Othercide

[h2]Hope was the first to die...[/h2] Literally my first Daughter that died was Hope. >,< This is a tactics game with a weird overarching strategy tied to gaining power long term via short term losses; aka. sacrifices. It is isometric turn/initiative based, almost like XCOM in presentation, but it DEFINITELY goes in a different direction combat wise. Briefly pushing aside the big thing people immediately talk about, here is how the game is structured. You start a run (recollection) with 3 Daughters and you fight through levels (eras) by accessing stages (synapses) each "day" to get resources, gear (memories) and XP. Once you get through roughly half of the level/era's "days," a boss shows up. Defeating the boss ends the level/era. Each level/era is a large step up in difficulty from the last. If you lose all you daughters (you can get more), die to the boss, or decide to "give up," the run ends BUT you get to unlock bonuses for the next "run" depending on how many stages/synapses you completed (for the most part). The bonuses boost power, boost the base level of new daughters, give a few rez/ other bonuses, and even let you "skip" levels/eras. But here is a major sticking point: when the run ends, you lose all of your Daughters, all your resources, and all your equipped gear. You can rez daughters, even from previous runs, but this still means momentum will be slowed down significantly . Now this, paired with the "original" way to play were you can only heal via sacrificing daughters means it will become somewhat grindy. Even with the newer "dream" mode that heals 50% every day, this will take a bit, though if you play smart, will definitely be quicker. Another key mechanic, tied into the sacrifice theme is that some key disruptive abilities in combat use HP, which is a tactical choice to attempt to mitigate larger damage... ideally. Anyways, I found it interesting, and I recommend trying it only if you interested as well. The art is great, and the soundtrack is generally good. The story is odd and kinda vague; this is mainly a combat/tactic/strategy affair. Though I decided to put it down after the 2nd boss, it was an engaging and challenging experience that I am sure would take a number of runs to complete.

Yeah, no. As much as I wanted to like it, Othercide is just not up to snuff. The key issue to me is the immensely low variety between combat encounters. The game does try to keep things fresh by introducing new types of enemies over time, yet this didn't feel good enough to me. It's not like variety is just about the opposition you face; not all is well in this regard when it comes to objectives and your merry warband's capabilities. The number of skills each character gets is nothing to write home about, and the traits they develop over time, even when amassed, are also not that great. Getting to customize said skills via lootable upgrades is definitely a step in the right direction, yet it's a "too little, too late" sort of thing, I'd say. Then there's the fact that the game leans far too heavily into the whole "HP is a currency" thing. It's a great idea thematically, and I suppose it's not an entirely bad mechanic, given how it presents a sufficiently engaging choice between spending HP on your terms and weathering the enemy assault naturally. ...but doubling down and tying HP recovery sacrificing your units out of combat? That's just not pretty. To be fair, you do get to sidestep the death of your units (whether they fell in combat or out of it) by having access to resurrection, which is basically healing with extra steps, but, understandably, opportunities to defy death in such fashion are limited. Long story short, plenty of style in here, but the substance isn't what I'd call delectable. I strongly feel that Othercide could've been truly noteworthy, but for me it misses the mark a bit too hard to be enjoyable.

> accidentally press shift 5 times, window asks me if i want to activate sticky keys > after clicking no , realize my keys are already sticky 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤

Okay, so there's actually a good game in here. A lot of the negatives bashing it for core design decisions aren't really legitimate criticisms. But there's enough individual little flaws that add up that make it hard to recommend. I'm no stranger to "masochistic" games as I tend to enjoy games like Fear and Hunger or Iron Man X-COM. In broad strokes the game is a combination of rogue-like and X-COM. You are expected to fail runs and start over with stronger buffs you can purchase for each run (i.e. Remembrances). These benefits include free resurrection tokens to bring back your strongest and favorite Daughters (basically your heroes) or starting at a later chapter in the game or being able to recruit new Daughters at a higher base level. So there's a progression system in place to make later runs easier. There's lots of complaints about spending health or sacrificing your Daughters as health potions to your other Daughters and this is really over-stated. Games like Hades expect you to try and manage your health to get through a run. Some skills do cost hp, which sounds scary at first, until you recognize that using those skills prevent more damage than you'd lose on activating on the skill. Many of this skills tank damage, interrupt attacks or let you dps race bosses. So they'll outright prevent more hp loss or death than if you didn't use those skills. I've had Shieldbearers just tank killer move after killer move from bosses and because hp-based skills only drain a % of current health, your Daughters can hold out for a long time. And this is all worthwhile if you beat a chapter since this unlocks a lot of the major milestone upgrades I mentioned above. That's a good time to reset the run since you can get a fresh start with all your new upgrades to play with. There's also nifty management tricks like saccing a damaged higher level daughter to heal a lower level one and give them a substantial buff -- then rezzing your sacrificed daughter to bring her back to full hp. If you liked Darkest Dungeon, then there's a similar cutthroat HR management system in place here. As you encounter enemies, codex entries open up explaining their behavior. One enemy will focus your backline and ignore your other daughters entirely. Others will target the closest daughter with the highest hp and so on. So as you learn the game you can somewhat reliably plan around the enemy AI. You learn to prioritize which targets you can focus or ignore. Where the game gets really frustrating is that unless you save scum a lot, The UI doesn't always communicate how boss moves work or some weird edge-case AI behaviors. Sometimes melee enemies will move their full distance to touch a Daughter and not attack, and other times they will. Newly spawned enemies won't attack you right away. *Usually.* Unless they're specific types of ranged enemy. Or you're camping their spawn. You don't learn without experiencing this. There's a bug which curses some runs. This bug causes melee enemies to randomly hit you in from across the map. Which wasn't quite enough to ruin my runs and progress to another chapter. But man, it's frustrating that devs haven't fixed this one yet. The UI in generally contributes to the game being unreadable. Bosses and other enemies have reaction moves or special states they enter on trigger conditions. The Deacon boss is a notorious example of this and I had to save scum the mission repeatedly to learn his pattern. I'd really like it if there were better tooltips, some aggro indicators highlighting enemy intent and the ability to read the enemy codex in combat, especially as this game tends to lean more toward being a more pure "chess-like" strategy game. You really want to take your time planning out your moves. And man, it's not fun restarting the same mission a dozen times to try and figure all this out. In addition, scrolling the map and trying to examine enemies for their move range and turn order is a pain in the ass because most of the game just uses red highlights and greyscale for everything and the scroll speed is so dang slow. Enemies also don't highlight in red on the turn order timeline when you pan over them. And the UI can get "sticky" making it hard to cancel out of examining enemies, input commands or pan back to your active daughter without accidentally inputting a move you don't want her to make. There's just generally this clunky feel about everything. All-in-all all the friction from these minor issues just add up to get in the way a game which I'd otherwise enjoy for its challenge. It's legitimately addicting once you really get into it. There's not enough straws on the camel's back to break the entire experience, but it's damn near close. That said, I got the game on sale for $3, so I can't complain. I'd really recommend the devs to work on the polish and improving readability and signalling.

I love this game. I'm a big fan of tactical strategy games like X-Com and Phoenix Point and this game gives Phoenix Point some strong competition for my favorite of the genre. This game shines if you really like tactical combat and you like it to be tough as nails. This game has given me more challenge than a game like X-Com ever did and without any of the rage-quit frustration of something dumb like whiffing multiple 99% shots in a row. The combat is satisfying, it can be punishing if your not paying attention to your opponents and the timeline, but very rewarding when you finally get a feel for the strategy and the abilities of the units. There's very little RNG that can screw you over in a fight, outside of the occasional missed attack or unfortunate enemy spawns; generally if your playing smart the game rewards you for that. And I gotta say again the game is pretty dang hard, definitely one of if not the hardest I've played in the genre and that comes down mostly to the very tough decisions you have to make in combat and out of combat regarding your units health. If you don't like ongoing stress of every hit your best units take degrading them permanently your gonna have a tough time, as well as deciding when to use your abilities that cost health and which of your units to sacrifice to heal and empower your others. It gets a bit easier later on when you can resurrect your best units from previous runs but even thats limited. I really appreciate this game for the really great combat system (love the timeline mechanic) and the really hard decisions you have to make to maintain your units. In a weird way it turns the management of your units health and levels into its own resource. Like trying to keep some of your lesser units up to level so you can sacrifice them for health if you need to, or trying to get the very last few drops of usefulness out of a good unit that took to many hits before you have to sacrifice her to heal up an even better one; or deciding you want to put her on the backburner and try to level up a lower unit to sacrifice to her so she can get back in action. Its a very different kind of resource managment. Another thing I want to reiterate, this is your game if you LOVE tactical strategy turn based combat because theres very little else to the game outside of that, I don't mean that in a bad way; its actually a positive IMO. My other favorite game like this is Phoenix Point and in that you have to manage your bases, equipment, soldiers, resources, explore the planet, recruit, build faction relationships, research enemies and new weapons, complete ongoing objectives/quests etc. Much like X-Com theres a lot of non-combat upkeep that is still obviously fun....but does drag you away from combat for a good amount of gameplay. If all you want to do is move your characters around on the battlefield and kick butt this is a great game for that. The only thing you really HAVE to do outside of fights is pick new skills for your units, modify them a little bit and sacrifice/heal them. Theres lore stuff to explore but the game is 90% combat and 10% unit/resource management; compared to the more even split of other games. That might not sound as fun if you like the complex resource management in games like x-com and Phoenix Point (which I do) but ultimately my favorite part of this genre is the strategic combat; and sometimes I just want to sit down and not worry about researching new plasma rifles and just fight my way through some unending hoards. I really appreciate the style of the game, I think it looks great and very striking. The lore/story is interesting if very scattered; its one of those things where you can ignore it entirely if you want; or spend an hour or two reading through all the story fragments you unlock after a long playthrough and try to put it all together yourself. The few downsides I could give it is that the enemies are somewhat limited; there's only a handful or two of different types but there's enough to keep it interesting through a playthrough and you get familiar enough with each type to really learn their ins and out and how best to beat them; plus each boss is unique enough to keep the variety going as you finally get to each one. Similarly their are only a few unit classes (three with a secret 4th you get part way through the game) Each of the units are really well designed with distinct feeling playstyles, and unlike in other games I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite; they're all very fun to play and useful to bring on a mission (making the very limited slots you have for units per mission another difficult choice in this game). I do really wish the devs had at some point put out a DLC for at least 1 more unit type, that would have been very cool to see. I consider those downsides very minor considering the overall smaller scope of this game. Whats here is really well designed and if you like hard but rewarding turnbased tactical strategy games that are VERY focused on the combat; I'd recommend this game over any other. Very much looking forward to the spiritual successor they're releasing this year!

It's beautiful. It's fun. It's mysterious. It's not worth £25, it's definitely worth £3.74 (RRP and current price at time of review respectively). What I'd say it's worth probably falls somewhere in between, maybe £12? Get it at 50%. Keep your expectations reasonable. It's a game that sells itself on its style. Play on Easy Mode. I get the symbolic point behind the healing system but it's a huge PITA that in practice I think makes the game too difficult for the kind of player who would enjoy the simplified form-over-function XCOM combat. 10/10 visuals, 6/10 gameplay, 8/10 total. Recommended at 50% or lower of RRP. Notably all above average. I'll probably beat the game, or watch one of my girlfriends beat it. Edit: Spelling.

Awesome and unique art style and atmosphere. Hard at first, but gets easier as your daughters level up. But the most important thing ... the soundtrack of the very first boss is A BLAST!! Why such epic music just for the first boss, I don't get it but ehh doesn't matter, I'm still listening to it! I WILL NEVER FAAALLL ~ !!