Of Gods and Men: The Daybreak Empire

I wish I could give this game a "meh" instead of a thumbs up or down. Going with thumbs up because you can feel the love the small (and new) dev team put into this game, and I want more game entries in this genre generally. This game reminds me of ye olden game boy/DS fire emblem games. The good: Enjoyed the graphics, the story (though somewhat short and predictable) has heart, the soundtrack was appropriate, and the gameplay is my preferred mix of turn-based combat and team management. Also some interesting ideas in different class mechanics. The bad: This game needs rebalancing. It wasn't very long before I had collected a team of named heroes which could easily one-shot every single enemy they encountered, and the enemy AI, both in combat and on the world map, was lackluster. Game is also on the short side, and lacks the replayability of the fire emblem series. The bugs: I somehow broke the tutorial when I was almost finished with it by clicking on the map too early, and had to restart the game. I also couldn't position units at the very top of any map in any battle, because the screen would cut off their action window.

I've just completed the game on standard, decent 7 hours. The tactical combat is fairly good, and though the campaign map is very railroaded it was nice to see that the enemy factions would move around and take territory. The different classes were interesting as well, though I don't think they were balanced the best. The melee units that weren't hero units felt very underwhelming, archers can pick them off easily before you can move the infantry in, which I understand from the weapon triangle but then the enemy cavalry units are usually higher level and just rush in and destroy your infantry in one hit even with the weapon triangle. Perhaps some sort of armor mechanic that reduces damage from melee could've helped I'm not sure, basically I only used shieldmaidens, archers, mages, and the alchemists for non hero units because the infantry and cavalry died so easily to the higher levelled enemies. Also the campaign map AI isn't the best, if it only has the army on its capital it does nothing, even if you wander off leaving all the bordering provinces with no defenses, this is one of the major improvments I think that would make the game a 6 or 7 / 10. For the $8 price tag, and if I'm assuming a 5/10 to be an average game, doesn't blow me away but isn't bad, I'd give it a 5/10. For the Devs: If you guys do a second patch, one of the levels near the Axeman panda place is bugged in that the action menu sticks off the top of the screen and you can't attack with units on the top most row, its the one where you spawn in the top 2 rows and all the fighting is along the right most 2 rows. Also, the tutorial that shows you how to create units glitches out in widescreen mode. Also, cavalry archers are named as regular cav on the campaign map, and their stats and upkeep don't show up in that spot. Completing the encyclopedia would be nice, and having some way to see what each unit type does in game would be nice. Being able to select an enemy unit and then move the camera to see the full attack range would be nice, also maybe have two colors one for movement and one for attack range for the enemies, I lost a number of units because it looked like a unit couldn't be hit but an enemy was actually in range. Additionally, a sandbox gamemode where you could start in whatever capital you wanted and have a free for all would've been really interesting for replay value