Brawl Tactics: Origins

As a fan of Tactics RPGs and Roguelite Deckbuilders, the concept of this game is something I have daydreamed about several times before, yet when I got to play it, the execution felt underwhelming at best. I think what hurts this game the most is the stat system, it is one of those cases where more does not equal better. I apologize for the comparisons, but I can't avoid mentioning Slay the Spire here for obvious reasons. In Slay the Spire, each character has a tremendously unique playstyle even though there's barely any stats in the game, the differences are done through their available card pools instead. I believe a similar approach would have helped this game a lot more. Now let me be clear, each character obviously DOES have different cards that reflect their playstyle, my problem with it is that on top of it they added an RPG stat system that you can upgrade too. This doesn't sound bad in theory, but when you start playing it's just a not really fun, quite generic, and completely disposable part of the game altogether. I honestly think the game would be better if it didn't have it, and that's never a good thing to say about a game mechanic. Keeping it simple was the better choice imo. Another issue is that you only get to upgrade your main hero's deck, you can't add cards to your allies' decks. I'm not sure if that's an early access issue or if they plan to leave it that way, but that's how it is right now. It is important to say, though, that the devs seem to be highly invested in working on this game, as they have been releasing updates daily or almost daily ever since the early access started, so that shouldn't be a concern. The only reason I can't recommend this game as it is now is because I frankly didn't have fun with it. I will keep checking on it from time to time, but I highly doubt they change the whole system at this point tbh. TL;DR: Great Concept, Bad Approach imo. I respect the work done by the devs but I didn't find it very enjoyable.

I've finished 2 playthroughs of Brawl Tactics with the Sentinel & Rogue classes. Right off the bat I'm a big fan of the way card upgrades are handled in this game. Upgrades are received through new cards, and are applied to all copies of that card in your deck. It's engaging to consider the cost/benefit of boosting a card's strength vs diluting the cardpool. Additionally, the ability to remove all copies of a card from your deck at the forge makes it easy to build a concise deck by late game. Getting to an overpowered state by late game, with 0 cost cards which allow me to draw more and have turns where I strategize to play 20+ cards has been great. There are a few negatives I've noticed with this upgrade system however. Firstly, adding a card which you already have multiple copies of is almost always going to be better than adding an entirely new card. The benefit of a new, unique card has to outweigh the benefit of boosting 4+ copies of a card you already own. This means I'm spending much more time playing with the starting deck than experiencing different cards. With this in mind, I would think the non-starting deck cards should be buffed to make them more attractive. Then as it applies to the mastery card which can only be used once per turn, without being upgradable it is quickly outclassed by the numerous upgrades which can be stacked on other cards. I've found these cards to only be useful in the early game since boosted cards are almost always the better choice. The nerf of adding +1 to their cost seems unreasonable when they are only barely usable at their lowest cost. I have not yet used the higher level mastery cards, but I don't expect much to change. These could maybe be boosted by having the ability to spend astral dust to apply the standard buffs to these cards and by removing the +1 cost. I've also enjoyed the partner units that are provided. They offer different playstyles in a single run and are a solid reward after clearing a zone. I find the spotlight on the main unit effective for differentiating between the units you're controlling. The different classes tend to benefit each other as tanky characters are able to aggro the enemy while ranged characters hang back. A big drawback of this system however is that the decks of the supporting units cannot be modified. By late game, partner units tend to take up space as the main unit performs extended combos through their upgraded deck. While I think keeping the shop, forge, and events isolated to the main unit is effective at keeping the focus on the main unit and cutting down on decision making, I also think that the end of battle card reward can apply for each party member. This would allow for a minor way to enhance the effectiveness and increase the variety of partners. When selecting the 2nd unit, there could be an option to add a few cards upfront to makeup for the difference. When it comes to attacking, the damage/probability displays are effective at presenting the outcomes. I like that this is shown and must be confirmed for offense and defense. I was initially confused by the "confirm attack" option when enemies attack. I feel like "confirm defense" and would make more sense in these scenarios since it otherwise seems like you're pressing a button to attack your own unit. For the probability displays themselves, I think this could be modified to include the probability of trinket's activating as well. One last difficulty I've run into is visualizing the range of long distance attacks. When playing as Sentinel it's not quick/easy to tell if an enemy will be in range of you move to another tile. There is the undo button, but if you land on a combat item this option is removed. It may make sense to have a "confirm movement" option which, when hovering over cards, shows the range of those moves from that position. A few more positive things: I think the debuffs applied to controlled units are effective at posing a threat and taking the player out of auto-pilot. The level up system is a solid way to buff stats without falling into he exact same route everytime while engaging the player's decision making. In general I'm happy to see many of the refined ideas from Tower Tactics make their way here. One note on a possible bug: Handsize is stuck at 8/9, activating a card with draw 2 while at 8/9 doesn't bring the count to 9/9. Looking forward to playing this game more and seeing how it develops.

This game is, in its current state, problematic to recommend. the mechanics? Great. The game is generally fun, challenging in exactly the right way (for me). So the basic game works. It is a round based combat game, with a lot of randomness thrown in. Every run is different, runs can be done, as the developer says within the game, in 60 - 90 minutes. Of course, its likely that you will quickly develop a prefered build, and not getting certain things can be a run breaker (healing is, for me, the big one - health is kept the same through encounters, and well, this means you need healing from somewhere. Certain debuffs make things very challenging (undead - healing is damage, most of everything else (excepting specific cards (abilities) you can gain is unchanged.) Which brings us to the first problematic thing about the game. Its UI. As soon as you have used an ability that creates status effects you can see what they do if you hover over the affected character with the mouse (often blocking sight of the enemy movement range, which is not a good thing). But you cannot see the effects when you get the card, so you basically need to roughly remember what they are doing - and simply remembering the basics, like: that effect does damage, is not enough. Poison and Bleeding are the damage effects I have noticed. One triggers at the start of the affected characters round, and is persistent throughout the entire game, the other triggers at the end of the characters round and reduces by one each turn. Both affect a percentage of the characters max health, though a different one each. But UI can be fixed. In general, descriptions are missing everywhere. There is a restart button in the menu during a run. It restarts the entire run, and you dont get the exp and stuff you have earned until then if you press it. There is no warning. There is no description what the button does anywhere I have looked. Thats the sort of thing that annoys, but isnt really problematic, because it is fixable, and this is an early access game. The restart button existing isnt bad, if you have bad luck at the start of the run, requiring to go to the main menu to set everything up again would be annoying, and that button makes that process much faster and smoother. So I see that, and the other UI problems mostly as children of the early access state, the mechanics work, but the UI is secondary to the game working. Which brings me to the point where I am not sure if I can truly recomend someone to buy this game. The game doesnt work. Crashes are a relatively common thing, I managed to date 3 runs without a crash, and in 2 of them I died in the first encounter, because I didnt understand how movement works... In the other I managed to reach the final boss. I think the situation is getting better, but its still not good. All in all, I would say this is a good game, if the crashes can be fixed. If the UI is improved after that, it transforms into an excellent little game. But I would not buy it in its current state., it crashes to often, which really hurts enjoyement - sometimes crashes soft lock a run (as far as I can determine, the game saves after every encounter), which means you cant access the next encounter (aka the one it crashed in) again after restarting the game. Which means you need to restart the run, and loose out on the main progress you have gained to date. Good game, bad UI, horrible stability. I would encourage wishlisting, but not buying. EDIT: The Developer added a confirmation window to the restart run button, which explains the effects. This is good, and shows what early access is about - the developer giving us a game thats already fun, but unpolished, and in return getting feedback that both makes the game more fun, but also, and in my opinion more importantly, polishes it.

Looking forward to playing more. Look at the dev's previous game / update frequency, definitely a safe buy in terms of growing in content. Great foundation so far though.

It definitely doesn't feel like a 1.0 release. I was going to leave a positive review, mostly because I trust these dev and their continued work, but I convinced myself otherwise as I wrote this. The UI is a mess and sorely lacking in tooltips, the cards are unreadable unless you hover over them because their bottom half is off screen, so if you want to read them, you literally have to hover over them one by one. Same goes for readability. A lot of the time you can't see where enemies can move because their tooltip boxes will be on top of the grid, and when that doesn't happen, the box will clip outside of the game screen so you can't properly read it. There's a lot of low resolution art that looks placeholder for the cards, and they aren't the most intuitive for each card either, which again, doesn't help with the fact that none of the cards are particularly intuitive or easy to read. That all said, the concept is solid. And so is the implementation. However, it feels, at best, like good early access title, and not a 1.0 in the slightest.

Great game! The issues/bugs I encountered in the past were addressed and I haven't run into any issues in my latest runs. I definitely recommend the game. And if you run into any issues while playing, the devs are very responsive and helpful so that's a plus! :)

This is a calm, engaging tactics game from an engaged and responsive developer. Even in early access, there's a lot here, and based on the trajectory of the dev's previous game (Tower Tactics : Liberation) I expect it to continue to improve!

Altogether great deckbuilder. Only thing I would recommend is native controller support, ala slay the spire, with the popularity of the steamdeck (hint: I want to take this on the road with me). Great graphics and sound from the peeps that made tower tactics: liberation,

70Mb download and a very very short tutorial. That's how you get good reviews.

I really like this game after finishing my first run i can definitely say that there is a lot of different lines of play and tons of options to play with. The only thing that im not sure if i like yet or not is that you can only add/upgrade your main unit and not your allies. It really felt like they were stating to fall off in usefulness in the second stage.