Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

I have a weird relationship with tactical RPG's. I was a huge fan of Shining Force back on the mega drive in the early 90's, but while I've played and enjoyed many of the Fire Emblem games that made this genre mainstream, I've never finished one, having drifted away to other games around the 60% mark. Symphony of War not only managed to overcome that hurdle for me, but was good enough that I also downloaded the DLC and played it through a second time. How it achieved that is difficult to pin down, but they've done a number of things that manages to spice up the gameplay enough that it never gets to feel repetitive. The most notable addition is the use of squads rather than characters. While you have your standard named characters building an army, each can be outfitted (or combined together) to create miniature army units of anywhere from 1 to 9 units. These squads attack as one, and the units that comprise them come from a range of types that individually level up and can be promoted into greater classes. You might decide to move your soldiers up to be spear warriors, or give them shields to defend the units behind them. Or maybe you want to put them on a horse and move them into a cavalry unit? Do you want your apprentice magician to develop into a fire, ice, or lightning mage? Is your skirmisher going to move into the assassin class that opens on the enemy back ranks, or perhaps you want to give them a bit more survivability and have them move into the ranger class. Or maybe you want to move them into an acolyte to eventually build them up into a paladin. The choice is entirely yours. Between every battle I found myself spending a chunk of time micromanaging my squads, adding new units, moving some around, and the game is very soundly constructed to have this constantly developing over the full 30 campaign chapters. Since each squad's size is linked to the leadership stat of the commander, in the early game you're stretched to have squads bigger than 4-5, but this grows over time, not only in unit number or the amount of squads you can send into the field, but also introducing larger units such as dragons. It's really well done, and achieves wonders in tackling the issue of the gameplay stagnating which similar games suffer from in later stages due to them just being more of the same on different maps. But the developers didn't just settle with that. Most of the battles can be accomplished within 8-12 rounds, with optional targets for additional resources to kit out and promote your units up littering the field to collect if you so choose. The story is also split into parts, where earlier chapters are quicker and smaller scale affairs, gradually building to the end of section big battle at which point a reset takes place. This wave-like delivery of the story means it's constantly refreshing itself, with the addition of more exotic units in the later game that breaks up the monotony of standard soldier, knight, archer, and assassin that the setting dictates in a medieval military world. A further addition midgame introduces additional super powers. These are like hand of god abilities that can range from dropping fireballs on the heads of all enemy units in a + shaped set of squares, allowing a squad to teleport 10 squares away, refreshing an expended squad to have a second turn in the same round, or buffing a squad's defense while simultaneously forcing every enemy unit in range of it to attack them on their next turn. The choice of when and where to expend these can often decide whether you can complete the tight constraints in the bonus mission objectives or not, or you could choose not to use them and take down the enemy with strategic wits alone. I could go on with all the small details they've stuffed in, the beautiful sprites, catchy music, the morale aspect of combat that allows you to break an enemy without necessarily killing them all, the talent tree unlocked based on an external reputation being built through your actions in the world, the various artifacts you can equip to your squads to further curstomise them, or the mini relationships the story characters can build with one another. Some of these work better than others (the relationship aspect feels a touch unfinished, and I'm never going to stop laughing at the random name thrown on a cultist being Adrian or Gregory), but it all adds together to create a wonderful game that's not only a joy to play through once, but has legitimate replayability value. If I had one complaint, it's that I'd have liked a few more boss characters throughout the story. There are named villains to chase down, but the unique units on the battlefield tend to fall into future party members or meme enemies who don't even fight back. The game focuses heavily on the internal civil war with the empire, whereas I'd have liked to have a little more time given to the cult, with maybe some more unique boss exclusive units to take on once in a while. But that really is the smallest of complaints. If I had to describe Symphony of War in a single sentence, I'd say it's a game designed to give you a huge amount of tools and elements to play with, but never forces any of them on you, instead respecting your ability to choose how you want to play. If you have even a fleeting interest in tactical RPGs, you want to give this one a play.

Great game.

+1

Muito Bom

Très bon RPG tactique, pas forcement facile de s'y lancer de prime abord mais la partie tactique est complète mention spécial au DLC legends. Un petit bémol sur les tooltip d'explications des objets/attaques qui n'est pas très clair, la navigation dans les menu et sur la carte avec un clavier/souris est perfectible PS : RIP zorro

表现和玩法都算得上比较优秀的战棋游戏 相较于其他的战棋，本作几乎没有类似属性或者兵种克制的概念，相反突出的是构筑和养成的能力 养成和装备思路都使得趣味性提升了相当的档次，最喜欢的就是养一个数值怪一路碾过去(论翠玉雕像为什么是神) 有点算是难蚌的点的，是剧情中间主角死了让我有点差点看不下去 （虽然笃定肯定能打赢复活赛，但还是觉得不舒服） :steamthumbsup:总体还是推荐游玩，建议打折入手:sts_defect:

Peak