The Last Spell

I got this game on sale for 3€ because it seemed interesting, and I believe that paying full price would have still been worth it. The Last Spell is a really good game, albeit with some flaws. The game is at its peak during core gameplay. By day, you develop and manage a town in order to help defend it by night. You have to prevent the hordes of monsters and magic zombies from killing the mages preparing the last spell, the spell to end all magic. Each wave will consist of tactical turn-based battles, where you have to use your heroes and their skills (tied to the weapon type) efficiently to kill the most enemies without being overwhelmed. After that, your heroes gain levels, you choose stats and perks to make them stronger and develop your economy to equip them with better, well, equipment. A day plus night cycle can easily take one hour of gameplay, but the pacing is incredibly well done in my opinion. You are always thinking about how to move, position yourself, spend your mana wisely and which stat or equipment will better complement how a hero plays out, while town management will have you ponder about what or what not to build, how to organize space or if you prefer to put walls, ballistas or a bit of both. In the base game, there are five maps and they all play differently, each with their own number of waves, which can all the more alter your strategy. Everything takes a lot of time to consider, but it's never boring or tedious and I think that this is where the game shines the most. Unfortunately, there are other design decisions that, to me, feel needlessly tedious or punishing. Namely, the boss fights during the final wave of each map. Well, I would even go as far as say campaign, since some maps can take more than ten hours to clear. At the time of writing, I have finished the game in 80 hours, and that's only ten runs worth of gameplay. The last two maps took me two tries each and then I re-did the first three maps for fun. So, boss battles. Not only are they not particularly interesting, as it's just a monster that takes more attacks to kill, they also all have a "gatcha" element to them. And if you're not prepared accordingly, this can very well mean that your run is lost. Problem is, when you lose, you have to restart the map from the very beginning. When a map can take up to ten hours, only to lose because, for example, the boss decided to spawn directly on your best hero, nearly killing it in the process and rendering them nearly useless, then it's a bit frustrating to redo those ten hours from scratch. Plus, the maps themselves can have a little gimmick that's forcing you to play differently. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but the biggest offender here is Elderlicht, the fourth map. Each wave, you have to deal with invincible ghosts that will attack or hinder you, or buff the hordes. To disable them, you have to extinguish braseros, often located within the hordes, and spend all your action points. And the AP cost goes up every two to three waves. This means spending one, maybe two turns not attacking the ever-advancing hordes and putting you in harm's ways just to get rid of a truly unfun gimmick. While I get that this is done to give each map their own Identity, I'd have prefered different types of map, for example ennemies coming from one single large front instead of the usual four. On that note, I think the game has too much of a habit to spread your squad too thin. In time, you'll get to have six, even up to seven heroes in order to cover your perimeter entirely. However, this discourages pairing up and comboing two complementary heroes. There are ways to circumvent that, like installing teleport circles all over the map to go from one front to another quicker, but in my experience, it still better to level your heroes to be strong on their own and spread them efficiently. Another thing concerns the meta-progression. This game is quite grindy and, while you unlock a lot of stuff at first, you then come to a halt as the deeds to accomplish or "tainted essence" to accumulate become quite high. On the one hand, you always have something to unlock, so you never sit on piles of a currency that's become useless. But on the other hand, there is so much stuff to unlock that you won't see the end of it. At 80 hours of gameplay, I think I still have a good third left of stuff to unlock I burned myself out by playing the game so much in a short time. If you don't mind the grind and love turn-based tactical games, this one is definitely for you. Really, the corre gameplay is excellent. There is a ton of weapons classes that all play differently and perks allow for a wide variety of builds. Building your town and your heroes is the best part, and for that I can't recommend the game enough, it was a pleasant surprise. I just wish the bosses and gimmicks didn't taint the experience. As a final point: the music is damn good. It sometimes reminds me of Loop Hero, which is another excellent but grindy game.