Shields of Loyalty

This game is a clone of Fantasy General. At first it seemed OK, but the lack of polish quickly became evident. Update: The game is actually impossible to complete. When you try to start the mission "The Tower", the game kicks you out to the main menu. First, the tutorial doesn't explain mechanics clearly enough. I only understood how most things work by the time I cleared the first island. For example, I was confused why abilities like "Defensive Fire" or "Brothers in Arms" trigger inconsistently - only later did I notice they have limited uses per battle. And "Offensive Fire" on artillery units doesn't seem to work at all. Some ability descriptions are just wrong: "Freeze" says that affected units can't move for 2 turns, yet it doesn't seem to affect movement at all. "Hit-and-Run" is supposed to let you move after attacking, but it actually *prevents* you from attacking if you move. And I still don't understand damage calculations. The game shows "expected results" when hovering over enemies, but actual results are often completely different - enemies often deal far more damage than previewed. The upgrade system is also poorly explained. I put off unit upgrades because they're expensive and I wasn't sure which units to invest in, only to discover they take several missions to research. I ended up reaching the final battle of the first island with only basic units. Some unit upgrades feel like downgrades. For example, Sylph upgrades to Dryad, replacing the powerful "Freeze" ability (which reduces enemy defenses) with "Thorns," a mediocre damage ability. Since upgrades take several missions to complete and the game doesn't tell you what units upgrade into, you can't undo these decisions. Second, the graphics look dated despite releasing in 2025. Points of interest are hard to spot on the map. Most units are visually distinct enough, but animations are simplistic and slow even with "Fast animations" enabled, making the game more tedious than necessary. On the second island some units are hard to see against the white snow. Third, there are severe balancing issues. The game is engaging at first, but quickly becomes a frustrating savescum fest. Enemy fliers appear out of nowhere - their movement range exceeds your maximum sight radius even with artifacts - and deal massive damage, often forcing your units to surrender. Enemy casters spam AoE spells that can wipe out half your army if units are grouped together. You have to try to lure them out with your heroes, which often isn't possible. There's too much RNG: in identical situations you might deal 100 damage or 400, and the game doesn't tell you what the range is. Finally, there are bugs. In the first mission on the second island, the game randomly softlocks - it still runs but you can't take actions except ending your turn, which does nothing. The save system is confusing: it sometimes lets you save mid-battle but always reloads from autosave, making manual saves pointless. When you use an ability, and then select another unit, the game selects the first unit. Points of interest that increase HP don't seem to work properly - the game displays "1350+100" in the statistics panel but shows "1350/1350" on the actual HP bar. There's missing text in some places (displaying placeholders like "WALL_DISAPPEAR_TEXT"), and some text is poorly translated. There was a mission with the objective "save all units behind the wall." I cleared the map and rescued all units behind the wall, but the mission failed when the turn limit was reached - turns out I needed to bring all of *my* units behind the wall to win. The player's avatar speaks in several different voices, which is jarring. Some lines have no voiceover at all. And there are many more minor bugs. It feels like an early access game, yet it's a full release. Hard to recommend in its current state.

Uninstalled after mission 3. Fog of war I understand, turn limit I can live with but both together no way I played this mission 3 times and in all of them I had all my army but I lost because I couldn't find the last enemy so if you wanna waste your time buy this game.

At first it seemed to be a really pleasant fantasy general clone, but there are simply too much annoying things go on. - bugs. mainly that in many cases the game gets stucked in a state where its still running, but you can't interact with anything. happened on the second turn of the very first map, and on average every 8-10th turn after that. - you have absolutely no idea, not even hints what awaits you in the next scenario, so you can't strategise with your deployment. The enemy deployment is also totally random, so if you want to split your army, use scouts etc, you'll often find a significant part of your army marching into the nothing, while scouts hunted down in a single turn. Most games like this put the bulk of the enemy hordes to defend cities, and set up some ambushers, here the bulk of the enemy hordes resides in unimportant forests. - upgrades. terrible. since you can't expect what will you find in the next scenario, you have no idea what should you upgrade, and even if you would know, the upgrade takes a lot of resources and multiple days (=completed maps). Usually these games simply unlocks unit upgrades in tiers as you progress, and you only spend resource to upgrade the units themselves, and it works MUCH better. - the user interface is simply terrible. you get about zero information about what special skills do mid-battle, so you can only guess based on the appearance of the enemy, and its type. this is especially annoying on enemy spellcasters, you need to reverse engineer their effects after they use it. you can't even see how far enemy units can move. When you fight at the top of the map you can't even see the expected results, because the popup window goes out of the screen. - the archers offensive/defensive fire support looks good on paper, but the number of opportunities are per map. Just make a limit per turn, or give them an ammo pool they need to restock, or at least give an option to not use it on every possible time. Nevertheless it favors the enemy a lot this way, since its units only participate in a single battle. - there is no undo movement button at all. I'd get it if I can't undo when discovering new enemies, but the option simply doesn't exist. Neither special movesets like you can divide your movement before the main action, or certain units (like skirmishers) being able to move after action - the graphics are well... not catastrophic, but the map has too much contrast and its really hard to figure out where the walkable path even is - unit placement is annoying too. You don't get any bonuses from flanking/encircling enemies, the only two cases where it matters is trying to make the fleeing enemy ending up next to an own unit so it can't heal back instantly. - windowed mode not supported, you can alt+enter it but the resolution stays at fullscreen On the plus side it is still more engaging than Fantasy General 2.

Get this, if you are a fan of Fantasy General, but wait until end of Q1/2026 with playing, as there is still ongoing bug-fixing and balancing work according to the dev discord. Respect for the devs for keeping the support going.

I like that kind of TBS games, and this one is...well, decent. Not a Fantasy General, but the Developer is following its steps, as much as his time and budget allows. There are some balance issues, need a lot of QOL enhancements, graphics…well, it’s there. But still – I had some nice time and would have given it thumbs up if not one thing – it freezes at the end of turn constantly, and about halve of my time I was replaying turns in different ways, trying to advance further. I am now on the third island, and I am tired. Last patch didn’t help. Right now – I’d recommend to wait for several patches before buying, the Dev seems to listen to community and works on improvements. Possibly will change to positive review once I’ll be able to actually finish the game.

Awesome game & I mean that. If you like turned based strategy games, why you dont have this game is beyond me. Reminds me of the old Fantasy General by the great SSI. When every game came out with a 150-300 page instruction Manual. The Soundtrack worth $20 US by itself. I see it on sale for $13. That should be against the law. My hats off to the Dev's. Whatever you decide to come out with, I got your back. Thanks Community. You guys are cool.

Fantastic strategy game really enjoyed it. I would of liked to see a random battle map generator in the game but other then that..... worth a buy. Thumbs up from me.

A game like fantasy general. Got unit exp, upgrade tier, experience, item and special ability. 3 factions

Incomplete game. Still have many bugs. Some scenarios ridiculously hard with way too many enemies. Needs (a lot) more polishing.

I cannot understand how this sits at "mostly positive." It feels and plays like a flash game from the early 2000s. The balance of both the economy and skills is just whatever the dev happened to think would work after giving it a couple of seconds of thought at best but above all that, it starts showing game breaking bugs after a couple of missions. I had units with mostly dead soldiers that couldn't get new units because "no soldiers are dead." In the space of 30 minutes I had rounds that bugged out and just wouldn't let me play until I loaded a previous round three times. Ranged units will either do or not do defensive/offensive fire apparently completely at random. In the second mission I was suddenly given control of the enemy voodoo priest. It just randomly became my unit after attacking my units 3 times in a single round. That this game is considered anything other than the lowest form of shovelware makes no sense. I honestly believe these are bought reviews, something I have never thought on Steam before.