Cantata

Beautiful art direction, a real 8bit retro-vibe. Just my kind of game. Isometric turn based strategy. Good music too. Then I find out every campaign mission has an arbitrary time limit (number of turns) that became a complete and total fun killer. The worst part? It was patched *in* post-release and they don't give you the option to disable. Gone is flair, experimentation, trial and error. Hours of time could be lost, just because you didn't follow the exact turn by turn set of actions. Because of this, I can't recommend the game.

I'm writing this review because the development team's response to criticism, while polite, has primarily been "refund the game if you aren't having fun.", and the game's design/slow gameplay will rapidly push a player outside of the refund window before it's clear how deep some of the issues run. The company has stated they do not have the resources to make the requested improvements to the game and has largely moved on, leaving one dev behind for patching issues. Pros: The artwork and atmosphere of the game are unusual and top notch. There are some interesting mechanics that can open up interesting gameplay, but for reasons below you likely won't get to discover or apply them easily. Cons: Individual levels are extremely long with multiple objectives revealed over time (makes planning ahead difficult), combined with a tight turn limit. As a result, mistakes are heavily punished and can cost hours of time. In 8.5 hours of playing I am only on the third level. If you understand all the mechanics in the game, the levels are doable. If you are a slow/methodical player or make mistakes, the turn limit is going to prevent any and all progress. No turn limit option is coming, the developer considers the turn limit to be "vital" to the balance of the game (because the AI is too passive to provide any actual pressure.) The UI is incredibly poor and a tutorial only exists for one of the three factions. Units have obscure mechanics that have little to no documentation, you can only really learn by trying to build everything and push all the buttons (tooltips frequently won't explain what a unit or ability is for), but because of the above mentioned turn limit such exploration is heavily punished. However, *not* knowing the mechanics is also punishing towards winning under the turn limit. Icons are also usually very poor, they can be hard to differentiate and usually do not describe what they do. On top of that, the tooltip popup frequently gets in the way of actually using the UI (blocking clicks and locking itself in place if open too long), while still not actually explaining what anything does. There are game breaking bugs that have been recorded back in August that are still unfixed. The entire turn can effectively "freeze" preventing you from even opening the game menu to save or exit, much less issue orders and continue playing. Objectives in the game can be incredibly unclear and only uncovered through exploration or trial and error. In some periods on the second level your objectives will consist purely of "Don't let the main hero die" and "Complete the level in X turns" but does not specify *what* completes the level. Many triggers that continue the level or even *win* the level are not specified by mission objectives but rather merely hinted by exploration and dialog. There is no compendium or any resource explaining what all units are in the game and what their abilities are. There is a vote for such a feature but has generally been regarded as an "AAA game" type of feature that the team does not have a budget for. As stated above, the developer does not have the capacity or the concern to improve many of the issues in the game and has largely marked the game as "done". There is talk of an update coming in a few months from now, contingent on finding affordable contractors and accomplishing the work (I would not lean on this given that this issues were not solved when a full team was on the project the first time.) I do want to applaud them for taking the risk of this art style and doing something new. I hope they learn from the feedback and apply it either to this game or the next one.

I really wanted to like this game, but this is not a 1.0 release. We'll do pros first: 1) Graphics. Some people may not like them, but they're the best part of the game to me. Unique, eye catching, they really get you invested in the universe. 2) Starcraft style faction asymmetry. Always more interesting than your dudes with guns vs their dudes with guns, or your dudes with guns vs BUGS, SO MANY BUGS!! However... 1) No manual, and a tutorial that only introduces one of the factions. Really? Maybe this isn't a popular opinion these days, but watching videos is not how I learn games. I'm happy to do the work of ctrl+f in a manual, with a short tutorial introducing concepts unique to the game. It is very difficult to parse how the other factions work. 2) The pace. Is. So. Slow. Look, I like slow things. Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite movies. I play slow TBS games. However, slowness is only okay if it is developing to something. Unfortunately... 3) The AI is basically braindead. The threat of losing missions is the timer, not any sense of enemy threat. Another game that disappointed me with this sort of thing was the skirmish mode in Hegemony Gold, I wanted to play as a minor faction like Aetolia and conquer Greece, until I realized that the AI didn't do anything; instead the main campaigns were enjoyable because of scripting. But Cantata lacks even the heavy scripting to suggest an active foe. 4) Multiplayer comes with no random map generator and just two maps. 5) This is more subjective, but the combat was just unengaging. I play mostly turn based wargames, and a good tactical wargame is one in which even the minor actions within the overall battle tell a compelling story (our outnumbered phalanx holds out despite being flanked with heavy casualties until help can arrive, our mortars smoked that AT position so our flame tank could approach and roast the crew, etc etc). None of that is really present here. The combat is more reminiscent of Into The Breach, but without the sharp focus of that game. I bought this in early access, and I regret it. It was a waste of money. I was really excited, and you can still see the bones of a really good game in it that seem unlikely to ever emerge.

Devs didn't deliver on what they promised.

Devs promised to make Skirmish AI and never delivered. You essentially have 9 missions (and quite boring ones) and that's it.

I bought this game 6 months ago, played it a few hours and thought it was in a very bare-bones alpha state, too early to be released even as Early Access. The UI was terrible, there was no tutorial and they had completely changed a key mechanic of the game. But the AI was the worst, It did nothing until you came close to an enemy unit and there was no Skirmish AI at all. I was very surprised when the game was released last update. Instead of developing the AI so it actually does something instead of sitting still the whole time until you come right next to it they added a turn limit so you're forced to approach it and the game still doesn't have skirmish AI yet. Another huge issue is that it's an immense pain to move your units in this game. Imagine Starcraft, but it's on a grid, and you move each marine separately 4 squares each turn. Now, to "speed things up" you can move the marines next to a Jeep, pick each one up, one by one, and now you can move your Jeep 8 squares each turn until you get to where you want, and then you can unload each marine, one by one. It's madness. I thought they would've fixed the unit management by launch but apparently not. The campaign is very short, consisting of only a few scenarios and I can't imagine playing this in Multiplayer with both players micromanaging each unit.

Hurts me to give a negative review to a game that has this gorgeous art style and that shows a certain level of ambition on the part of the developers. The game itself is just too flawed in its core design (no AI, underdeveloped resource system, terrible mobility out of combat, etc.), and i overlooked most of it, but at one point in the eighth campaign mission, the game just decided it would freeze on the enemy's turn (even after multiple reloads). I was on the fence with this one (the art is just too good), but a game-breaking bug near the end of a long campaign is just too bad.

no update since 08/2023

The Graphics, stories, concepts are stunning, I'm actually a fan of turn based strategy but the gameplay is too slow and complicated. The limited turns in a scenario make it more difficult to play. They should make this an RTS or RPG based on this realm.

[h1]"Pursuit of the machine traitors has led you to the abandoned colony planet, Shoal."[/h1] [h1]Introduction[/h1] Cantata is an overhead grand tactics game in a similar design to the classic RTS city builder formats we grew up playing. With its unique art style and emphasis on exploration, Cantata seeks to revolutionise the genre by breathing fresh life into it. But did Cantata rise to face this challenge head-on, or was it crushed beneath the weight of it? [table] [tr] [th][b]🟩 Positives[/b][/th] [th][b]🟥 Negatives[/b][/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]🟩 A well-written and detailed storyline helps emphasise the opposing sides and their motivations as they begin to unfurl during the campaign. 🟩 The three main factions in Cantata all play uniquely and have their strengths and weaknesses. 🟩 Each map is robust and beautiful, with lots of exploration and rewards available for the keen adventurer. 🟩 The graphics and audio play a significant role in the general game design, where simplicity only represents more complex mechanics.[/td] [td]🟥 Quite a few bugs are still present in the title, including a few game-breaking ones that caused me to restart a mission because I took a path unintended by the game. 🟥 The turn-based mechanics fit the style of the game but have been poorly implemented and often feel clunky and tedious. [/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]Story[/h1] Cantata takes place over a 9-chapter campaign, where the human race, the 111th Reign of Harmony and Prosperity, has landed on the hostile planet of Shoal to stand against the machine empire known as the Unified Spirit. As this bitter conflict reaches an apex and begins to cause the planet great distress, the alien race that calls Shoal home, The People of Sun and Shadow, rises to face the invaders and begins to wipe them out indiscriminately. But whether either empire expands or peace is once brought to the wartorn planet is entirely up to you. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148773595 The story is captivating, well-thought-out and paced, which can be lost on some players, as the start of the game is slow, and there's an overwhelming amount of information provided very quickly, which makes learning the mechanics and understanding the story difficult. [h1]Gameplay Analysis[/h1] [h3]Slow and steady wins the race.[/h3] The game takes place on a varying-sized map depending on the scenario provided or chosen, from Extra Small (32 Squares) to the much larger Universe (512 Squares). The game is played in turns, meaning you will utilise all your available action points, then end your turn permitting your enemy to make their moves. This back and forth continues until either side has achieved victory through objective or eradication, sometimes both. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148773860 Depending on map size, matches can take 1 hour to 8 hours and scaling the difficulty can vastly alter the play time as the AI on more challenging difficulties becomes quite a brick wall. My only significant issue with the gameplay loop is that, during your turn, you can't move multiple units at the same time. You will need to choose your unit, choose their destination and then wait for that movement to finish before choosing another unit to move. Waiting between moves becomes rapidly tedious and feels unnecessary within a turn-based title. [h3]We all play our part.[/h3] There are several building and unit types within the world, which vary from faction to faction. There isn't a lot of variety here, but enough to give the game a base-level complexity that takes some time to learn and adjust to. As you begin to comprehend the mechanics, you will discover that the only genuine way to progress is to capture territory by eradicating the enemy from it and placing your own structures down to claim it. [h3]The requirements of our victory.[/h3] The last major part of this puzzle is resource management. Resources are found and generated within the world but are also provided as a default by your faction upon game start, usually enough to start a rudimentary base or force. You increase this by building structures that will supply goods to your army, such as ammo or fuel, and you can find raw materials while exploring. [h1]Audio and Visual[/h1] Cantata is a uniquely designed title, with sharply contrasted colours and shapes that blend together into a beautiful mosaic of warfare. Its pixelated, old-school design helps capture the title's heritage aptly and delivers an experience I can only describe as nostalgia. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3148773296 The audio is much the same. The soundtrack continuously surprised me and filled me with pride for the team I was fighting for, but the animation sounds don't really vary that much and everything beneath the music sort of blends into itself over time. [h1]PC Performance and Specifications[/h1] I attempted to play the game on the Steam Deck, but after struggling with the controls for a couple of missions, I had to give into the fact that this is more predominantly a desktop title. With no significant graphical options, I had the game set to my standard resolution of 2560 x 1440, and the game ran reasonably well, other than the issues listed below. 🟧 The game suffers from game-breaking bugs, where specific objectives are unreachable or unobtainable for no particular reason. It also crashed six times within the 25 hours of gameplay. 🟨 A few instances of units simply disappearing off the map. 🟨 A lot of grammatical errors plague the dialogue. The hardware usage was negligible, so I removed my usual statistics. [h1]Final Thoughts - Good[/h1] [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2529084785]Review chart here.[/url] This was a tough one, as the game is by no means mechanically bad, and the story is well-written and has an absorbing arc to follow. However, the sheer volume of bugs and issues, predominantly in the latter half of the game makes it an ordeal to play at times. I am only recommending it on sale because the groundwork here is top-notch but let down by some questionable design choices and a considerable lack of QA. [quote]If war has all but worn you out, head on over to [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/] Summit Reviews [/url], where every review is bound to rejuvenate.[/quote] [quote]or if you have no interest in pursuing war anymore, head to [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/hellpurgatoryandparadise] Hell, Purgatory and Paradise[/url] where sanctuary is just a click away.[/quote]