Heretic Operative

Maybe if it's on sale for <$5, but... 1) It's very much a digital single player board game - draw some cards that tell you what happens, roll some dice to see if you die (probably yes), repeat. 2) As others have mentioned, it's very RNG based. 3) It's very busy, giving the illusion of complexity, but most of it is clutter. You CAN do any of a hundred different things, but 99 are useless in the immediate sense. You only get 2 action points per turn, which, if you're VERY lucky, is enough to accomplish the exact right actions to survive to the next turn. There's no real strategic options, because any sort of long-term planning will just get you killed in the short term. 4) As others have mentioned, nothing is explained anywhere. You're just chucked into the deep end, and after drowning a few times, you figure out which buoy to swim towards and ignore the rest.

I just want to write this review to give some support to a game that deserves more love and attention. A lot of the negative reviews seem to be from players who have less time in the game. And while I wouldn't say that they have a more shallow understanding of the game mechanics, I think that their assessment of the game is a little bit unfair. I'll address that in turn. Anyway, Heretic Operative is a fantasy digital board game in which you play as a group of outcast magic users (magic is outlawed in the game's setting) dedicated to stopping the advancement of a dark cult that is plotting the end of the world. There are a number of different cults to play against which change the nature of the gameplay significantly. For example, the storm cult spawns lots of cultists in the harbor district; summons a kraken; and can cause flooding at points of interest in the game. By contrast, the beast cult spawns numerous bestial hunters which try to murder your operatives. There are also multiple scenarios to choose from, and your objective varies between scenarios. An early scenario causes eldritch gates to spawn in random locations. You are tasked with closing these and later defeating an otherworldly cthulhu-like horror to win the scenario. A later scenario involves apocalyptic torrents of flame falling from the sky, destroying locations and killing all helpful npcs if you do not intervene. You choose an initial starting operative to begin the game. Operatives have three basic skills--arcane (magic), social, and physical skills. There are numerous ways to increase (or decrease) your skills during game: through random events at locations as well as by items your characters obtain and via npcs. You can also recruit other playable operatives at locations during gameplay. The basic gameplay loop is that you move your operatives between points of interest while collecting resources--influence and gold--to recruit helpful npcs, recruit other operatives, purchase powerful items and spellbooks. You also work to power up your operatives to help fight off the cult. Many interactions in the game have "challenges" associated with them. These are basically dice rolls that determine success of your actions. There are challenges associated with each of the basic skills of the operatives--arcane, social, and physical. If your operative has a higher value in the stat associated with the challenge, it will be easier to succeed. Different locations have different types of challenges associated with them (arcane, social, and physical). Your other major goal is stopping the advancement of the cult. The cult starts with cultists in one or more locations on the map. If you allow the cultists to linger in a location, they will generate a cult site that increases the power of the cult and can block or kill useful npcs from being recruited by you. There is a sort of "doom track" counter in the game. If the cult has more cult sites and cultists, this doom track will increase faster. If it gets too high, you lose. One of the interesting facets of this game (both mechanically and thematically) is that casting any magic spells will cause "corruption" in your characters. Magic has a great cost in this world. If an operative's corruption becomes too high, he/she will essentially go crazy and will be lost (the character will turn into an enemy that your other operatives must defeat). There is also a stat called tranquility, which decreases corruption every turn. Characters with a higher tranquility recover more corruption each turn. However, certain spells, items, or events may decrease tranquility. If a character's tranquility becomes negative, he/she will actually gain corruption every turn. Some of the most powerful spells in the game (from the "night" magic school) cause extreme damage to enemies or provide extreme map/gameplay benefits (i.e., there is one that basically resets the doom track to zero) but at such a ruinous corruption cost or cost to tranquility that you may end up having to sacrifice the character. Now, to address the problems that some others seem to have with the game: There is only one map in the game, but it changes slightly from scenario to scenario. I will allow that this probably does limit the game somewhat, though I think this allows for a tighter, more "bespoke" and balanced experience. I do wish that there was a second map or others. Still, I have gotten more than 20 hours of gameplay out of the game and I am quite satisfied. Others have stated that some of the locations and actions that you can take on the gameplay map are not as useful as others, as you only have two actions you can take per turn (later you can increase this to three actions). I actually think that this is not true at all. You are really only limited time-wise in the last two scenarios (the Apocalypse Scenario and the Astral Fate Scenario). However, on the others, you have plenty of time to explore various options. And honestly, some of the more peripheral locations, such as the Elven Archive or the Forbidden Isle, can give very strong bonuses to operatives that you park there; these more than make up for the extra action points you spend to reach them. Some others have also commented on the randomness. Again, I think this is a rather unfair criticism. You can see in advance what sort of challenges will be found at a location (arcane, social, or physical) and the relative difficulty level. Taking an operative with 0 or 1 social to the cathedral (where there are high level social challenges) will result in really bad outcomes. Similarly, taking a character with little arcane skill to the lost temple will probably result in high damage to the character or loss of tranquility or even death. But you know this in advance. Yes, sometimes you do get bad dice rolls, but the game never seems unfair and is usually not too punishing with bad outcomes. Also, there is an additional resource called "fate" which allows you to reroll dice in some circumstances, mitigating bad rolls significantly. The only time that I think RNG really plays a large roll is in the apocalypse scenario, in which you will have a lot of hard challenge rolls to rescue people at locations/perform evacuations. You may fail a lot and you probably won't be able to save everyone and your characters may take damage and die. Still, I don't really mind this because I think it fits with the scenario. It's the hardest scenario in the game and you're not supposed to be able to save everyone. You're supposed to make hard choices about where to go and sometimes sacrifice operatives. One last concern that others sometimes bring up is that the corruption mechanic seems too punishing. As I mentioned, spellcasting increases corruption and it can be easy to lose spellcasters to corruption if you have them slinging tons of fiery death every turn. Additionally, some have stated that certain spells are not useful--such as the "night magic" school--due to high corruption costs associated with them. But again, I think that this fits mechanically and especially thematically with the game. You're not supposed to cast that universe destroying power bomb on a low level grunt. Certain spells are so powerful and dangerous that the taint of them can never be washed away. You need to save the really powerful stuff for boss battles and you may need to sacrifice operatives sometimes. Anyway, they have also added lots of ways to reduce corruption; for example, orbs of fate can reset a character's corruption to 0; the mentor at the hideout can decrease corruption or increase tranquility; parking an operative at the Forbidden Isle can result in lots of opportunities to reset corruption or reset negative tranquility. Anyway, hope that helps. I urge you to check this game out. The developers have clearly put a lot of time and thought and love into crafting a great game.

Ever been drug into a game of Arkham Horror or Eldritch Horror with your "friends"? Stuck in a big 5 hour long fiddly dicefest where sixty cardboard chits are thrown across the board randomly and you only get two actions every half hour and then you have to roll the dice to see if you even succeed at those before another awful "draw cards and read them then clean up and throw out sixty more chits" phase? Heretic Operative is literally that, but good, and without your friends. It's a virtual adventure board game where you move from place to place trying to simultaneously build up a character and complete story objectives while the enemy cult continues to advance. The RNG is actually fun unlike the garbage Fantasy Flight games it apes, and the game design embraces the digital implementation, giving you a great UI full of information, dozens of abilities, units to recruit, options to get stronger all over the map, and all the cleanup crap is automated. It takes a bit of learning and you have to enjoy playing a 30-45 minute adventure board game over and over with different enemy tracks, story decks, and player skill kits, but man it's a fun ride.

I rarely write comment on steam although I have played more than 100 card, tactical or dice games. This one for me is very special in my heart. The missions are unpredictable due to dice and card element plus you could go to so many hero options. The difficulty and the learning curve could turn some but I recommend start on easy and learn well the places and the objectives. The game really combines all three of my favourites elements like dice, board and cards in very polished UI. More time you put in the greater the reward. Thank you developers.

I usually like these sort of games, but this one didn't strike with me. The stories are nice, but the variety is sorely lacking. Don't be deceived by the different starting operatives, enemies and stories. Very, very few things change between playthroughs and all of them are following the same formula of recruiting, building resources and throwing dice when at the right place to see if you complete the objective or not. All of it is played on the same map, which is another thing that sucks. Dice-based combat can be very interesting, or at least could be if there were more options available. Because of how this game limits the actions you can take at any given turn, there are actually very few winning choices you can make and thus even the freedom to explore is limited lending more to the lack of variety. Game runs smoothly, I like the sounds and the art is beautiful; the themes are nice, the first challenging map was a blast; the second one was a lot worse because I had technically played it with slightly different rules, and after the third one I knew this game was not for me.

Excellent game if you play it properly. Originally, at release, I played it the wrong way by rushing things which made it feel like each games was over way too quickly. Now that I revisited it years later, I realized that you're meant to play it slowly by taking out the cultists rather than trying to beat them to victory. This makes for a vastly different, and much more interesting game. If you rush, it feels like only a few things are worth actions and many seem pointless, but in the slow game the usefulness of certain actions changes completely. Still, only a few of the "stories" seem long enough to feel like a "proper" game to me. Most are over way too quickly even with my new playstyle and could use a few more phases. Really interesting spin on a fantasy setting, I especially like the "flesh abomination" story. The variety of mechanics, especially spells, keeps the game very fresh even when replaying the same story, and the different cults change the context of each game to a surprisingly high degree. Same goes for the main operatives. Still, each time I played the game intensively for a while, it amounted to some 9 hours per "season" before I felt I'm done for a while. I'll likely revisit it again a year or two later. So whether it's worth your money depends on how you feel. It's not exactly an expensive game for what you get, in my opinion.

3/5 Quite addictive board game, but it has its frustrating moments. Random events can completely ruin a run and the spellbooks you draw can determine victory or defeat. Elementalism is basically the only decent choice for combat, whereas Blood and Night will rapidly kill your character if you use them. Most of the time I've started recruiting and using physical fighters instead of spellcasters. But my biggest gripe for which alone I've lowered the rating by one point: In this day and age a game should never, EVER, lock you out from accessing the main menu during play. When I want to quit a run, I should ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ be allowed to.

Continuant mon voyage sur la route pavée des jeux de plateau, j'ai découvert un peu par hasard ce [b]Heretic Operative[/b], et je dois vous dire que j'en suis fort comblé! Ce jeu de plateau est original mais dur, il faudra planifier à chaque instant vos actions qui sont limitées, et ne surtout pas laisser le culte se développer sous peine de ne plus pouvoir lutter. Par ailleurs la corruption est un vrai soucis qu'il faudra très vite gérer. [u]Le Pitch[/u] Dans ce jeu vous aurez pour adversaire "Le Culte", sorte de mages impis, ce sera cet adversaire qu'il faudra contrer et qui pourra vous nuire le plus mais aussi vous faire perdre la partie. Mais de plus comme vous êtes des hérétiques, vous êtes également pourchassés par l'Inquisition. Le jeu prend donc lieu dans un monde de type [i]Heroic Fantasy[/i], sur un plateau où il y a ça et là des locations importantes, comme une ferme, une auberge, votre cachette bien entendu (votre point de départ), une cathédrale et une ville, et d'autres lieux chargés de magie comme la forteresse elfe ou encore des tombes. Avant de commencer vous devrez choisir un scénario imposé par votre niveau, en augmentant de niveau d'autres scénarios se débloqueront. Ensuite vous choisissez un champion de départ, d'autres plus tard dans le jeu seront à inviter à se battre à vos côtés moyennant ressources. Ce champion aura un sort unique et quelques sorts de départ plus un livre de sorts à identifier. De plus il a une arme très basique. Puis enfin vous choisissez quel culte combattre, idem d'autres seront débloqués ultérieurement lorsque vous progresserez en niveau. Vous démarrez avec un héro qui a des caractéristiques plus ou moins élevées en arcane (la magie), en social, en force, en vie, et deux autres caractéristiques plus qu'importantes que sont la corruption et la tranquillité, qui s'opposent en quelque sorte, mais j'y reviendrai. De plus vous aurez des ressources, listées en haut d'écran, que seront l'or, le lore (coutumes, servant à obtenir de nouveaux sorts ou encore à débloquer certaines étapes du scénario), l'influence (qui servira à obtenir des "Townsfolk", des citadins qui travailleront pour vous, à obtenir dans chaque bâtiments (plusieurs par bâtiments), et vous permettront d'obtenir ressources, stuff, voir carrément des déplacement ou des effets utiles (comme le Barman qui pourra vous raconter les rumeurs qu'il entend), il y aura en plus, justement, la rumeur (pour relancer une carte aventure qui ne vous plairait pas) et enfin le Fate, la destinée, qui s'obtient en ne jouant pas une de vos deux actions (ou les 2) et qui sert à relancer un dé. Dans chaque lieu des cartes aventure pourront être piochées automatiquement chaque tour lorsque vous y séjournerez, ce sont en fait des events à choix multiples, et des carac. seront associées au lieu (ex: la ferme est surtout liée à la carac. force, ce qui voudra dire que lorsqu'une carte aventure associée à la ferme est tirée, ce sera surtout cette caractéristique qui sera utilisée pour les tirages de dés, et les cartes aventure de la ferme sont souvent relatives à des épreuves physiques). Chaque lieu a son lot de "townsfolk", et à vous de les débloquer contre de l'influence pour qu'ils travaillent pour vous, de façon passive ou active, contre un point d'action. Vous avez 2 points d'action par tour, à utiliser entièrement ou non pour récupérer du Fate, sachant que cela sert à un tas de chose (actions de townsfolks ou pour se déplacer). Abordons le culte maintenant. Sur le côté du board vous aurez une jauge formée de petits cercles alignés les uns sur les autres, qui se grisent lorsque le culte évolue. Au bout une tête de mort lorsque la jauge est entièrement remplie. Ca et là vous aurez dans ces cercles un point d'exclamation ou une croix, dans ce cas lorsque la jauge atteint ces cercles/croix une carte "culte" sera tirée, faisant alors grandement avancer les activités du culte; enfin lorsque cette jauge sera remplie entièrement, les activités du culte augmenteront en intensité, un "2" est alors annoté près du visage du culte, et lorsqu'il y a un certain nombre de fois que la jauge est remplie entièrement ce sera "game over" (ce nombre de fois est indiqué en message pop-up si vous laissez la souris sur la carte représentant le culte en haut à gauche), de toute façon plus la jauge se remplit, plus le culte envoie partout ses séides sur la carte, il vont dans chaque bâtiments et alors tout devient plus compliqué. Il faudra donc à un moment combattre pour les déloger, que ce soient eux ou encore des orcs ou autres ennemis ailleurs. Les combats sont assez intéressants car ils font appels à plusieurs types de dommages obtenus de différentes façons. Vous aurez au départ un livre de sort avec une poignée de sorts dedans. Chaque livre de sorts vous fera découvrir certains sorts liés à un ou deux éléments, pour en découvrir d'autres liés à d'autres éléments il vous faudra d'autres livres de sort ou d'autres héros. Pour découvrir de nouveaux sorts via votre livre, il faudra utiliser 1 point de Lore et réussir un jet de dés (arcane). Si tout va bien, plusieurs sorts vous seront proposés, à vous d'en choisir un. Les livres de sorts ne sont utilisable qu'un certain nombre de fois pour découvrir de nouveaux sorts, après ce sera par d'autres moyens. Vous pourrez également avoir des mercenaires travaillant pour vous, des artefacts ou encore des objets, tout cela s'obtient ou en visitant et achetant certains artefacts/objets présents à différentes locations, ou encore en débloquant par exemple le shopkeeper et en l'utilisant moyennant or, il vous fera alors choisir 1 objet parmi trois proposés. Il en va de même pour les mercenaires, tirer une carte du deck mercenaires en utilisant certains townsfolks. Chaque sorts ou stuff ou mercenaires va alors avoir un nombre de dés associés à un type de dommages que sont l'iron (fer, souvent venant des armes ou mercenaires), du feu, de la terre, de l'arcane, de la nuit, du sang, de l'illusion ou de la nature (il y en a tellement qu'il se pourrait qu'il y en ait encore d'autres). Ensuite il faudra faire en 3 rounds un nombre de dommages, chaque sort ne pouvant être utilisé qu'une fois. Si vous ne faites pas assez ce sera l'échec et ses conséquences. Vous aurez des missions principales dans chaque scénario. Cela commence toujours par déplacer votre champion sur une certaine location, puis la quête principale prendra peu à peu effet. Abordons enfin la corruption, qui s'obtient de différentes façons mais surtout en utilisant la magie. En ce cas vous commencerez à obtenir des points de corruption qui, s'ils sont trop élevés, vont transformer votre agent qui devra faire des jets de dés régulièrement pour éviter de s'abandonner à la corruption. Pour contrer la corruption, il y a certaines capacités (stuff ou townsfolks) mais aussi la tranquillité, qui ampute la corruption chaque tour de son nombre, mais c'est peu, d'autant que si votre tranquillité devenait négative, alors votre corruption augmenterait chaque tour. La corruption est vraiment à gérer, c'est une plaie Il n'y a pas de tuto dans le jeu, de plus il est en anglais comme vous l'avez remarqué. Seul un petit topic "aide" vous donnera les grandes lignes, il est très basique, et cela me déçoit car de nombreuses questions restent en suspens. Voilà, un jeu très intéressant, ne demandant pas un énorme niveau d'anglais, mais il faudra voir si l'évolution est satisfaisante car une fois tous les scénarios finis, que se passera-t-il? Y a-t-il un mode "bac à sable" ou "jeu de plateau"? A suivre

Меня привлекла в игре интересное описание. Но так и хочется написать: "не переносите настолки в компьютерный вариант один в один" - это просто убивает игровой процесс. В общем игра оказалась бедной на компьютерный геймплей. Для настолки смотрелась бы хорошо.

First off, this isnt a *bad* game. But it is an example of using a bad UI to stretch a low amount of content.