This is for after performance patch 1.0.4. I have one full party and one guy in a 2nd party atm.
The patch seemed to work for the most part, before this there were really obvious performance issues, but most of them seems to have gone away now. Dunno if it'll come back when I start getting more guys though. Though I'm crafting potions now and it seems to hitch a bit when the craft finishes. Still better than before where it just randomly hitches though. Other than that... seems fine. Performance wise that is. There is still some jank. So it depends on your tolerance for it.
Now what I like about this game, is how they have this tactics system. And some of the other automation.
But to start with, I remember that back in Dragons Age Origins, they also have a system something like this. And I haven't seen any other games with that after that. They either go all the way to programming your own troops, or they have no or very simple commands, or maybe need you to micromanage but let's not talk about those.
So what can you do, it does simple things like, chug potion at 50% HP, use shield breaker skills on shielded enemies, use AOE skills only when there is 2 or more enemies so you don't waste mana. To more complex stuff like use small heal on allies when they are at 80% HP or use big heals when say 30% or w/e. You can set all that yourself, though the interval you can set is every 10%.
It also improved from back when I was playing the demo, when learning a new skill, I needed to manually add them to my tactics, now it's done automatically with a seemingly appropriate setting, like the above mentioned shield breaker on shielded units, though you can still change them later, but it's nice QoL. Also it's nice that they do not dumbly add it to the front or back of your tactics queue, but instead to the middle. Because generally the front would be taking potions, and the back is basic auto attack, both not good places for skills.
The next thing is after you build a Guild Hall, you then have access to Group Orders. Which basically allows you to tell them to go to a map, do something, like collect a certain amount of materials, kill a certain amount of enemies, then you add the next order, to say go back to craft healing potions. It's a nice bit of automation that allows you to just set and forget your parties. Since you have more than one, and then each of them simultaneously does their own thing.
After the Guild Hall, you can build the armory, this gives you auto equip gear. And unlike most other games' auto equip, this one is at least somewhat intelligent, it doesn't just blindly equip gear based on some nebulous power or stats that might not fit your build, or just blindly say you are a hunter(archer) class and therefore just gives you ranged gear, instead it looks at the stat distribution of your character, and uses that as weightage to determine what gera to auto equip. So if say you build a strength hunter for some reason, i.e. one that uses melee instead of ranged, then it'll inteligently equip the appropriate equipment.
Then i guess there is the training hall, which gives what seems to be the only offline progress, where you get up to 12 hours of exp gain and nothing else. Dunno if more comes later. You can upgrade it though for probably more time. I see the upgrade, but sadly it doesn't describe what it actually does before you build it. A failing.
Now the game still has some jank, and it still lacks some QoL issues, like copying your group orders and tactics over. Though I'm not yet actually feeling that it is a major issue. Maybe when late game you have many parties and want them all focus farming something, then that would be annoying needing to manually do that for each party. Though you shouldn't need to modify individual tactics.
You also atm after creating your guild, and creating your characters, first one on start and the rest on recruit, you cannot customize them after the initial customization. So if you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up their hair color for instance, then atm you cannot fix it. Though the dev seemed to be receptive to adding midgame customization later.
Customization for characters is also limited, you can choose their name, hair, eye and skin color and gender. Each class has a unique sprite, but they only have 1 sprite. And gear doesn't show on it. I wouldn't really expect this to change though, last I heard this is more a financial issue, since they don't use AI and need to hire someone to actually make the new looks.
But yeah, if you can tolerate some jank, and you like the sound of how much you can tweak the automation, then I would get this.
Edit: Had a 3rd party and got lag again, but 1.0.5 patch dropped and it went away for the most part. Seems like each extra party you get could cause some performance issues, but at least so far, the dev is keeping on top of it.
Also apparently you can edit your name mid game. It's in the most obvious location too, just click on the name. Still no sign of appearence customization though. And by that I specifically mean the stuff you can customize when you make your stuff, like colors and all that. I'm hoping for but not expecting further customization.
