The Last Flame

I do wish I could give a neutral review. At the end of the day I think this is a good game, it does have some issues but not enough to warrant a negative review. But combine those issues with some personal feelings and it got a negative review: On the pro side of things that game does have a lot of depth. Unfortunately they leaned into complexity which is not a good thing, a game with good depth is simple to pick up but hard to master like chess. A complex game is the opposite, it is hard and complicated to learn, and often has artificial depth due to the learning curve but very little real depth. On on the pro side of things the game has a lot of variety to try cool builds, to mix and match, and gives you that proper rogue feeling. Unfortunately due to complexity and I THINK ??? rng it does not feel very skillful? I beat the game including its secret boss a few times and got several ascensions in. But I spent so much time reading ALL the stuff it throws at you it was a chore to progress. Similarly while variety is good there is SO MUCH stuff it is very difficult to really have much of a strat and just sort of feels mostly like luck. It has a cool aesthetic, and I think something resembling a story? But it seems to be 90% complex mechanics and not much else. And the final personal nail for me is something I can not quite describe. Usually with autobattlers/roguelikes there is a since of tactics, of challenge, accomplishment as you figure things out and progress, and exhilaration with good RNG . While the game is certainly not without that feeling, it just did not feel like it had very much of that? It is hard to put into words why it is just lacking that IT factor, but I just sort of muddled my way through, grabbed vaguely synergistic types, and hoped to get lucky enough to pull enough of the matching heroes or appropriate items to do well. It just did not feel like my choices were really impactful beyond applying basic strat/synergy. Which I know at the end of the day most autobattlers do sort of spoon feed you the answers, but it just did not feel good in a way that's hard to describe. I want to like this game, it has a lot of cool stuff going on, but it just misses the mark for me. Reading the other negative reviews it looks like the game was better when it had smaller pools of stuff and a little less complexity and the patches it received a year ago sort of moved it in this overly complex direction that I find distasteful, and sadly it seems it is at the end of its development life cycle. This game really needs smaller pools for heros/items/abilities, and less stuff going on all at once, a little more story, a little more combat variety. And while it may sound contradictory despite having a large pool of stuff that makes it feel like it has LESS variety as it is hard to come up an actual build in many runs, so you just sort of cobble together things and hope to get lucky.

Infinite reading + mechanics that are complicated but don't seem to add meaningful depth. Maybe if mechanics were introduced more gradually

Game is massively under recongized, one of the best auto-battler I have ever played. It feels so satisfying when you find out a weird combination on the fly that just works, I had runs that felt like they would be over any moment only to get the missing puzzle piece and turn my team of janky fools into a force of nature. This game has a lot of depth to it and feels like a PVE mode of those auto-battler games (dota underlords etc.) How this game didn't get more attention also by content creators baffles me a bit.

这游戏，就两个字，护盾~~~~~

好玩是好玩，有以下几个问题： 1.装备的说明有点复杂，装备的负面加成很不友好，不如删掉负面加成。 2.不能重新随机奖励的装备，也不能重新随机英雄，想玩什么流派都靠纯随机，比较难受。 3.装备如果可以2个或3个相同装备升级成二星装备就好玩了。 4.英雄升级技能选择也不能重新随机，比较难受。

Cara, achei o tutorial muito confuso.

妈的，已经跑路了

This is a numbers game, and a fantastic one. The graphics and sound are mediocre. The UI is functional. It's all about slowly recognizing the many connections between the different stats on your heroes and items, and learning to make a build that wipes the floor even with high-level monsters. For this, the game works very well. Buy it if you like diving deep into hero stats, or if you played Path of Exile or Diablo II and actually liked theorycrafting your build much more than actually running around fighting monsters. Don't buy it if the presentation (graphics + sound) are a lot more important to you. There's a lot of content to try out via custom modes, but the "meaningful" progression (unlocking new stuff and climbing the difficulty ladder) stops too soon for me. Regular progression stops at Flamemaster, which I've beaten after about 30 hours. At 66 hours, I've beaten the game at Impossible++, which is a custom mode three difficulty levels above. But if you don't mind spending time with custom modes or Steam achievements, no problem there.

Good fun for a while!

If you like deck builders and auto battlers this might be the biggest under appreciated game on Steam for you right now, especially at the price point this game currently has. I never write reviews, but I felt obligated to do it here.