Ok I was sure I wouldn't post a negative review since it's Naheulbeuk and it's my teenage years and blablablabla, but also I can't recommend this game as I'm not sure I enjoy playing it.

This isn't a bad game by any means, but I can't go with the fight mechanics, and even though people do like difficulty, here it's more about decisions that I just don't understand/can't agree with.

During the fights, you will have to deal with :
- people dodging/paring attacks from the back
- people dodging attacks with 100% hit chance (hit chance being only based on your character stats, the dodging/paring being hidden)
- your character failing 100% hit chance friendly buff (because there's a hidden flat fail chance even if you have 100% hit chance, because fy)
- your character failing AURAS, STANCES and VANISHING, skills that do not even rely on hit chance since they are supposed to be a guaranteed hit (as you would expect from an aura or a self-buff ; all of this because of the flat crit-fail chance again).

While the devs are open about this and insist it's on purpose, it makes fights a random fest where anything can happen (I killed an ally trying to buff him). It's fun when you play multiplayer games, but in solo games it's just a pain, as fights are punishing (at least in hard mode) and this random crit-fail usually means you either lose the fight or are in a very bad situation from then.

I play tactical RPGs because I like planning, relying on mechanics and trying different strategies. Here, I just cross my fingers, hope I don't kill friends or get one-shot after missing a 100% hit chance attack in the back of an enemy who dodges and kills me in return.

Not fun, not satisfying (when you win, it's because randomness was on your side), punishing when random are not on your side.
I will finish it because Pen of Chaos, John Lang, le Naheulband etc, not because I enjoy the game itself.

I would not buy it knowing all this, also.

Edit : first fiht after this review, my dwarf crit-fail his defense stance and my thief his vanishing in the same turn. Apparently crit-fails have a 3% chance to happen. I don't believe so.
Edit 2 : the next fight, my vanish also epic failed. it's been once per battle for the last three battle. this is a joke '3%' rofl. At this point it makes me laugh nervously.

The writing is just absolute gold. Whoever wrote the script for this game needs to be given a bloody medal. It is right now the *only* thing keeping me trying to enjoy this game because it has the single worst, most infuriating RNG system I have ever experienced in a game since the 80's.

I knew it was coming too. Everything was going pretty well until the game introduced the "hey if things go bad, here is a meter of buffs that will fill up to make you feel better". The second that came up I immediately knew the game was now going to go out of its way to screw the player over and I have yet to be disappointed.

Every single combat since that thing has been a non-stop chain of critical failures, 90% miss streaks, constant enemy crits and oh, I missed the explanation where they discussed how NPCs don't pay any attention to attacks of opportunity. I have given up on even trying to set up units with threat squares as the NPC will routinely just stroll right through them without a care in the world.

I really want to like this game but at this point I barely make it through a single combat before I have to stop playing because the game is just that dead set on making you miserable. Hell I found Darkest Dungeon less aggravating and that game comes right out and tells you it is designed to screw you over.

So sorry, this one is getting a thumbs down from me on my review. Really really wanted to enjoy it and I tried. I would watch a show if they ever made one based on the game so long as they hire the same writers but as a game it is just not enjoyable.

I absolutely loathe the RNG in this game. It is my biggest turn off of a game I should adore. How can a 140% chance to hit backstab, not only fail to connect but also be critically parried causing your enemy to kill your team? Your abilities often hit your own team mates despite the odds being 6% or lower for friendly fire. Quite often you'll find members of your team can and will be killed before they even get a turn.

If you do get this game do not bother with the higher difficulties.

If I could give this game a recommendation of "maybe" or "only when significantly on sale" I would. I don't write reviews pretty much ever, but I felt I should with this one. I purchased this game because like many denizens of the internet and geekdom, I like Felicia Day and find her hilarious. Her talent could not carry the game enough for me to give it a positive rating though.

The game is very well polished, the English voice acting well done (with 1 or two exceptions), and the graphics are decent (not bad, but not spectacular either). One very wonderful thing about the game is that it has the unique position of being bug free as far as I could tell. I'm sure if someone digs deep enough they could find them, but there was nothing obvious, large or small to break immersion from the game. For a PC game that seems rare to me that a game is so bug free.

The gameplay though was average. There is very little character customization outside of your stat points and the small skill trees. For my playthrough, my characters ended up with 3-5 specialized skills each outside of standard attack, defend, use item, and move. This gives the game a more casual RPG feel to me. Each character is suck in their individual class and you get to pick one additional character if you wish, but there is a good amount of overlap between characters' skills and ability, unless you heavily skew everyone's stat points in different areas. A few characters had unique skills such as the thief's trap detection and disarmament, but with that example there was so little risk to stepping on traps and the exact same item reward (the basic grenade that is quickly useless after a few levels) from each disabled trap regardless of level or playtime it felt unnecessary. The combat was standard fare and executed well; nothing bad but nothing unique or that stands out.

The story fell flat for me. Prior to playing the game, it seemed like it would be hilarious and comedic. While playing the game, there were lots of jokes, but the best they could get from me was a small chuckle and not a laugh. The humor here was generally based on RPG stereotypes and failure, with nothing feeling too original except for the elves being morons instead of highly intelligent. However, everything was fairly silly, so it wasn't awful either. Many of the things the characters will say are the same, just stated in slightly different ways (e.g. the Barbarian always wants to fight and his god hates everything unrelated to fighting, the thief is a coward and everyone ignores him). I felt very little depth to the characters and often was bored by them.

So, do I recommend this game? No, not at full price, unless you are a person who loves any RPG and can more easily find things to be funny than most people.

So this negative review is entirely on how the combat is calculated in this game. The devs of this game seem to have collectively decided to calculate if you will hit an enemy almost impossible. Long explanation following this.

First there is a 3% critical failure. You would think that means when you go to attack an enemy,. and the screen says you have a 100% chance to hit, than only 3% chance for something bad to happen right?

Nope that is so far off from what actually happens that it make the game more difficult than not to even have it there. When you dive into what your actual chance to hit an is cap'd at 95%. So even if the screen says 150% chance to hit, that is still only 95% chance, with a separate 3% critical failure.

So wait you might think that means you always have a 5% chance to miss and a 3% failure right? Nope wrong again that 95% chance, is just that the action will make it to the enemy or object in quest. Once it reaches that square THEN the enemy dodge/parry/block start to kick in. This means you have to check the enemies parry/dodge/block EVERY SINGLE TIME before attack.

There is at least one BOSS that has a 70% dodge chance.

TL;DR

The numbers for hitting in combat are a lie and actual chance to needs to be calculated by inspecting enemies dodge/parry/black and doing the math in your head. If they had showed the block/parry/dodge chance on the screen when you attack this would be manageable. But to have to do a deep inspection before every hit is mind numbingly frustrating.

The game's attempts at humor get old and creepy fast and the RNG makes XCOM's look fair.


I was hoping for the Fable series meets Baldur's Gate/XCOM. Humor is one of the hardest things to translate so I cut it some slack. Even so, the writing relied on references, 'lol random' humor, and toilet humor too often for my taste. The English voice acting was bad. I get that some of the characters' voices are supposed to be annoying, but that doesn't stop it from being annoying! Even if all the jokes landed it would get old, and I considered muting the voices before I gave up entirely.

There isn't much of a main plot, and the characters are bad by design. They don't have names and are referred to by their class, and none of them develop. I don't care if the characters being cardboard cutouts of fantasy/DnD tropes is the joke, it gets old really fast. For example: the Elf and the Dwarf hate each other, like Legolas and Gimli in Lord of the Rings. You know why that duo works? Legolas and Gimli eventually grow to respect one another. In this game? Nope. They just bicker every chance they get and it gets increasingly stale with each repetition. Some of the early innuendos were kind of funny, like the 'Sudden Blood Surge' passive skill for the Ranger that raises his stats when he's next to the Elf. But the game keeps doubling down: the Ranger starts talking about the women on the team being "naked under their clothes" and whenever you access the Elf's inventory she wonders "why does everyone always put their hands in my pockets?" because her entire character outside of bickering with the Dwarf is being a dimwitted bimbo who's too stupid to realize she's being groped. It gets worse: The Elf receives at least one rape threat. A goblin you fight says "save that legume piece for later, doesn't matter if she's alive or not". I was giving some of the creepy lines leeway because I thought the translation was making it worse than was intended, but that? There is no way to make THAT even remotely okay, especially when it's said in the same over-the-top jokey voice as everything else and none of the characters react to it.


I played on the 2nd hardest difficulty. The fights ranged from being cakewalks to 'pray to RNGesus' hard, with several dips and jumps in difficulty. Here are the issues, from least annoying to worst:

The only way to remove traps permanently is to SLOWLY walk around with the Thief and disarm them.

You are limited to items on the characters' belts, which means each character has one to three items per battle. That's fine, but using an item costs your ONE action for the character's turn. This makes most items except healing potions and alcohol useless. The other gear is BORING. I was never excited for anything I found in the dungeon or shops. The shops update between chapters, which is not often enough.

Your characters have a stamina/mana pool but I never ran out because the ability cooldowns were too long.

Characters get experience based on how they did in the fight. I never figured out what the game rewarded. If a character is knocked out their xp is reduced, in addition to taking injuries. Since there is no way to grind for money, gear, or xp, if you scrape though battles with multiple knockouts too often, the xp penalty will build up until you are under-leveled with no way to fix it.

Combat feels extremely random. The enemy information tooltip is useless. Your party's chance to hit also doesn't factor in the enemy's chance to dodge/parry. I get that those are separate rolls that happen after the miss/hit roll, but you should display them as separate percentages. The enemies also dodge and parry VERY often. The devs response to this has been "Invest heavily in Agility and keep your characters together to increase your chance to hit." Let's break down the flaws in that plan:

First, many enemies have AOE attacks that they can and will spam. There are also exploding crates and traps. So grouping up tends to result in half of your party being dead at the end of each round, and you don't have enough healing to keep up with that.

Second, ranged attacks do not benefit from ally support, so for the Elf, Ranger, and Wizardess, support does nothing unless they are in melee, where they absolutely should not be. This also gimps the Charisma stat for them, and the Elf and Ranger start off heavily invested in Charisma. Ranged attacks can also inflict friendly fire and the chance of this happening is 10% of your chance to hit your intended target. Having higher accuracy means you have a HIGHER chance of friendly fire!

Third, when EVERY class has to dump most of their points into the same stat (Agility), something is wrong. I tried investing in Constitution for the Barbarian, Dwarf, and Ogre. Turns out that I should have made these tough, clumsy classes have the same Agility as the Thief because it increases accuracy, parry, and dodge, so it helps your offense and defense. After you max Agility maybe add some Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, or Courage depending on class, but these are distant secondary attributes and Charisma is worthless. Agility and support also only affect your hit chance, and having a hit chance over 100% DOES NOTHING. It doesn't increase your chance to critically hit or reduce your chance to critically fail, and it doesn't reduce the enemies' chances to parry and dodge, so many of your attacks will still be negated by parrying/dodging.

Fourth, EVERY action has a 3% chance to critically fail. This is the case even if the game says you have a 100% chance to succeed. This applies to buffs and healing too! The Barbarian critically failed his war cry? You don't get your buff, wasted your ONE action for his turn, and also DEBUFFED any allies in range! Also war cry is now on cooldown. Yes, the enemies can critically fail too. The worst thing that happens to them is they take some light damage or maybe trip. They never fail so hard they debuff their entire group! When the devs felt they had to add a 'pity meter' that fills up whenever your party fails their actions, so you can attempt some free actions to fix the situation, that should've been their hint to reduce the RNG.

Finally, the deployment area at the start of combat is too small and the enemies have better cover than your party does. Sometimes enemies approach from multiple directions, and sometimes your party starts next to a bunch of explosives they won't be able to move away from in time. Enemies also seem to have far better mobility, their ranged attackers can attack from a lot further away than yours can, and they seem to IGNORE several rules. They often bypassed my attacks of opportunity, and even if they DO trigger AND hit AND aren't dodged, attacks of opportunity just don't do enough damage because the enemies have so much health compared to your party! I fought RATS that had as much health as the BARBARIAN. The end result is that YOU have to be careful of attacks of opportunity, but the enemies don't. They WILL charge right past your front line to attack the Ranger, Elf, and Wizardess. Some enemies even seem to break the '1 action, 1 move per turn' rule, because they would move, throw a bomb or debuff, and then attack!

I'm giving this a no recommend based on what kind of player I am. That is to say, a semi-casual simple gamer.

I like tactics, I like strategy. I like chess, checkers, Age of Empires, games that have a set of rules and parameters that one can work within. I also like XCOM, Divinity, Pillars of Eternity. These games do have some RNG, but for some reason this game right here takes RNG and rubs your face in it. If you hate bad luck, inconvenient coincidences, and "of course that would happen" situations, this game will probably not be fun for you. I saved scum my way through this game. Combat can be fun, SHOULD be fun, but it's not. Everything that can go wrong will probably go wrong. It's just not fun for someone who expects things to work as they should. I set up a multi-layered move that took multiple turns with skills that are on 3 to 4 turn cooldowns it's kind of frustrating when the final piece of the puzzle gets smacked out of my hand because the game decided it didn't want to follow the parameters. In conclusion, having a critical failure mechanic is not fun-inducing. Better yet, having a critical failure mechanic that is not able to be mitigated is even worse.

Outside of that this game is alright. I enjoy the puzzles, the loot, the somewhat linear gear scaling, the limited skill tree. Like I said, I'm a simple gamer. Art is cute, humor is light and childish. I'm easily amused. I just don't recommend this game for casual gamers who don't like pulling out their hair.

Such a shame.

Great franchise for those who speak french, had a blast with the story, the voice acting and all the inside jokes and references.

Problem is the game mechanics are busted by the Critical Miss mechanic which is way too present (5% for ANY action, some enemies RAISE that number). When randomness becomes an integral feature of your combat system, in a TACTICAL RPG, it's just plain bad.

And the critical misses aren't just on hostile actions against something that could resist or counterattack, it happens just as much on buffs that the targets accept with open arms. Best example, the Brabarian has a shout that buffs everyone in a large radius. Cast it on turn 1 to start off the fight, critical miss, DEBUFFS all targets. I mean, what the actual fu*k.

Oh, and don't try to reload the fight to try and get a different result, the encounters are seeded. So by doing the same actions, you'll get the same crap. Not bad for a game thats core feature is randomness...

It also feels like the game devs were counscious that the critical misses were a problem so they added a bogus "balance" mechanic which is a gauge for special actions that fill up the more you fail. Long story short, it doesn't balance ♥♥♥♥.

Really wish I could recommend such a great story. But since I had to bump it down to the easiest of difficulties so that the bullsh*t critical misses wouldn't break all the fights, I really can't. Having followed the franchise for almost 20 years, I forced myself to finish the game out of sheer... fandom? But in the end it was just a long slog to the finish line.

I ain't getting the DLCs, hell, I ain't putting myself through any more of this sh*t.

it's cute and playful, but clunky. Feels like they spent their time on the characters but overlooked creating fun game play. Basically, you just follow a linear path and encounter repetitive, low tactic battles.

Where to start you attacks will miss more than they hit. Even if you have 100%+ chance to hit the enemy will just dodge. Half way through the game the enemies will do almost double your dmg. They will start to out number you 2 to 1. You only get to move once per turn and then use an action once, but the enemies dont have to abide by this rule. You dont even get to customize your party how you like outside of 1 character choice. Also super short story that could have been good but definitely not worth 35$. Go get divinty original sin 1/2 for a better story, longer game, and fair mechanics for around the same price.