Not gonna lie, I DID expect a bit more, but at the end of the day it's an auto battler with some replayability, some different modifiers/modes, and an asynchronous multiplayer, where you fight other players' teams after you win the game (or in between in 1 mode) for ... nothing, really, bragging rights. There's a leaderboard. It's an interesting idea, and you can't fault Konfa Games for rehashing their one and only idea over and over again. They have built this "Despot" universe, but each game in it is vastly different, only keeping the pixel art, the puny humans, Spot and some of the unit designs you see in later games.
In this game you will build teams based on your preferences and RNG. Each puny human can be outfitted with different weapons or gadgets, a certain amount of unique ones in each class increase the class synergy, unlocking powerful abilities. You have tanks, healers, fighters, ranged damage dealers, mages, and so on. Unfortunately, there is not a lot more to see, once you've actually won once. You can experiment with some different team comps, but at the end of the day you either focus on building a massive team and inevitably losing high XP humans to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ buggy (?) Mantraps (I swear, they have like double the HP of any other enemy on this floor, have no armor, but still take NO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage. And there's 3 (!) of them in Sprint Mode. Twice per run! I hate them.
The real differences don't come from the shop, because eventually you can pretty much build whatever team you prefer, but from the mutators you pick up along the way, which can steer your run into a very distinct direction and cause you to pivot your current strategy if you find a good one. Or not. Up to you.
Winning so far has unlocked new mutators and stuff for you to find, but unfortunately no new classes or even inter-class synergy effects. Your tanks will be your tanks, your fencers your fencers, you can't multi-class them or gain synergy effects by having x of one and y of another, so there are no unique interactions, which could have really helped the longevity and replayability here.
As with their last game I see the appeal, and I think 20 bucks is justified, but it's really more of a pretty solid foundation. For example, every run has the same bosses and enemies, the same classes, the same upgrades you can do in between (more health, more damage, etc.), only the mutators vary, really. Even the events are very limited. There's like 2 event rooms in each biome, and only 1 of them appears, but that means that you will encounter the same room in every other run, same with the events after clearing a floor. I've already seen many events like 3 or 4 times now.
Like I said, I wish they would have actually ... stuck with it? Expanded upon it. Focus on fewer puny humans, but more impactful strategies and synergies ... or build a low health, low damage swarm team, or a team entirely focused around summoning things without an actual tanky frontline, because so far I don't see a way of actually getting very far without tanks and healers, which takes away some of the supposed choice.
Still, it's enjoyable, the pixel art is gorgeous, the humor is good, and the music is a banger, so I'd definitely give it a whirl. You CAN get a lot more out of it than like 5 hours as I did, but for me ... I know what it is now. I'm good.
