As a veteran Into the Breach player, I jumped into this thinking I knew everything and inevitably got slapped by the mechanical differences.
Writing this review as of 100% completion of the achievements list (and yes, I'm aware it's only been out two and a half days), I robustly recommend this under its own merits.
Mechanically, it shares a lot of its base structure with Into the Breach. Its core loop is roughly the same, though with a set map path. It has nearly every damage type, tile action, and mission event as its compatriot, but adds a lot of new ones (for example, things that might be called escort missions broadly have artefacts like cannons which have their own free move).
These similarities are not a bad thing, especially with the game's hero system/party composition allowing for more interesting setups with far greater freedom of choice at the start (a trade off, of course, for less flexibility later on). The addition of the four man (well, three and an animal companion) squad also allows for some really interesting teamwork.
Currently the game has four unique bosses, each of which is solidly designed, but always in the same place and always accessed by the same route. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as each attempt will always be a little different, but if future additions are in the works then more variety would add to the game's appeal. Steam doesn't let reviews have enough words to write a full breakdown of the changes and additions to the mechanics, but its not hard to pick up in play.
The game plays clean and I've yet to encounter any crashes or major bugs through multiple game clears. The achievements are fair and can be acquired reasonably easily (though some take a little patience... or the lack of it in one case).
The one issue I would pick with this game is its lack of a manual (at least, as of its release state). While there is a tutorial which admirably covers the basics, certain mechanics aren't explored in depth and the damage calculation formula isn't always clear (for example, if you push a shielded enemy and deal damage in a single move, it seems to calculate the push damage separately from the rest of the attack, allowing you to wound or kill the target unlike Into the Breach's all in one calculation). This I suspect will likely be overcome once fan guides and future support are in place.
As such, I wholeheartedly recommend this game, especially to grid-based strategy fans!

Kind of sad to see this getting a Mixed rating on its first day. Plenty of worse games have done better.

It's inspired by Into the Breach, and it got kind of screwed by the fact that ItB came out with their Advanced Edition literally 3 weeks before it released. On top of that, ItB costs $15 while this game costs $20 (and even on its 20% launch sale discount, at $16 it's still more expensive than Into the Breach).

So, should you buy this if you don't already have Into the Breach? One billion percent no. Into the Breach is almost inarguably the best tactical roguelike of all time, and maybe one of the best video games of all time. If you haven't played it, wait for it to go on sale—or hell, just flat buy it at $15—and have the time of your life. Don't buy this.

But *assuming* you've already played ItB into the ground, Tyrant's Blessing is a good pickup. It's obviously inspired by Into the Breach but also plays very differently from it, since your goal is to kill the enemies (repeatedly) rather than to protect buildings, and there are nuances of strategy that the negative reviewers on Steam have obviously failed to pick up.

More games should build on Into the Breach. That game deserves a million clones, and Tyrant's Blessing is a heck of a good starting point.

The game is pretty good. But to be blunt and a bit mean, there is almost no reason to get this if you haven't already played Into the Breach. This basically does everything ITB does but a little worse.

The most annoying thing is you regularly can't see enough information without it being a chore, and sometimes just isn't shown at all. Some of the items you buy will say "uses per battle" and give you a number... yet for no apparent reason half of them simply leave you guessing. Monsters with special effects have no visuals or special icon easily viewable for easy reading of the complicated battlefield. When placing units at start of battle, you can't see their movement range, hp or what their attacks are... come on. If you have increased damage due to a proccing passive or other situation, your skill doesn't show its updated damage in its info window - but you also can't see total damage it's doing if it's more than hp than the enemy has, making you jump through hoops at times to calculate your actual possible max damage at x moment. Why can't I make hp bars show automatically, and good god why are enemy hp bars the same color as your party's (even ITB had this problem). There's a good amount of chore-causing oversights like this.

The one significantly unique thing in this is a weird mechanic that leaves a ghost image when you move a unit, and they can still take damage if that spot is attacked this turn. Maybe it's somewhat of a hassle, but it's also a pretty interesting idea that I wouldn't say is bad.

It hurts a little to say this but just get ITB and play this once you're sick of it. The game is similar while being more readable, better at giving information, not riddled with typos, cleaner interfaces, polish. This game is good but held back by lots of similar issues as mentioned above. The ITB devs simply paid more attention to keeping the gameplay smooth and well-communicated.

Half-baked Into the Breach.

I literally just finished digging back into ITB because they just had a huge update and man, that game is so, so fun. It's a perfectly balanced chess match with the AI. This game is not that, but I respect the effort.

First off, the resurrection mechanic for enemies is so annoying and honestly felt like the dev threw it in to artificially inflate the difficulty. It's not like Vek spawning where you have control of the board at all times. These mobs will respawn AND with a shield. It's like the dev couldn't think of good ways to balance gameplay, so they just made the existing enemies more difficult and spammy.

Second, the ghost feature. When you move, you leave behind a ghost that can be struck. Interesting in theory, but poorly realized and in actuality, an unnecessary and unfun layer of difficulty (a theme in this game). It is not made even remotely clear when certain things will and won't move your ghost, making it one of the most annoying aspects of the entire experience. I had to just run test paths with characters to see if it would move them or not. With abilities like the shield push, sometimes it would move my ghost and other times it wouldn't.

Third, the overall experience. Now, I'm not one to judge TOO harshly on user experience, as I've played a lot of indie games in my day, but this game needs a boat load of polish. The clunkiness of the UI was manageable, but uninspired. Like the shop was this dull purple blob with giant squares representing concepts. Character upgrade UI is massive and obtuse. Animations, character design, and environment all have this lacking to them. It feels like royalty-free Final Fantasy Tactics art was purchased. Oh and one particular nuisance was how often abilities wouldn't even register their hit patterns on the map. Couldn't tell you how many times I had to drag the cursor off and back on, sometimes a few times, just to get it to show up. This occurred extremely often, so it's highly unlikely it was missed, and sort of represents the ethos of this game: The experience exists and is complete, but I'm tired and don't want to polish up anything.

Fourth, the quest/game progression itself. ITB allows you to select one of four islands and even jump straight to the end after two. In this, at least on my first playthrough, I was guided on a linear route, occasionally given one offshoot optional level to complete. However, not doing it would just disadvantage me, so it becomes mandatory "optional". ITB only allows you to complete about 80% of the map before you fight the boss, giving each of your choices weight and strategy. The objectives within the missions were plain and uninspired. Protecting buildings in ITB created a HUGE difficulty and balance dynamic that also deflated the already small fighting arenas. There is nothing like that here. Sometimes you protect optional objectives, but they're inconsequentially easy, even on hard difficulty, to get around. There's a clear lack of understanding why ITB made the buildings an integral part of the gameplay loop and no effort was made to replace that complexity. Then they'll go and straight copy them, like on mine triggering missions, but because there's almost nothing restricting paths on the map, it's extremely challenging to guide the mobs onto the mines and I ended up having to shield and dive bomb my own characters to finish the objective.

Fifth, characters. Part of ITB's genius was their mech designs and synergies. I was always amazed by how each squad could make something so simple completely transform the way you play. I played every single squad in ITB and enjoyed every single playthrough. The starter crew in this game are your basic fantasy archetypes with little to no synergy with each other. They all function fine on their own, but don't explain how the game designer is going to wow you with their character classes or synergies. Maybe as more classes are unlocked, I'd change my mind, but after looking at what you can buy for optional skills from the shop, I am extremely unhopeful (like a simple +4 dmg dagger, pull rod, or give another player a turn at the cost of your own, despite your starter having that skill).

This game has the core engine capable of making something that is marketable and salable. In fact, I had actually just been thinking about how a fantasy ITB would play out literally yesterday and was JACKED when I saw this game. But, so many corners were cut along the way that it pulls you out of the experience and ultimately leads to regret and a desire to just go back to ITB and play that.

I just finished my first run. I don't know about this one. I enjoyed some of it, but it was also a bit bland. Would give this a "maybe" review

The good:
+ Lots of playable characters
+ Pretty design
+ Plays well, like Into The Breach
+ I enjoyed combat

The meh:
- I would've liked some more character customization
- A lot of the battles are pretty similar
- Run takes too long. I feel this should be more high-stakes, and 45 minutes max. I play pretty fast and I clocked in at about 1:30 for a victory. That's too long for a game like this imo.

I was having good time, solving puzzles trying to make a strategy to move enemies, kill some and try to not take damage etc.

I reached to the final boss. It was a joke. There are 3 enemies with 5 HP but best damage i can do is 4. So no one shot kills.
2 of them are grenadiers, which they are resistant to your move attacks, also they have 5 hp so you have to 2 shot them.
But there is also this boss ability that deals damage to 3 tiles on 3 different locations, just like princes's ability but more advanced. Its open field, even if you dash trough some pillars the enemy dragon still can deal damage to either you or your shadow. It was complete bulls..t, dealing with 6 different enemies,
1 dragon
2 of those enemies can do damage to 4 tiles (T shape attacks)
2 of them are grenadiers.
And last one is 5 an HP archer.
No matter what you do, you are going to take damage and these mf's deal 5-6 damage to you. Even if you maxed out everything you are still going to get 1 shotted. I killed the boss to get rid of his dragons ability, he respawned on the other turn. This is the only boss battle that boss respawns.

And the most annoying part is, YOU CANT RESTART BATTLE. So if you fail at the boss fight you have to play another 3-4 more hours to reach the boss just to try again. Game giving me "Victory" after horribly failing that mission is another joke.

Off the bat, I need to address that just because I don't recommend it DOES NOT mean this is a "bad game" - the game does what it's meant to do well. It feels like a good logic puzzle and it's fun and satisfying to get it right. In a vacuum, I'd absolutely recommend this game...

Unfortunately, we're not in a vacuum. Tyrant's Blessing takes *a lot* of inspiration from Into the Breach. The two games play *very* similarly. They're too similar - and I don't say this in a "copycat" sort of way, but they're so alike that you have to compare them apples to apples. And when you compare them, I personally feel Into the Breach is a bit more polished of a product, it's a little more stylish and has a little more substance, and it's the original... it's also $5 cheaper.

Tyrant's Blessing does do a couple things different. Most notably, while Into the Breach is mostly about protecting strategic objects on the map with some mech HP management, Tyrant's Blessing is mostly a battle - the enemies are primarily targeting your units, and you're trying to defeat them in turn. There is some variety to the missions, but they mostly revolve around direct conflict instead of tactical defense. To keep it challenging, if you try to move when targeted, you leave a 'shade' that will still take damage if hit. It creates a very interesting dance of pushing enemies and allies into and out of attacks to get everyone out of danger.

So what's the driving force? While it's fun and satisfying to nail, the game isn't particularly difficult overall and should be consistently clearable with a little thought. The story is kind of a nothingburger, so that's not it either. The big drive really is Achievements - they are both a goal in their own right, and the unlock system. Every two achievements a new character or pet to use; as such, the game rapidly becomes about completing as many as possible as quickly as possible. The last three unlocks are small bonuses for your camp; they aren't very satisfying of a reward for completing all 54 achievements, if we're honest.

There are also some balance issues. Some characters are simply better than others. A character that does high damage, on average, will do about 4-5 damage per enemy hit, sometimes to groups of up to 3 enemies - but this is nothing compared to a support character, whose attack hits every enemy. Nothing feels more OP than just doing 3 damage to every enemy for two turns, outright killing most and leaving the rest ripe to be picked off. Or the pet guinea pig, who spits out disposable allies, who can themselves do damage and build into a veritable army, and also happens to create extremely valuable smoke clouds anywhere each time it does this - good luck convincing anyone that the dog who does 0 damage but gently tugs someone and can do so in the rare instances of water is any match for that.

TL;DR - it's a good and fun game, but it has to live in the shadow of Into the Breach while also costing $5 more. You really experience most of what you need to on your first winning run, and each run after that is a hunt for achievements through samey encounters with samey enemies and an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion, and the interstitial dialogues don't do much to break that up. If you wish Into the Breach was more about direct combat, this might be more your style, though.

So, I love Into the Breach and this game is essentially Into the Breach, fantasy edition. There are some minor differences, but they aren't huge. If you have played Into the Breach, then picking this game up may be an easy choice and will be easy to understand and start playing.

Differences I have seen from ITB:
1. There are some missions that have objective bonuses to protect buildings or stationary objects, but I haven't seen them cause a failure.
2. Instead of protecting buildings, you instead have to deal with your character's previous location. So for example, if you move your character 4 blocks SE, a shadow of your char will exist in its original location. This means, you still have to deal with potential damage that might come to that spot after the turn ends. There are ways to avoid this with a Dash ability, but it seems you need to have "cover" like items near you, like a bush, or a wall.
3. While you might be able to make custom teams in ITB (I can't remember) you start off doing this in Tyrant's Blessing, you pick the 3 heroes from your roster that you have unlocked and 1 pet, equaling 4 total members. The pets are not as advanced in abilities (they have one, as far as I can tell) than your main heroes.

I haven't had many hours in the game, and while I don't know if it has the same Overwhelmingly solid game play of Into the Breach, I can so far, recommend this game as I love the brain challenges these kinds of game offer.

I am omitting a lot of details here because they simply are exact copies of how it is done by Into the Breach. Graphics are solid, resembling the Isoteric turn based RPG look of the Japanese Tactics genre. Music is decent and it appears to be roguelite with how the missions play out and rewards you get, but characters and abilities are static, again, very much like Into the Breach.

A fun puzzle game disguised as an SRPG. The gameplay loop is fun and the diverse characters and mechanics stretch out the experience. It has less balance than Into the Breach, but that just introduces a different kind of fun. Just because Popeyes has the best chicken sandwich doesn't mean you can never ever ever ever order the Wendy's Spicy Crispy.

Yep, simple and addictive.
Quite like it.
It's not too difficult so it's kinda perfect to get latched on.
Levels are between 2 min and 10 min for more difficult ones.
I'm 4 hours in and closing on end of first run.
Don't know what else is there to discover but looking forward to it.

Ok, so I finished the first run with a win.
Some conclusions after 5 hours:
The game does not have much replayability.
You aren't getting new heroes random, you are buying them as you wish and basically, sometime mid first playthrough, you can have all the best ones and breeze through the rest of the game.
From there on, it's just rinse and repeat.
So, while this is a good and fun game, don't expect more than 20 hours, realistically.
There are no upgrades or anything to gain by completing the game multiple times.