Trials of Valor

Balance could be much better, at least for players who aren't naturally very good at perfectly timed blocks/dodges. Characters that can dodge frequently and/or stay at range are much more forgiving. Another pain point is that the game really wants you to go for coherent builds, but you have very limited opportunities to influence the RNG. You might end up with the items to support a mana-using build on the first character (warrior), but you're never offered any abilities that take advantage of it (or vice-versa). My main complaint and reason for the negative review though is the very steep increase in difficulty from ascension 0 to 1. I feel a little misled about the accessibility of the game. It's fine to make a game that simply demands a lot of skill, but please let me find out inside my refund window.

This is a fun roguelite which has the standard FTL branching map progression but the combat nodes are all a 3d sidescroll action combat system. There is a pretty decent amount of variety in builds, for example you could go with a blocking build in which you get thorns and other triggering effects that damage/debuff the enemy every time you perfect block their attacks. You can do similar with a dodge build that triggers effects such as summoning a minion and doing a burning explosion every time you dodge, along with giving yourself extra dodge charges. There is status effects, summons, different weapon types and you can carry 2 weapon sets each with their own abilities that you can switch between during fights. Enemies have a decent variety with their own abilities, however after just a couple runs you will likely have seen just about all the enemies and the major bosses seem to be the same (not sure if that changes at higher challenge levels) so the main difference in each run is what gear sets you get in a run as well as what builds you go for. There are different classes that have their own passives and you can unlock more by completing challenges. They equip different types of weapons and and have their own restrictions on what kind of armor sets they can equip so that also adds to variety. There are also ascension levels you can increase to make runs harder, although I wish that you unlocked higher difficulty levels for all classes/subclasses when you complete a lower level one as now you have to unlock them all separately for every class and that feels unnecessarily grindy to have to do several easy runs with a subclass just to get to the challenging ascension levels. The game has gone on some pretty deep sales so you can snag it for less than $10 and for that price it's a pretty easy recommend if you enjoy this style of gameplay.

Now this is a rogue like/souls like with motion, where the fun starts from the begginning where you can actually feel your character get stronger against enemies that feel like they have a brain instead of just watching numbers on the screen and taking unavoidable damage against enemies that are all the same under the hood. Countering and dodging feels fluid like your doin the worm all over your opponent. Collecting items feels valuable because of extra set bonuses so even gear that isnt perfect still works and each piece gives a unique stylistic look to your character as you progress. Its locations and lighting are well done, enough to immerse yourself into each battle, i dont usually care that much about graphic fidelity as long as everything looks consistant, and here nothing looks out of place and leans into the quirky fantasy aspect the game is at its core. I dont usually like rogue lites, but this one, hits the spot.

This is a really cool game, the concept is very novel and the game feels responsive and combat is impactful. The games do get a little long and the difficulty isn't all that high, but im writing this having only beaten it twice. It has an Ascension system that you unlock after beating the previous tier of it, so that might completely change my opinion. There are a lot of elements that you find in titles like Slay the Spire, relics are found throughout a game that change your stats, add mechanics, survivability and so on. There are set items that can be collected at different stages to go more extremely into a specific direction- fire set for fire mage, poison set for poison stacking rogue and so on. I think it's really neat, again my only complaint really is the initial difficulty being low. I stomped everything on my very first time playing and i was pretty drunk. 7/10

i brought this game thinking i wasnt going too enjoy it long term,... man was i wrong, its fun!

Actually a really neat game with an interesting gameplay loop. feels good to play and decent build variety. Would like to see what this team could do with more people and more of a budget.

This game is so much fun! At first it seemed to be way to easy until I got to the 6th or 7th ascencion. Its easy enough for my kids to play at the lower tiers and hard enough to make a serious challenge to beat the 10th Ascension. Unlocked everything and now going for achievements. I cant wait until the new characters come out! Hopefully there's lots of DLCs to come!

My partner came across this game while he was scrolling through the steam store and thought I might be interested in it, so he bought it for us...and I'm SO glad they did. I love everything about this game! The visuals are fun and well made, it has the fun feeling of gatcha mixed with some decision making, the combat is seamless, and so many more things! The devs of ToV stumbled across my Twitch live stream when I was playing their game, and they are the kindest, most thoughtful people I have EVER met. They listen to my concerns, interact with not just myself but my entire stream community, and you can tell their hearts are 2000% invested in this project they made together. I highly recommend ToV, and I have plans to keep playing it for a very, very long time. Thank you to the pair of developers that brought their vision to life in this game, You both are incredibly talented, and I wish you both the best!

This game is really outstanding and quite unique system. Its really fun that how build u make in a different way using a diff skill and item to enchanged. I really do enjoy and can't wait more coming and please support developer just go for it! it worst your money!! Go to try Demo and you will see how awesome it is!

The good news: it's literally one night of code edits to make this a great little game. The bad news: I have never seen a game less respectful of its players' time. What the actual ♥♥♥♥. Content is gated in such a way that you'll have to grind a lot just to try / access *basic* gameplay content. I don't mean like "progression", but honestly the most basic content. And you can't even grind playing styles you like, because everything is gated behind very specific kids of gameplay. Zero ability to direct your gameplay style, as everything is pure RNG, and you can't even count on buying healing potions. Like... buying the game basically gets you the demo version until you grind a ton. Dev really, really needs to just allow the basic classes to be played out the gate. Having to grind to unlock sub-classes is fine enough, but the amount of gameplay required to get the magic-user class is absurd, and just feels like a big f-you to anyone who prefers that style. Clearly built around the idea of meta-progression, with a guaranteed "die and try again" loop, but there is ZERO meta-progression. You just die and start over. (yes, there are some coin-shop things, but the impact on the next run is basically zero). And again, your next run will be something you might not enjoy, because you have to play that exact thing in order to hopefully, one day, unlock the rest of the base game so you can try play-styles you actually might like / why you got the game in the first place. And you can't even mitigate this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and push the play-style more in the direction you'd like to try, because all progression is just RNG for what's in a shop. The actual gameplay is good - it's just hidden behind some really bad game-design choices.