Godless Tactics

A work of subtle brilliance. I bought this couple years ago and started playing it but pandemic stuff got in the way. What I remembered about it is that it had a simple and clean interface for tactical battles. When I came back and dove deeper though, I was more and more dazzled. Blending the scope of a Grand Strategy and the personal focus of an RPG this game kept on giving the more I investigated its guts. The premise is that there is a major war going on and you have been assigned by a smaller faction to lead an elite strike team (XCOM style), taking strategic points behind enemy lines and striking fear into the enemy (Inglorious Basterds style). The war goes on around you on a full scale and every turn hundreds of battles may go on outside of your control. What this game does differently is that you influence the tides of battle not through abstract point-and-click orders, but through your victories and how you spend the spoils. You can spend it wisely and secure brick wall checkpoints for the enemy to run up against or you can shine on your superiors and do the bare minimum while pursuing your own goals. Don't want one faction to have too much of an advantage? Free the settlements to their neutral inhabitants and gain gifts of resources from its grateful citizens. Want a quick victory at the expense of an ungrateful superpower? Give them the best strategic points and level them up yourself. The choice is yours. This provides a great level of hybrid strategy that gives you a lot of influence in the (almost dauntingly vast) world. The lore is fantastic, very lovingly crafted and a wonderful attention to detail. Each settlement has a name in its native tongue and a translation to the common tongue, a la Tolkien and many of the Points of Interest have unique entries in the codex, an impressive feat given the size of the world. None of the factions are too "good," giving a real sense of personal agency in the world. A great example is that your native faction is so oppressive that it's spawned a rebellion against it. They will give you huge rewards for crushing it but at the same time making you wonder if you did the right thing. The game doesn't judge you though, the choice is yours either way. One of the things I loved is the nitty-gritty of combat. Each tile has tactical importance and is laid out in a fashion that's very natural. The environments stand on their own but also work great as battlefields. The stat system is fantastic, simple enough that you can make the best decisions possible but complex enough that it provides a rewarding challenge. Also I love that there aren't caps and esoteric gradients in the background. Your team can vastly overpower one of a lower level, making the necessary RNG less painful, i.e. it feels more like a result of the a combo of your tactics and the chaos of battle rather than gamey ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (like the lovely point-blank whiff with a shotgun at a 95% to-hit chance that you get so often in XCOM). The music is fantastic, with that fast-paced sweetness of classic Japanese game music. My only quabble is that there's a track with 8 bars of violently dissonant solo guitar. Now, I have no issues with that in itself. I love me some Stravinsky and even some Schoenberg on occasion (a very occasional occasion, admittedly lol) but in the context that it's in, it is very jarring. Every time it plays, I'm ripped from immersion in the game and have to stop until those bars are over. Aside from that, the score is top-notch and a pleasure to listen to. In all, this game has the earmarks of the spark of genius inspiration. I'm consistently impressed not only at how the different aspects work together and how well that they do, but that it seems to happen so effortlessly. The only real ding against it (other than the musical one I mentioned above) is the title. It seems to refer to the amorality of some of the decisions you can make but that is so subtly woven in that the title seems a bit disconnected. The only reason I bring it up is that it my keep the game from reaching its full potential audience (along with the lack of a "Grand Strategy" tag in the store). Something the references the strike squad would really add punch and draw interest of a browsing gamer, along with "Godless Tactics" as a subtitle or something (e.g. "Strike Force: Godless Tactics," or something along those lines). I may be wrong but that's my impression. This game is masterfully crafted and needs more people to play it, IMO.

This was a good $3 game, but it could rise above that with just a few modest improvements. The AI is exceptionally bad at tactics which, given that this is a tactics game, seriously impacts replay value. I also appreciate this would be the hardest thing to fix. Even on the hardest mode, it's possible to go dozens of battles between losing ANY soldiers. It's also too easy to create impregnable fortresses by investing in single locations and using those to dominate an area. As you grow in level, the game plays a little like Dynasty Warriors meets Pokemon where your top soldiers can wade through enemies like they're nothing. A couple classes have "super effective" moves against certain other classes. Weapons outpace defensive capacity such that one-hit KOs are the norm - that's not necessarily a complaint, just a note. It would be nice to have different and/or randomizable maps so replays aren't repeats. I think a Godless Tactics 2 could easily be turned into a hit. This one is more of a blueprint to a hit.

A game that actually respects the player's time! You can just play the decisive encounters, no grind, no whack-a-mole, many different strategies, a lot of replayability for just a few bucks. The Dev is our boi! If I could ask for a thing it would be sprites (and other visuals) with the darker art direction of the amazing cutscenes. Honestly, I'd gladly pay for it. I don't know a thing about adaptations but the game would be perfect on mobile (both Android and steamdeck)

its a good game with a lot of tactics and adventure, it also has good lore and unique storyline, but some corrections need to be made, first all attacks should have at minimum 10% hit rate and a 1 damage, other wise you may fight some battles that are impossible to win or lose, depending on your situation

It's a hidden gem. The game gets old after you've figured out a bit of it, but it'll stay fun for quite some time as you test out the game. Auto battle is a godscend in the later parts of the story, and letting the AI handle the smaller and repetitive stuff is just a good idea. I wish there were a bit more story, more events, and more unit types that make things different. But It's a good game as is, and really doesn't need that extra stuff.

I like the game. It has some interesting aspects that make it well worth the $8. Some things that helped me. YouTube has a first 20 rounds done by the creator. It is very helpful and worth the 50 minutes. Green is your ally and have more resources than blue. If you give areas you capture to them they will do a better job of holding them in the beginning. You can build up blue after green is established in the area. Towns on pathways will defend better than those on the sides so I recommend putting resources into these chock points to build them up. You can build up any ally town. Good luck and enjoy!

Wasnt as strategical or tactical as i expected

Could be a real gem with some rebalancing.

the gameplay is fantastic, the UI is functional

pure little gem. Really got it at -33% (4.01€) but it s worth 10€ it would benefit from a bigger HQ development. The quest mecanics is quite good , and would get greater even with some improvment. the map itself is fairly HUGE and scatered with ruins, monuments and lore.