Last Regiment

I love this game, and their first one, Legends of Callasia. They play similarly, but different enough to enjoy and own both. I have only played the single player campaign missions so far, but there are a LOT of them, and they are very well designed. Someday I may give multiplayer a try, but maybe not. There is enough here with single player campaign missions and skirmish mode to keep me happy for a long time. Good, fun, quick playing turn-based combat game with we-go turn mechanics. There are some pretty unique mechanics here, and along with the card play (what game nowadays doesn't have cards?!?) to recruit new units, buff units, and cast spells and such, give this game good variety. Just plain old fun with a capital FUN. Jake and Elwood think this game reminds them of "Sweet Home Chicago", whatever that means. But, I think it's a good recommendation from the blues boys. I just REALLY, REALLY, REALLY wish they would add an option to slow down the turn execution. It just happens way, way too fast for this old guy to even process what the heck is going on. I have no idea who attacked who, who bumped into who and when during movement, and such and such. This really knocks the game down a huge notch. The developers finally acknowledged that they "might" look at this, but I have been asking them about this for years, since Legends of Callasia, and they still ignore this request. Come on folks, please give us an option to slow down the turn execution so we can see what's happening. It can't be that difficult.

UI is poor. Important information is given through highlighted keywords on tooltips, but the highlighted keyword can't be moused over because it's on a tooltip that goes away when you try to inspect it. The default camera pan is arrow keys and I had to re-map it to WASD. Moving my mouse to the edge of the screen didn't seem to pan? Movement occurs on a hex grid simultaneously, but unlike other games, this game makes no attempt to resolve expected collisions between units. There is a tiny 'X' shown when the collision will occur and if you hit End Turn then the units collide, revert to their previous tiles, and stop moving. This makes navigating multiple units along a similar path an exercise in frustration. Often while click & dragging to move a unit I would end up dragging across the wrong tile and need to redo my entire move. There didn't seem to be information on the UI for how far enemy units could move or attack. I somehow lost a unit when I had a higher attack and higher health than the enemy but I didn't see why because when I hit End Turn I was looking at a different battle in a different part of the map and the game doesn't automatically re-focus the camera to show you important events. The blurb on the store page suggests that this game is a "fusion of cards and turn-based strategy", but the cards are primary just a way to summon units onto the map around your general -- but they also have cost in gold and mana, so really the cards primarily serve as a way to randomize what units you can spawn around your general, _but_ you get to pick starting cards and the win condition for killing the enemy general means you just pick your biggest units to start, spawn them, and assassinate the AI before they realize what is happening. There are lots of passive abilities and minor actions that you can take like razing structures or digging trenches. I didn't like how many of these actions seemed to have functionally identical outcomes (e.g. adding block or increasing damage) but were obfuscated by different tooltips, names, and descriptions. I came away feeling like the game had significantly less real complexity or depth than you might think from the sheer volume of different options. As for the actual abilities and cards, all of them get resolved at distinct phases during the end of turn, but the page in the in-game encyclopedia that should describe those phases ... didn't? It was just blank for me. It seems like there's ~10 phases like "Fortify", "Buff", "Heal", "Attack", "Move", "Capture", etc and the game goes through those phases when you hit End Turn and resolves abilities on each. This felt very weird and unlike a card game. Normally, card games either resolve instantly or use something like a stack. There's many units and heroes in the game. The heroes seem interesting, but the units are mostly cookie-cutter. Each unit generally has a single attack, 1-2 passive abilities like "increased damage in woodlands", or "immune to X damage type". Some units have a buff or debuff ability like healing allies or slowing enemies but that's less common than the attack + passive template. I'm not sure if any units were exact reskins of each other, but it felt like there didn't need to be so many units since so many of them play similarly -- move and attack target, where target is either adjacent or up to some tiles away. Overall, my biggest issue with this game is the UI and the confusing movement / end-of-turn resolution system. That's unfortunately amplified by the game's focus on "flavored" abilities instead of sticking to a smaller set of well-defined keywords and actions shared by all units -- for example, is there a difference between "Mage Armor" and the "Armor" given by using Fortify on a unit? I'm not sure, but they were highlighted as keywords on units so maybe! If the answer is "no", then the game shouldn't have used a different keyword. If the answer is "yes", the tooltip didn't explain to me how "Mage Armor" is different from "Armor".

To be honest, I didn't care for it. I liked their previous strategy game but I found this one to be utterly dull and the mechanics rather tedious. You have to constantly discard garbage cards, many of which don't contribute much or are superfluous. There's too many boring and tedious tasks which really drag this game down.

Solid turn-based strategy (TBS) game in a fantasy setting. Campaign takes around 30 hours to complete. Then you can play skirmishes against AI with preset or custom decks for all leaders. Game apparently supports multiplayer but I couldn't try that as there does not seem to be many players playing that mode right now. Pros: [list] [*]Each leader / faction can be played in quite a few different manners (especially in skirmish mode), even though a lot of units are shared. [*]Maximum unit is capped by default (although you can remove that in skirmish). It avoids one of the tediousness of most TBS were it takes ages to give orders to all units. It also opens strategies based on this: as it is difficult / costly to redeploy a strong but slow army somewhere else. [*]Campaign with storyline and lore [*]I like the deck system and the depth it brings in terms of strategies / counters. You can make rush decks, stall decks, spell nuke decks. [*]Relaxing soundtrack [/list] Cons: [list] [*]Campaign difficulty is not always consistent. I am quite experienced with TBS games so most of the early campaign was quite easy, with no need for retries except for stuff like "hero died". Starting from chapter 4 it does ramp up a bit, with a need to adapt deck and strategy to the actual mission and a bit of die and retry after figuring out how the map plays. [*]Skirmish AI is not very strong and there are no difficulty level selection. But you can always play against multiple AIs instead of 1v1. [/list] I had a few crashes but autosave worked well. Overall it feels like an old-school TBS with modern graphics. I guess it could be a good starting game for someone new to this genre.

PROS: + story + tons of units + many commanders + spells + card system + deck building + price + workshop + skirmish + long campaign (20 hours) CONS: - sounds - graphical bug - you still see some damage number even if you are watching diferent part of map, but nothing game breaking, so never mind FINAL VERDICT: 10/10 - for me - absolutely star in this year. Comes from nowhere but gives me tons of fun and many hours of gameplay. And for actual price 10 Euro = must have for all turn based strategy lovers P.S. - for developers - hope for some datadisks every half year for fair price ;)

is good

Solid turn-based strategy game. The campaign is interesting and the unit capabilities are balanced well for replayability in multiplayer.

I was on the ropes about getting this game and i said the hell with it. Now that i played it I just have to say what a heck of a game. I wasn't sure about the turn- based simultaneously but they nailed it. If your hesitant on getting this game, don't be you will not regret it.

Very good game. Solid, no crashes, good production values. It has a gameplay that is different than most TBS games, as another very good game of the same developers, Legends of Callasia, also had. Also this is not a sequel of Callasia; both are good in their own way. Hopefully the devs will continue to release great games in the future.

9/10 - Well worth checking out for turn-based fans! POSITIVES: - Planning simultaneous turns is an interesting, well-executed twist on traditional turn-based tactics games such as "Battle for Wesnoth". - How you use and influence the cards you draw can be critical: generate extra income, deploy or upgrade units, and give direct boosts. - The graphics are stylish and the interface provides plenty of information without getting overwhelming, even when a lot is going on at the same time. NEGATIVES: - The learning curve might be quite steep for players new to the genre, but with a little patience it becomes quite easy to understand and predict outcomes as the turns system is well-polished. - Some of the campaign maps can take quite a long time to complete – not necessarily a negative, just something to be aware of when buying. - The difficulty goes up around chapter 4 or 5 with stronger enemy units, so earlier maps may seem a bit easy for experienced players or quite challenging later in the game. OVERALL: Deserves to be seen by more players. Plenty of hours of turn-based entertainment to be had.