20 hours in content clear, thoughts so far. *SPOILERS*

[Watt]

First some background, I have been playing tactics style games for over 30 years from ogre battle on the snes and FFT on the ps1 to the more recent banner saga and triangle strategy. I have played countless settings, stories, and systems throughout this time and have a darn good idea of what is subjectively and objectively good or bad in these types of games.

From what I have played this game is very likely to be a solid addition to the genre when it is finished. Minor hicups aside nothing has stood out enough to be a glaring issue, I refuse to dock points on these for a game that is in early access AND unfinished. At the same time I have to admit that there is very little to make this game stand out so far. It feels, looks, and plays like a solid game just nothing that has wow'd me yet. That's not really a bad thing in my mind though, it just means the game can grow and improve from here. So heres my journey and thoughts.

I started out playing on normal difficulty and did not pick adaptive. I wanted to play what was purposefully crafted and honestly I never have trusted a game when it says it is adaptive to how you play. AAA or indie it doesn't matter, so far anyone that has claimed this always leans either too easy or too hard and is rarely more then just a hp/stats number tweek instead of being a tactical/AI tweek. Making enemies into 'bullet sponges' does not make them hard, just tedious, same thing for making them easy. The first few chapters of the game was great, nothing too hard or too easy for normal, I even lost a few hearts on a few of my units but never lost one completely. All the way up to the 2v1 Matilde fight where I found a victory bug. Up until this point the challenge was a nice curve that I had fun with. Story wise it felt familiar, was getting some hard ogre battle 64 vibes at the start, and everything was making sense until the heel turn with Matilde. Up until that point, and even the hint from the killed merchant, she felt like a full fledge rebel. So at the end when she comes out and says 'ya, no, i was always a baddie now die' with no real solid reason just felt off. I knew she was going to betray us, I knew she was bad because I have seen this story line play out before, but I was expecting her reasoning to be something like 'the kind has my family/lover' or *evil magic brainwashing*. She has been helping the rebels for a long while right? The red head rebel even says so, and even turns away to shed a few tears when you get back from the mission. To have very little attachment after so long and no strong reason behind her treachery other then service to the king, to me all that just felt a bit off.

After the Miltilde arc I was given two choices of where to go, out east and up north, both to go find help to replace what was lost. Story wise it checks out, we need help and more equipment for the fight against the king. Went to the east first because I felt that was more important right now then a favor to the red head rebel. Got totally destroyed in that first mission, reloaded the auto save and got destroyed again. Reloaded my save before the fight and finally notice the big level 15 recommended sign..... all of my units were 10 or 11. Bit of a shock there considering how well the curve has been so far, so I decided to grind for a bit. Found a nice spot with the node above the southern town, nice opening area with a unit allowance of 10. Turned on a movie and spaced out for a bit, next thing I know all my units are 18-20, opps.

Blasted through the dragon storyline. Like the dragon knight guy, it felt like he was supposed to come off as a gullible character but to me it felt more like he was just being taken advantage of. Neither of those are bad in my mind but it didnt feel like he leaned hard enough in either direction and came off as ehhh instead. When it was done I got the full screen popup of 'thanks for playing' and really appreciated that the game didnt just end there and I could keep playing. At the end of his story line he has mastered the dragon and is riding around on it saddle and all, but when I goto the next section and check my party setup the dragon mount is no where to be found. Not put in yet, or did I find another bug?

From there I went around to the shop and blacksmith fully gearing out all my units and went to the north to take care of the red heads favor, which I figure out later being the necromancer storyline. This whole section I really liked. The take on necros being good, atleast originally, isn't something I have seen done much if at all. The ideological rivalry between the new guest and our guys was done well. The back and forth was entertaining and in the end the show of respect to your dead necro friend was nice. The reveal of the queen at the end was neat. My one and only gripe with this arc was with the gauntlet at the end. Yes I know you are able to leave it and start back where you left off, a feature that does not happen often in these games its either all or nothing, but it was way too damn long. Either by stubbornness or stupidity I did the whole thing in one shot so I only have myself to blame, but it needs to be cut in half. A gauntlet should realistically only be four or five missions at most.

[Watt]

Now for some misc bits.

Bugs
Yep, there are some. Dialogue will freeze/stop sometimes, combat will freeze/stop at times for different reasons, units sometimes clip through terrain or display oddly, Matilde not dieing forcing me to SPARTA her, and I crashed to desktop with no error once. All of that said, and like I said in the first post, this game is in early access and unfinished so I wont dock points for these, but I have to mention them atleast.

Music/sound
Nothing stands out too much, a lot of atmospheric stuff too. Love the crickets during night and sounds of the storm. But sitting here thinking back I cant go 'oh that music played at this part'. Like for instance ogre battle 64, I can vividly remember the title screen, when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan, and briefing music and I havnt touched that game in over 25 years. Music was just ok for this.

flag loading screens
really minor gripe, but do we have to press something for it to clear? After a while it starts to be an annoyance. If you want us to read/remember the lore bits attached to them then make them available in the archives maybe?

leveling
I cant remember when, I think it was before the dragon storyline, but my levels were cap'd at 20 and sp at 1000. This really should be removed. If I want to grind to 100 or to whatever max level is/will be then I should be able to do that. If you dont want your players to do that then I suggest you put diminishing returns on XP if you out level the enemies instead. That way you could grind to a point but eventually it would be better to continue on in the story to get access to better XP.

SP
This one needs a rethink. The cost of skills is mostly ok, I feel some need to be reduced, but overall ok. What needs a change is the loss of SP when changing classes. I get why you dont want SP earned by a unit for one class to be used on another class, maybe the unit would be too overpowered. However it doesnt stop that because all you are having the player do is grind out some more fights to get SP which also gives them xp and they end up being over leveled. So they end up overpowered anyway. Let the units keep their SP when changing classes, that way they are stronger in abilities not levels and in most cases the stats you get from levels far outweigh the advantage of most abilities. If letting us use SP across classes isnt possible or something you dont want to do then can you please have it record and save the SP a unit has for a class that way if you decide to change a unit back they have any SP they didnt spend for that class. I had an archer with 600SP that I switch to duelist for an ability then switched back to archer to get the last skill and her SP was gone.

Mounts
We only have access to horses with the current game so I dont know if this is something you will add or change later but I will give my thoughts now. Mounts need something special to them. Right now they just feel like an extra HP bar for a unit. When you factor that in with how they take up another unit allocation and are awkward to move and position on the battle field I didnt end up using them much at all.

Magic units
The game up to the current content feels really melee or physical damage heavy and I think would benefit a lot by having us meet up with a named magic user(other then the necro) during the Matilde arc or atleast sometime before the dragon arc. I saved up all my magic related tarot cards thinking I would run into one and never did. If a new named character is out of the question then maybe a new magic unit type to recruit from enemies or buy from the guild? Maybe one that specializes in buff/debuff spells. Both options are a bunch of work sure but would be appreciated.

UI
Small gripes again sorry. Give us the option to access our party if we are in the shop/blacksmith areas, having to back out to the world map to check if I already have a item or something gets annoying. In the try and buy section of the shop we get nice indications of good(green) and bad(red) numbers which is wonderful and helps a lot for at the glance comparisons, however if you go into the party menu and do the same for a units equip menu there is no red and green, would it be possible to add the shop function to the party unit menu too?