Telepath Tactics Liberated

It's not for me, but I can see the appeal. In general, I tend to avoid games where both sides go all at once. The reason for that is that "strategy" is basically "have everyone pile on one dude until they die." That tactic is particularly noticeable when the AI prioritizes it at the cost of all else, and when there's permadeath present. It's a competently crafted game, and it's a good indie game. I just couldn't bring myself to finish it, so I can't recommend it.

It has the makings for a good game, but it's very unpolished. From the dialogue and animation to the combat and tactics, the whole thing just needed more time to be truly put together. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this game. Additional information pertaining to my dislike of the combat system as requested by the developer: There feels like a heavy emphasis on pushing and pulling enemies to manipulate the battlefield in your favor, but much of this seems slightly misplaced. For instance, you can push someone into a rock or another character and it barely causes any damage, but if I push them into a puddle they're going to miss a turn and start drowning? Most of the enemies don't seem to do anything until you've already entered their move/attack range, taking away any sense of urgency to complete your objectives. Instead, you need to align yourselves for a first strike type of opportunity and you have all the time in the world to do it. This gives a strong feeling of the game being designed with a need to 'game the game' in order to succeed, which tends to break immersion and feel more like I'm abusing the system than overcoming it. It just feels strange to see a bunch of enemies stand around and watch you beat up their friends and make no move to intervene. Front, side and back attacks all change your hit and damage, but I can't choose the facing for my characters at the end of their turn. Even if they killed the character they just attacked, I'm stuck staring at their dead body for some reason instead of turning around to prepare for the next enemy coming at me. So in order to get around behind an enemy and back stab them, I'm likely going to open myself up to their buddy's back stab against my own character. Ranged combat is very linear in that normal attacks only shoot in straight lines: up, right, down or left. There is no ability to shoot along diagonal lines or at any tiles within range unless you're using a ranged ability, which I find very odd. I also noticed some kinks in the elevation system which can cause line of sight issues. Sometimes when I'm backing my archers up steps, I seem to lose line of sight to the enemies on lower steps, like the ground in front of me is blocking the shot or something? Another complaint I had about ranged weapons was the need to get closer to enemies in order to do better damage. The closer the shot, the more damage it does, but that means I have to put my most lightly armored characters directly into the combat in order to get decent damage out of them. I understand this is probably an attempt to simulate the reduction in force as an arrow travels farther, but the reality is that 3-4 spaces away is not going to be any different in force from being 1-2 spaces away. I also dislike scenarios that force you to retreat or can't be won. For example, the map where you rescue the little black moogle thing, forces you to carry the black moogle back to the start position in order to win. But once you've freed it, you now carry it moving at half speed while you're being chased by enemies that are 10+ levels stronger than you are. So the only method to actually get back there while moving so slowly is to create sacrificial barriers with all of your other characters in order to slow down your pursuers. Why not just make the enemies a few levels higher and give the player the choice between a very hard (but winnable) fight or to pull back and retreat?

I haven't even made it to 30 minutes and I've decided to refund this game because it's very basic, not much fun, and nothing in it seems to be well designed or executed which surprised me a bit given its current review scores... The noise they went with for characters "speaking" with one another sounds like a nearly broken horn honking quickly and at different pitches and it's simply nothing but annoying and it is 100% unnecessary. The dialogue boxes are huge, they zoom in and out in a very strange way when characters are talking, and they look really bad. The bulk of the dialogue I saw so far isn't engaging at all, and there are some pretty bad choices made with it right out of the gate such as the "bet" related conversation in the "tavern." The graphics are a mixed bag. The bulk of the character portraits look wrong, something is off about them, but the combat graphics for the character are okay given the style they chose, however a lot of the background looks blurry or smudged. The UI is a clunky, block mess and the default shortcuts are very strange. Space bar to move to the next character instead of TAB. Ctrl-e or something like that instead of space bar or enter to end turn. Makes no sense. Rotating characters in combat is also very clunky because you can only rotate them 90 degrees in a clockwise direction so if you want them to turn 90 degrees counter clockwise then you have to rotate them 3 times clockwise... not sure why they didn't put in a system to allow us to easily select direction with a single key press to orient the facing toward the mouse. It's super annoying because facing is VERY important so you will be adjusting this often since being backstabbed is a good way to take extra damage or get killed. Combat is rudimentary at best, not well designed, and pretty dull. I did a couple fights and it just wasn't good enough to make me want to keep playing. There don't seem to be any zones of control or attacks of opportunity so you can just walk behind enemies with no penalty for prancing around in combat and get "backstabs" on them and they can do the same to you. Archers can only attack in straight lines along the four cardinal directions only, there are no diagonal shots allowed for some reason. Seems the same for some magic attacks and for melee as well. You can't rotate characters after they attack either, they just stand there with their back toward enemies. This forces you to play in a very, very specific way and it's not fun. This game also does something I loathe - loot pickups in combat. These are only fine if there's a good in game reason why the characters can't take 30 seconds to stop and pick up whatever the enemies drop. It's not like I can't pick that stuff up after the fight when I win, and it's not like I need to pick anything up if I lose because I'm dead. The enemies in the early game also drop only a bit of money, no gear at all even when they're obviously carrying weapons and wearing armour, and it doesn't seem like I can equip anything either but I didn't bother to look into that any further because there was really nothing to make me want to keep playing after the first 20-ish minutes anyway... Edit: A developer responded to this review and it seems they do not understand that ideally they need to hook players in the first 20-30 minutes of gameplay, something that is well known throughout the industry, otherwise they will often set your game aside and move on. They also didn't mention the bulk of my complaints at all which means the developer obviously agrees with the problems I described. They chided me for not playing longer and suggested that their game will magically just get better if I play longer, that the combat will somehow become less basic and clunky than it is at the beginning. Well, I'm not going to buy the game again just to see if MAYBE it gets better in that amount of time because I can recognise when a game is lacking what it needs and I know it will continue to fall short even if I put hours into it. Oh, and I just watched a Let's Play of the section the developer suggested that I play through and the gameplay obviously doesn't get any less rudimentary at that point, it's exactly as unrefined and clunky as it was at the beginning of the game.

I'm enjoying this. I started it on veteran mode which seems like a good pick, in that it's tough but not horrific. It's a bit of a weirdly big leap between difficulty levels though, from "death loses 1 max hp" to "death is permanent", that's like a 20-50x penalty multiplier. I reached a level where I didn't quite have enough surviving units to fill out the roster, but it still went okay and I don't feel like I've been totally boned by permadeath, though it *does* at this point lead me to do a bit of savescumming in tight situations. It's a lot more interesting than other games in the genre, as the variety of characters' abilities is huge. The engineer, especially, is a spectacularly "different" unit - setting up barriers can make a huge difference in the levels where you're badly outnumbered, as can a well-timed bridge destruction. The frequency of being able to exploit map geometry (shoving units into water being a worthwhile action) is also a big plus (and that the enemies can do it to you as well, so you have to bear that in mind in your positioning). There was one level that felt like a bit of a mistake - if you take a long time (not even that long I don't think) it starts churning out one extra enemy unit per turn, in a constrained location. I gradually worked my way over to that spot, and ended up with the entry point corralled and could have potentially done a massive level-up grind there just having different units kill that "free guy" each turn, especially the units whose weapons don't wear out. I moved on because grinding extra on purpose would have felt like cheating, but even just suppressing that recurring unit to let me finish the level unburdened was effectively "free xp", so it seems like the game would be better without that particular "timeout". Not really a point against the game though, probably some players would enjoy the exploit of it, and in sub-veteran difficulties it probably doesn't even really matter. (In case the dev wants to investigate, it was assassins spawning "from the basement") The janky camera animation would be one thing I'd count as a negative that's probably relatively easily remedied - if you tab between units there's a weird non-interruptible camera animation on a curve where the timing curve should be a lot steeper *and* should be interruptible. Not just for tabbing, camera animations in general. Oh, and one more thing that is probably a bug, there's a dark level (the crypt); I sent my engineer across a bridge he built to explore in a different direction near the start, and the darkness closed in on the engineer so there wasn't even a single visible square next to him - it seems that unit has no fog of war dispersal. Edit: further investigation reveals this is not technically a bug, the units that can't see at all have a zero fog-of-war dispersal ability. Still feels like a bug, like either you should be able to act blindly, or every unit should have a minimum of one in that ability so that they can't just be completely immobilized by darkness.

I almost didnt buy this game, due to the developer responding to negative reviews. I get it, I'm an artist -- it's frustrating when people don't like your hard work. But you gotta just let that stuff not bother you, and have control over your emotions. Otherwise it's a real bad look. With that being said, the game is good. The story is not great, and the dialog is a bit rough. But the mechanics, and strategy is pretty solid. So I think it's worth a buy if you dig games like Fire Emblem.

Contains woke virus. Avoid. Response to developer - "No you."

The technical state of the game is a complete disaster. It features primitive 2D graphics yet takes up 11 GB of disk space. I don’t understand how this game received “Steam Deck Verified” status. Even on the lowest settings, it stutters and can’t maintain a stable 30 FPS.

This is a nice classic-style TRPG, but it has some questionable battle design which is making the campaign a nightmare for me: you can't pass through friendly spaces and maps are very cramped (often just 1 space wide bridges or paths between trees, with 10 vs 20 battles). This means the strongest formation is often to pack your troops and rotate the whole pack 1 square at a time like a Rubik's cube to let everyone get off a shot at the lead enemy in the same turn. Meanwhile the AI units take their whole move at once and block their own side in a traffic jam. It took me like 4 hours to clear the 3rd map, just incredibly painful to repetitively maneuver my troops and keep attacking while denying the enemy attack range. This would be a good game for like 4 vs 4 battles or maybe current scale with larger maps and 4x wider paths everywhere. Or simply allow passing through friendly spaces which it looks like the AI would be more comfortable with. As is, movement is just too painstaking and tedious.

Interesting game. I don't have a ton of time in it, but I do always like to give initial thoughts because most people judge a game within the first couple hours. I don't have other games to compare this to, per se. This game is primarily some story elements told via dialogue, some market phase where you buy equipment and consumables, and then a battle. There isn't any overworld travel like a typical RPG (not that I have found yet). The game takes place as a series of battles. You can save at the start of every turn, which is really nice because it means you can save scum if you need to, or you can quit out if you need to get out of the game for something else. Pros: I like the combat. This is a very tactical game. You can see how far each enemy can move and plan accordingly. Pushing and pulling is a huge part of this, as is range. Ranged abilities do have falloff, so you have to think about that as you plan out where to strike from. Melee works with a simple system that incorporates counter-attack. Backstab is a positional advantage. As far as I can tell, there are no penalties for sides or for mobbing an opponent (having multiple characters around an enemy), so it appears that backstab is the only positional advantage I have found so far. There may be more later in the game though, so take this as a grain of salt. The game comes with one campaign, but you can also "randomize" the campaign to add replayability. I have no idea how long it is, but it is the story of a couple heroins and what sounds like a decent story where they are hunting their parent/guardian of some type. You meet new characters along the way who can join your cause. I'm only a few battles in, and I think I have like 8 people on my team, so this isn't a very small team tactics game. I've got ranged, melee, healers, spellcasters... you get to plan out how you want your team to work. The maps are full of tactical lakes and rocks that you can use to try and direct enemies into traps you set or simply push them into the water and watch them suck liquid. One thing I really like is it does appear that the story can depend on your actions, to at least a small degree. There's one battle early on where you are supposed to save 2 guards... unfortunately I failed to save both and one died. The other joined my team though! I could have save scummed it, because I actually liked the one who died... but I didn't. I presume had I saved her, she would have joined the team as well. So there is some response from the campaign to how you perform in it. The tutorial was decent, it showed all the major ropes. No complaints there. There are also other campaigns you can download. I think I saw several which are fan made in the steam workshop, and there is a button in game that the dev put to link to other campaigns you can download. That may all be steam workshop, I have no idea if there are other official campaigns. I presume this is something the dev could do as dlc. Cons: My biggest gripe with this game is actually the visuals, specifically UI scaling. I run a nice big 4k monitor and have this game set to max and everything is... well, really huge. The buttons aren't so much buttons as giant tiles in my face. I feel like I'm playing a game designed for the visually impaired. This isn't really a problem, I mean I can still click on everything... but sometimes it's just so large that it is really jarring. I wish there were some UI scaling, but I haven't been able to find any. Also, the zoom is useful because I like to zoom out and get a better view of the field. This also helps the characters be the "right" scale to my eyes on screen. But the game has a habit of constantly throwing you back to near max zoom in whenever a dialogue pops up or something happens, and it is really jarring. I keep waiting for the dialogue to end so I can zoom back out. I do get a little bit of animation glitching... specifically some hitches, what look like laggy loading time glitches? I'm not certain what causes them, could be some optimization issue. It happens a lot when I choose to attack in melee for example... there's a hitch and then the melee animation seems to fire off. It doesn't hurt the gameplay, but it is a point of polish that could be smoothed out. So I mean the cons are not gamebreaking, but they are something I hope can be eased with future updates. The story seems fun, and I'm sure I will continue to play this one through. Absolutely worth the price I paid, and I hope to see more from the dev on this one.

Don't be turned off by the ugly as sin graphics. Telepath Tactics Liberated is a hidden gem, a real butterface of a game. The story, the characters, and the music are all well done, but the tactical gameplay is where TTL really shines. The fact that you can coordinate your actions by moving characters incrementally, displacing both enemies and allies, and playing god with the terrain elevates TTL above other tactical RPG heavy hitters like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Fire Emblem. In those titles, a fair portion of the strategy revolves around building your characters' stats/passives and uncovering broken skill combinations, whereas in TTL, tactical play actually takes center stage. Imagine Into the Breach, but with a proper campaign instead of roguelike runs, and longer, more varied missions. I wish there was a visual equivalent of muting a game's awful audio, but if you can manage to look past TTL's outright assault on the eyes, prepare to lose hours in a deeply engaging tactical game that will have you reloading turn after turn to try to discover the optimal approach.