Forged of Blood

This game promises greatness and honestly just fails to deliver for me. The first and foremost is the good/neutral/ev--- wait, "altruistic, rational, hedonistic" alignment system. It sounds like something that will make a big difference and have major impacts. However, after starting the game proper (reaching the old capital - about 5-6 battles to get there), and then fighting another 2-3 fights, all your starting troops will desert your armies due to "difference in values". At first, I thought it was because I was picking evil -- err.. hedonistic options. So I restarted and went through the tutorial parts again, picking only good options. Guess what? My entire starter army deserted then, too. Plus, the obvious implication in on of the earliest parts of the game is that if you don't "win the hearts of the populace" you will lose the game even if you're doing fine in the war. And since people are deserting constantly, you basically have to play good to keep recruiting from events, or you'll just run out of money constantly buying new troops. So, thanks for the choices that are: Lose, or maybe don't lose. Since everybody is deserting like mad, it makes spending time customizing the extensive and otherwise fun skill tree feel extremely annoying. Oh, you just spent 15 minutes tweaking my ability tree? Lol see ya! The other great promise that the game has is its unique and interesting magic system. Here's the problem. It's super cool, and allows for huge amounts of customization. It is also half as powerful even for a skilled mage as non-magical options. I crafted a healing spell early on that listed "10-700 healing" in its description. After the 5th cast in a row of 20-30 points of healing, I decided to change the formula to avoid using chaotic elements, which are apparently garbage. So it was consistently doing ~70 single target healing. But one attack from a non-magic build was doing 150 - 200 damage by that point, so it would take 2-3 turns of just healing to undo one turn of damage inputs (but actually 4-6 turns - keep reading!). Damage follows similar numbers, lagging behind weapon attacks by half or more. So it's underwhelming by the numbers; grab a bow and be done with it. But what about utility? Yeah, the ability to manipulate enemies can be useful as a way to remove enemies from combat for a few turns, but even that's pretty obnoxious because spells can't be cast twice in a row. You have to cast spells from two different sides on subsequent turns. And usually one side is an underwhelming damage/heal effect, or a mediocre buff/debuff (underwhelming numbers again), so you can, at best, get good utilities every other turn. Since you can bring 5 troops into battle, mages are almost always better off being respecced as non-mages. So yeah, the most important and hype systems just... kinda suck. Other than that, the difficulty is a bit annoying to tweak. I just want to play, and the default difficulty is pretty dangerous, so I want to select an easier mode. But I don't want to spend time fiddling with 10 sliders. So I just made everything as easy as possible and ignored the skill-trees entirely, since all my troops were going to desert anyway. But it turns out that bypassing the only interesting systems because they're broken leaves a thoroughly mediocre game. The combat itself is pretty fun if you can find the right settings for you. The obvious fantasy x-com feel is there, with cover and grid based movement. The devs also clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the events going on in the world and put a bunch of effort into the events and encounters. If the alignment system didn't result in constant desertion, and if the magic system actually felt satisfying to use, this would be a great game. As it stands, though, I really can't recommend it at all.

This game is basically a medieval xcom Pros: • Good story (basically fire emblem) • Great looting system (when you win each battle you can loot everything they had equipped) • I love the great character sheet you can basically pick 2 weapons you want someone to have say like greatsword & bow and gain points in both, don't like what you have built? just reroll your character it costs nothing it's a great feature since im afraid of messing up builds. • the magic system is amasing and fun since you can have a mage character with 2 crystals in each slot with different magic in them is the best thing to try and find what goes best with what. Cons: • The tutorial, it's not really bad and not tedious but it's just awkward if you don't know that a great axe has more reach then a greatsword • During battle if you scroll out during your phase and want to zoom back in again you have to wait for your turn it locks the camera in place so you have to stare at a pillar or a wall for the enemies turn. • Voice acting is just hit or miss it's awkward it's funny it's dorky but brilliant also i do notice the same voice actor doing multiple roles ;) • not being able to stab with daggers, daggers are a throwable but that should be an ability where as in they do quicker attack for less points or do critical attacks more often or backstabs • i killed a gurrahorr and got nothing but experience, no leather or bones or meat or anything for such a big and lovely creature this was just shocking. • the moving on the map is slow (i know i can make it go faster with F3 but still) in my opinion it's worth the 30$ it's fun, immersive and the lore is there for anyone to get sucked into.

This is a very ambitious game that falls short for a couple reasons. One their is a hard time-limit that cannot be changed on conquering the world. You should at least be able to ignore the conclaves decisions. During my first play through I completed the entire questline for the loyalists, and completed 90% of questline of the Rebel faction. Still lost because the rebels outvoted me by a landslide. even though I owned about 60 percent of the map since the loyalist joined me completely and the rebels would've joined me completely in a few days bout then the conclave appeared. THE END.... Second the strategy portion of it leaves much to be desired. You have your quests and talons that can explore the map. However the money you earn is meaningless. No diplomacy, No spying, No development. All it is used for is to hire new people when other inevitably leave you. You're comrades should shift with you or at least give the option of talking with them since they leave frequently. All in all I did have fun playing the game, but the campaign felt like many things were missing. Like building outposts, establishing relations or diplomacy or spying or any other item that would involve strategy. The market was useless. I never bought anything from the market as the weapons sold there were simple common items. Now the spellcraft system was very interesting, the tactical parts had many options and were fun, but as far as choices having consequence the only consequence was people leaving Tactical Game - Very Good Story - Average - Being the Elvin Tyrants was interesting. Strategy Part - Barely there Recommended For Tactics - Do not recomend if you like strategy

A very promising but ultimately disappointing fantasy RPG with both a campaign and tactical, turn-based squad battles like X-Com and Divinity: Original Sin. The game really suffers from a "reputation" system based on Altruism, Hedonism and Rationalism. When given many dialogue options your choices will align with one of the 3 indexes. Every region and character in the game favours some particular balance of all three so whichever you choose you will likely be annoying two thirds of all the NPC's. This results in soldiers getting upset and leaving your army, characters abandoning you and eventually you lose the campaign - which is decided by the AI voting at the end of the game (which is on a time limit in the main story). Even regions of the campaign map you control may not vote for you if they don't agree with the actions you've taken through the game. Fortunately a pure conquest mode has been added to avoid this sort of rubbish if you so wish. But you will be plagued all the way through the game by npc's constantly moaning that they don't like the choices you are making no matter how you prefer to play. Combat mechanics are not very well explained. Particularly weapon "range". The range value does not directly correspond to the number of squares the weapon may reach to on the battle map - so while a sword may have a range value of 2, it only attacks 1 square away. More annoyingly, some melee weapons can attack diagonally while some cant (range 2-3?) and reach weapons cannot attack a target adjacent to you (range 2-4?). Just stick to ranged weapons, its much easier. Magic is very deep and complex with loads of options for you to completely build your own spells. Unfortunately its also quite restrictive and not worth your time compared to just equipping a bow instead. Cover doesn't work too well either. Stand behind a chair in a tavern and you get partial cover, but so does the enemy stood in the middle of the room as the adjacent chair that are shooting over counts as an obstacle between you. this is because the game engine takes no consideration of the height of the cover - eg you can shoot and swing an axe through an 8 foot high bookcase and hit the guy on the other side, despite it looking like it should block everything. Same with carts. Very good skill system I will say, but you will spend a lot of time fine-tuning and respeccing (which is free) your characters skills only for them to leave when they decide they don't like your decisions, or get killed by an encounter thats impossibly tough for your level - there is no warning or indicator or suggestion of how hard an encounter is, you just learn the hard way. Overall I just found the game hard work and no fun. You check out my full review in the video below https://youtu.be/B_Y2XR1XFVM?list=PLngtjbKGsqyHxDhINofKxn6J68RNYfXxj

I've only been playing this game for a few hours but it's a good tactical game. The magic system is very customizable. You can basically make your own spell effects - which gives a LOT of room for customization. The difficulty is also customizable based on sliders so you can very easily make the game more or less difficult without much effort. It doesn't have the ability to remap a lot of the key controls at the moment, so you are stuck with WASD for camera movement. Also it lacks a defensive stance/hold/wait function when you end your character's turn. Traditionally in tactical games you could delay your turn and move later in the combat order or turtle up. That feature is currently missing from this game. My biggest complaint at the moment is the lack of story background. The beginning of the game doesn't explain the setting very well. I'm hoping later on I will encounter some more lore that fleshes things out a bit. TLDR: Character customization very good, lots of abilities to learn. Needs more setting lore and information about spells and abilities.

Buggy, poorly executed abandoned game. Possibly an interesting spell crafting system. But in-game descriptions are completely missing and the codex is an unusable mess. So there is no real way of figuring out how to do anything in the game. Take healing spells for instance. Characters with high defense resist healing. So either you make a glass cannon that you can heal, or a tank that you can't heal. Either one will get killed by 2 or 3 enemy hits. Especially since you can only use the heal spell every other turn. So the magic system is pretty much broken. The "correct" way to play seems to be to cross your fingers and hope the enemy just consistently misses with their 70% hit chance, because you have absolutely no way of healing and death is permanent. Casting Teleport is also completely broken. There is no way to cast the spell, you can't even teleport 1 square. To make matters worse, because of the mechanic to forces you to cast one spell to charge the other, it makes both of your spells unusable in combat... Horrible design. The developer said they were going to fix it a year ago. Obviously abandoned. Other elements also suffer from very bad UI. The game is nice enough to show you a red blinking bar for how much damage you will do to the enemy. Only problem is it is completely bogus. The bar will show 100 - 150 damage. Then you click the enemy... And 17 damage is done. Pointless UI. The balance is also very poor. At the very start of the game you will face simply battles, and then battles against swarms rock monsters that can 1H KO your characters. Very little thought was given to enemy progression. Some battles are easy, and some are impossible without scaling your HP. It looks like a nice idea, and maybe it could have worked if they had a UX professional or a competent writer on their team. As is, its pretty much unplayable.

I think this was well worth the $30 if you're looking for a new game to play right now. If you already have a long queue waiting though maybe just throw it in your wishlist and wait for a sale. Combat animation speed can be increased which is such an amazing QoL feature I wish all SRPGS would implement. I want to address a couple of the major complaints I saw about this game and explain why I feel they weren't a big deal and were even somewhat positive. 1. Teammates will abandon your cause if you swing too far to any one alignment. [list] [*] I understand why this would be frustrating to people but I'm a little surprised it's such a big deal. [*] First of all, if this is an issue to you they've now patched it so you can control how sensitive people are to your alignment so just go ahead and nerf this feature for yourself, otherwise, it's an easy solve. [*] Once one or two people leave you start to realize you're doing something wrong so pop open the alignment chart, figure out what direction you're moving too heavily towards, then start making some decisions that will bring you back to the center. [*] For me, the first time around, i was being too altruistic. So after I lost a guy I started being a little less giving and started demanding payment for my jobs and being a little more self interested and after a few of those decisions my team stopped complaining, easy. My second time around I made the decisions from the start, stayed a good balanced leader and listened to my people, and no one left. [/list] 2. There is timer and loss conditions in this game. [list] [*] You can also turn off this feature so again this is another non-issue. But here are some tips if you want to leave it on. [*] Once the Summit timer runs out your progress in the main quests so far will determine if you win or lose, much more so than how much of the map you have conquered thought that also comes into play. [*] You'll want to get two working armies up and running as quickly as possible so you can pursue multiple threads of the quest at once. [*] Once the capitol of a nation is revealed, you can attack that city and upon capturing it, all other cities in that nation will fall under your control as well. This makes a huge difference when it comes time for the Summit so if you notice the timer running near and you're still working on the quests, I would suggest considering just attacking the capitols. [/list] 3. General tips: [list] [*] Support magic > dmg magic for the most part. Increased attack dmg and increased attack # and speed or something are the best. It's been a while since I've played so I can't remember exact names [*] Both short and long bow archers will mop up the battlefield when buffed with a different spells. I feel as though there's more I wanted to say but I've been at it a while now so I'm going to stop. I really liked this game, if you like SRPGS I would imagine you will too.

Unit customisation, looting and turn-based game play are all superb But the game follows too strictly too it's story and doesn't allow a free play mode The story's leashes totally destroy this game as you wade through conversation after conversation hoping that your replies are the most ethical and favourable to overseers of the land. Yes, it is a story of nicey niceness and all the fluffy pink clouds that follow. In this game it isn't the warlord who captures the most territory but rather the warlord who was the nicest to everyone who will win when the game's timer ends your long and hard-earned session abruptly. And although there appear to be much to go out of the way for you can only step off trail once or twice, during a session, less not get to someone in time to be nice to them. Score: Waste of Gaming Time / 10 Edit: The dev corrected me stating that benevolence isn't always the answer either which didn't make this better for me but further warranted my attention to the game's heavy dialogue sessions which I normally try and click through quickly. I should note that the novel being forced here isn't as obnoxious as many cookie-cutter JRPG games of recently which use a puppet show of still sprites on a static background. The text and interactions are spread out more through the course of the game. What would save this game is a Civilisation-like mode where all plot and dialogue are pulled.

Good premise to it, and the basic combat and the spell system is all a lot of fun once you learn it. However, after a certain amount into the campaign, the difficulty suddenly spikes and the moderately challenging combat turned into a host of nearly impossible missions. I don't know if there's some optimization I was missing or what, but lacking any sort of input or guidance, the bottom line is that it becomes an exercise in frustration.

Completion time: 33 hours I enjoyed this game a lot. The writing is good, the strategy is solid, the atmosphere works well, and the spell options have very deep customization. The rulership style system adds a lot to the proceedings. I will say, the level of micromanagement in terms of gear etc is unparalleled. I guess there are those who would consider that a good thing, but for me it went way beyond what I was up for. Still, that's not a dealbreaker. Give it a look. As an afterthought, I encountered no bugs at all. I'm not saying there are none, but in a full run I didn't see any.