Dark Envoy

There's a lot to like here, but a lot that's just kind of weird, or missed the mark. The story is kind of whatever, there are some glimpses of neat ideas here, but by and large it's pretty generic, choices don't seem to matter all that much beyond one slight fork that determines which faction will give you a couple missions in the middle of the game, and the characters have basically nothing going on, making drama or conflict fall flat. It's not offensively bad, just nothing special. Which is a shame, because there seems to be some interesting worldbuilding in the background that feels wasted on a fairly generic and awkward plot. The combat is sadly kind of jank. I played the game on hard, just to give some context. More often than not, it wastes its entire premise. You can tell that it really wants to be tactical, with sometimes very small AoEs, precise pathing, static traps or obstacles, summons that act like turrets, cover, and all that. But it's not. Every fight is a small clump of enemies, or a wave defense. There is no formation system to make sure your frontline actually enters the fight at the front, cover is pointless because it's destroyed a couple seconds into the fight more often than not, damage output on both sides is so high that healing feels almost worthless, and generally fights are over so quick that wasting time on proper positioning doesn't seem worth the effort. The consistently most effective strategy has been to pull all enemies into a ball and then drop every skill you have in there. There's good ideas here, skills and classes are decently well designed, but the system just doesn't support what the combat wants to be. Ultimately, I think the system would've been better as a classic turn-based one. The frantic nature of real time means that anything requiring finesse or some time to justify its existence just has no place. And then there's just a few weird things. Characters just stop getting skill points a couple levels before hitting the cap, but still get attribute points. The XP bar on the final level fills, but nothing happens when it's full. There's a whole ordering system for your party, but then formation is random. Movement speed bonuses only apply in combat, not during exploration, leading to a weird problem where you build your frontliner to be fast, but he has to wait out the stealth on combat entry timer for his speed to actually become available. Just very odd decisions. It's worth playing if you really feel the cRPG itch and can get it on a discount, but don't expect it to set the world on fire or any sort of deeply moving narrative.