It bums me out to give this a negative review, since I badly wanted it to be good and did enjoy some aspects of it. The art and animation are stunning; it was very clearly made by a team of visual design veterans. I applaud Stoic's attempt at breathing new life into tactical RPG battles by making it more akin to chess than say, FF Tactics. Unfortunately, the system they came up with is easily exploited once you understand how it works. Weaken (but don't kill!) lesser mobs so that they can't deal damage and continue to eat up turns for the enemy team, then focus on the heavy hitters. After a while I started to dread fights because of how formulaic and boring they become. No variation/advantages in terrain; just the same tired grid, battle after battle after battle. The lore is excellent and well-formed, yet the story itself is unfocused and difficult to follow. Even the score by Austin Wintory (whose soundtrack for indie darling Journey is amongst the greatest of all time) is forgettable.

I feel like there's a great game somewhere in here, but the pieces just haven't come together yet. With any luck Stoic will raise enough funds to continue the saga and I'll give it another go to see if they resolve some of these issues. Until then I can't bring myself to finish this first installment. Too bad.

UPDATE: Ended up beating the game anyway since I was at the final boss. Had to cheese my way through on easy thanks to an absurd upswing in difficulty for the second phase of the fight. It did not improve my opinion of the game.

It bums me out to give this a negative review, since I badly wanted it to be good and did enjoy some aspects of it. The art and animation are stunning; it was very clearly made by a team of visual design veterans. I applaud Stoic's attempt at breathing new life into tactical RPG battles by making it more akin to chess than say, FF Tactics. Unfortunately, the system they came up with is easily exploited once you understand how it works. Weaken (but don't kill!) lesser mobs so that they can't deal damage and continue to eat up turns for the enemy team, then focus on the heavy hitters. After a while I started to dread fights because of how formulaic and boring they become. No variation/advantages in terrain; just the same tired grid, battle after battle after battle. The lore is excellent and well-formed, yet the story itself is unfocused and difficult to follow. Even the score by Austin Wintory (whose soundtrack for indie darling Journey is amongst the greatest of all time) is forgettable. I feel like there's a great game somewhere in here, but the pieces just haven't come together yet. With any luck Stoic will raise enough funds to continue the saga and I'll give it another go to see if they resolve some of these issues. Until then I can't bring myself to finish this first installment. Too bad. UPDATE: Ended up beating the game anyway since I was at the final boss. Had to cheese my way through on easy thanks to an absurd upswing in difficulty for the second phase of the fight. It did not improve my opinion of the game.