Iratus: Lord of the Dead

I really like the idea of playing the side of the villain! A whole bunch of undead creatures at your disposal, each one with different skills and perks. Mix it with trinkets, spells and potions, and you get an interesting tactical turn based combat game. The only downside, the last levels become veryyy slow, as the enemies get really tanky.

I got this game on sale for under five bucks and it's quickly become on of my new favorites. Comparisons to The Darkest Dungeon have to be made. I actually find myself liking this more than I did TDD, even though I liked that game a lot as well. The strategy involved in succeeding in Iratus is kind of subtle, at first ... until it isn't .... Level One: in the tutorial (a.k.a. 'CakeWalk' difficulty) I played the entire game through with a comedy of learning errors and bad early skill-tree picks and still got through the whole game without a death. Level Two, entitled 'More Pain' :Upped the game to this difficulty on the playback (and yes, I wanted to come back and play it!) and I found it to be noticeably tougher, but I didn't start losing any characters until some of the bosses midway through the game. Didn't really need to adjust my strategy or minion preferences at all. To Level 3 Difficulty I ventured back, to 'Good Always Wins' ... with a minion dying almost every battle .... sometimes two minions in the same battle .... and on some of the later bosses, full-on group wipes! What was I doing wrong? Why was I out of resources? WTH happened?! I found myself asking, sort of laughing and cursing at the same time. Gave the minion bestiary a Very Good Hard Look, finally. Started making some better group synergies. Scrapped my game and started a new one with a whole new attack strategy for the Graveyard build and Iratus's Skill Tree. That paid off greatly, with a run that felt very rewardingly good and an end battle that truly felt hard-earned. Savvy Veteran that I deemed myself now, I ventured down the Rabbit Hole to the Fourth and Final Difficulty, Eternal Harvest. Would you believe there are FIVE ( YES, FIVE !!!) difficulty settings to THIS? Eternal Harvest 1-5. No joke! Well, I decided to just give Eternal Harvest 1 a go .... and I'm dead. Back, and dead again .... survived one battle with ... somebody? Then dead again. Lol .... there is ... nothing to work with here ... the Graveyard is ... um ... a graveyard, lol ... And yet .... somehow .... with a level of masochism I didn't know I had in me, I returned, again and again, new minion combos, new skill tree plan ... new graveyard build targets (when I could rub two souls together to get something built). For the whole first two levels, the entire likelihood of winning felt like it could be extinguished at the drop of a hat or a dusty old bat fart. Whichever came first. But at some point, I got a foothold in there and a party that refused to wipe, or rarely even relinquished a single minion. Then hit the end level and this group that worked so well through the first 4 levels was ripped to absolute shreds by the 5th level denizens, but by then I had resources and enough brains (no, I mean literally, brains) to put together yet another group with a synergy better suited to that final level. I sent two complete groups into the final battle on Eternal Harvest difficulty and they both got their arses handed back to them. I dished out as good as I got back, but that was not enough. I took a break to come write this review ... and then I'm likely going to jump right back into it and try yet a different minion combo. It's just that darn addictive! [EDIT] I did indeed get right back at it ... 8 days later and I'm finally back for one last bit of commentary here .... ... So here I am, returning to Eternal Harvest, Setting 1 .... I'm quite amazed I got to the end game on this level earlier, as a repeat has been quite the challenge. A whole lot of dying went on, with a great deal of that being my poor minions, but eventually, I fleshed out the Mortuary and the Arena (along with everything else) and got close to 3 full groups on rotation between Advance Party, Arena Party and The Walking Wounded Party. Being able to finally stop having to zap away resources for group spot heals helped tremendously, and set me on the path to knocking on the Arch Magister's door ... Finally, there I was, back again to take the smug son-of-a-gun on .... got one brief glimpse of possible success before the entire thing fell in like a house of cards and the group wiped ... Ugh! Not again!!! ... But that was merely the first wave of units I had brought with me (though, decidedly, the group I thought had the best shot ..... gulp!). Taking a critical look at who was left, and knowing the enemy would be refreshed and ready to receive us again, I had everyone decided but my back slot minion ... wouldn't you know, that choice came down to me finally winning the game! The unit I inevitably picked was the Banshee, and this unit almost single-handedly was the reason why I won. She even got the killing blow in when it all came down to it. But the two things she could do, repeatedly, was break the boss' stances and refill Iratus' mana bar. That first ability kept the boss from completely wiping the floor with us. That 2nd ability allowed us to finally overcome the onslaught and turn the tables. I'm fairly convinced if I had picked any of the other back end minions I had been considering, I would have been looking at yet another group wipe. Wowza .... going to need to unplug for a bit now! Hope you found this review interesting and/or helpful. Happy Dungeon Delving!