, if you are a fan of retro games with a super nintendo style.

Lots of really smart design decisions here; if you spend a ton of resources to upgrade a character and then realize you don't like the new class, you get all the resources back if change back to your old class. Healers are smart enough to hold their turn if no allies are hurt, and then drop the heal after the first round of combat. Lots of convenient little details like this are present throughout the game and show that the developer has played these kinds of games before, and has learned from them. Excellently executed.

The writing of the game is mostly smart with a hint of self awareness; the protagonist often voices the same concerns and questions the player will have, which is nice. There are definitely a handful of weird and cheesy parts but thankfully the protagonist and supporting cast usually get straight to the point in most scenes.

Downsides to the game are low res character art, lack of voice acting, some dated looking effects, and rigid menu system that often requires extra clicks to get to the setting you are actually trying to change. You can tell the game had a small budget. The game is also very easy, to the point where playing normal is more of a cakewalk and playing on hard is basically necessary if you want a challenge. Most maps can be completed easily on hard, but completing them with zero casualties is the real challenge and that can be tricky on some maps.

Overall highly recommended, but understand that you are getting a low budget, super nintendo looking game here. The multiple layers of customization and tactical depth underneath more than make up for it.

This game thinks you are stupid.

No, really, the writers of this game believe that your IQ is negative. It is obvious from the story that they wanted to tell a tale of political intrigue, of politics and backstabbing, of philosophy and the darker side of human nature. They wanted this to be Game of Thrones. And to their credit, the actual plot of the game is exactly that - political scheming and backstabbing and people changing sides while vying for power.

However, it feels like a studio executive looked at the script and said "dumb this down so children can easily understand it" and now you have Triangle Strategy. The characters stop and recap to each other every conversation, just in case the player is too dumb to understand the very basic info that was just stated. The characters themselves are also portrayed as very oblivious in this manner, so other characters have to point out the obvious to them and keep the player up to date.

The characters are one dimensional and have zero nuance. Most of the main cast of playable characters fit nicely into a stereotype and that is ok; where it really fails is the villains. The villains are just evil because they can be. Rude to everyone for no reason, laughing at their own evil schemes. Pretty sure they all go out for drinks after hours and look for puppies on the sidewalk to kick just to make children cry. Meanwhile the hero is a perfect boy scout at all times. It's extremely black and white, with no depth to either side.

The reason I focus so hard on the story in this review is due to just how much story there is, with numerous, long cutscenes in every chapter. I only played three battles in the first six hours of play time; the rest was cutscenes and wandering around town talking to NPCs and making decisions. When a game features so much story, that story should be better written than this. There is also the voice acting, which is soulless and emotionless from the protagonist and his fiance.

This is doubled down on by the fact that the characters frequently come together to vote on the next course of action, which can have major story implications and/or choose which level to go to next. If you have skipped through the dialogue, you may miss critical clues, and then be unable to convince your followers to agree with you. I was actually outvoted once in my playthrough and not allowed to visit the area I wanted to go to. So you can't even skip the dreary dialogue, otherwise you may be penalized or get a bad ending.


For the actual gameplay, it's surprisingly good. I know I just tore the acting and characters apart, but the battles do make up for it. Snappy turns and movement, creative skills, lots of playable characters, pleasing visuals, and fun mechanics. The battles are very fun and kept me playing to the end. The only downside is customization - there isn't any. You can't change classes, or weapons or armor, or anything. You get two slots for accessories and there are very few accessories in the game to pick from, so putting together your own custom 'builds' isn't really possible here. The customization instead relies on experimenting with different party member combinations, since every character brings completely separate skill sets to the field.

I have seen a few people mentioning in their reviews that this game is too easy; that may be true on normal settings but if you want a challenge you can put it on Hard. This game will absolutely and ruthlessly destroy you right out the gate with no mercy on Hard. It's not exactly balanced though, as every enemy has mountains of HP and hits much harder than you, so you have to play perfectly and/or cheese every encounter. But if you really want a challenge, that option is there.

Overall I recommend the game for its strategic fun, but I caution anyone who was looking for a deep or compelling story and memorable characters to pass on this. Go play Tactics Ogre: Reborn instead if you are looking for a SRPG with actual characters and storytelling.


Characters are dumb and forgettable, and many have painfully bad voice acting
Plot of story is ok
Combat is good, very fun
Many characters and strategies
No customization, your characters come in a box
Prepare to sit through very long cutscenes

Tight, tactical gameplay. Well executed mission structure, great variety of maps, light RPG elements for leveling your soldiers, randomly generated missions to keep things fresh, massive amount of mods available; this is the best sci-fi tactical game out there, bar none.

Nearly flawless game, with its few rough edges mostly solved with a bit of modding.

But I swear if my units miss one more 99% accurate shot I'm gonna lose my mind a;kfujbgalkufbjasdfhasdfh

Among all the first person co-op hack n slash games out there, this one stands alone as the best there is.

If you wanna chop up waves and waves of enemies while leveling characters and hoarding loot, accept no substitutes.

There are many FPS games, there are many RPG hack n slash games, but there's only one Vermintide 2.

.... ok so maybe that actually means there's been two vermintides, whatever, shut up and buy it.

Gets old very quickly. Run to the next objective, hit the button, hold off waves of aliens, repeat.

This is fine in the first mission or two, but when you're ten hours deep into the game and it still follows this exact pattern in every. single. level. it will really start to wear on your patience. Only the grand finale of the final mission offers a different playstyle, but that's only 1% of the game and it's not worth trudging through the 11 identical missions before it.

Visuals are great, audio is borrowed from the film so it sounds authentic, packed with references to the movies, lots of collectible gear and perks, multiple playable classes... there's a lot here that's done very well. But in the end the *extremely* repetitive mission structure holds it back.

The first hour or two of the game are great, as you constantly feel like you're uncovering new secrets and slowly progressing the plot while figuring out puzzles.

However, the second half of the game really drops the ball, as it drags on far longer than it needs to and starts to lose momentum. The writing in the first half is semi believable and pulls you in, but goes into completely absurd territory in the second half as it unleashes one 'twist' after another until the whole thing becomes ridiculous. Each 'loop' through the game events feels like it takes even longer than the previous ones as you have more and more steps to remember and perfect, causing the game's later stages to drag on forever.

Finishing this game also requires completing exact specific steps in a specific order, with little to no variance on how those steps can be completed. If you miss one item or even so much as miss-time your click, even with the correct items, you get forced to restart. This leads to some serious frustration at the end of the game once you've gathered every clue and have a complete understanding of the story, since even with all the information, you'll still have to resort to pure trial and error (repeatedly) to finally get through to the end credits. Each time you experiment to find the solution and get it wrong, you have to sit through the entire sequence again.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the game, but man, the last couple hours are pure pain and it really sours the experience.

Consider looking at Sexy Brutale instead if you'd like a good time looping mystery game.