Recent reviews by jayRIOT

Game has some fun features and is very clearly inspired by the Heroes of Might & Magic games.

However after playing a single scenario for 4 hours there are definitely some issues that need to be addressed to make this game more fun for the players.

1. It's clear that the AI blatantly cheats to artificially make the game harder, no matter what difficulty you set it on. I had numerous times where I would engage the enemy AI, and the game would tell me the battle against them would be "Easy", stating that my army power was much, much higher than theirs. And when in battle, the victory bar on the top would show my army at 80-90% win chance.

Once the battle started my forces would start out strong against theirs. Then after killing most of them, the AI would pull out a handful of units from nowhere that proceed to blow through all my units. Even my strongest units that clearly should be able to handle them (things like my elite troops that were Power 25 or 30+ being decimated by their 10-15+ power units). I would then proceed to lose the battle, and the AI would run around claiming all my buildings before running back up to their base and INSTANTANEOUSLY refilling their army back to the same units they had before.

2. How are the AI able to instantly refill all their lost units and add new units before the week is up? Again, there were multiple instances in my game where I would stomp through some of the smaller AI heroes (only had 20-50 small units), and within 1 turn they would already be back running around with the same, or even more units than what they had before. I get they probably had the Field Hospital upgrades for some units, but they usually always refill 100% of the missing units, or more. If the player is limited by the units they can acquire each week, why does it feel like the AI gets to "cheat" again and just buy units whenever it wants?

The real-time auto combat is fun, however it's very barebones and needs some big QOL improvements to really make it shine.

1. The ability to choose what units you add to the field needs to be tweaked. Having a limit to how many units you can have out before you throw some in the Reserves is nice, but it needs to be indicated clearer how many "points" each unit takes up on the field count. I found myself doing lots of guessing and trial and error when attempting to switch out units from what the game "auto picks".

2. The UI needs to be updated to make it easier to select and choose what units you want to add to the field. Trying to add X amount of units from a group of 100+ is really time consuming when you have to split them individually on the troop UI and add them to the field (which again runs into the issue with not knowing how many "points" each unit takes up on the field, and having to again do a trial and error until you stop going over the limit)

3. Auto combat is nice, but there needs to be a way to target specific units. Currently you can tell units on the field an area you want them to go towards, but that's all they'll do. Say the enemy has a strong unit that you want your units to swarm and focus on to bring down. Currently you could select your units and move them over that way, however they'll just choose to fight whatever they feel like and ignore the unit you really want to bring down. Having a way to tell the units "hey, attack this please" would make it a bit more bearable during fights instead of watching your units ignore the strong one that's just ripping through them.

Overall there's a lot here for a great game, but in its current state I'd suggest holding off until there's some Quality of Life changes to how the AI and combat functions. It currently gets too frustrating seeing how broken the AI gets, and how the game lets them cheat to win fights and come back from a loss so quickly when you're limited to restocking troops once a week.

As much as I enjoyed this game during the demo they released in February, I absolutely CANNOT recommend paying the current price they're asking for what they're calling an "Early Access release"

The games content is actually somehow LESS than what they gave you in the demo (keep in mind the demo was free) and it feels like they made a bunch of changes to other parts of the game that makes it feel easier, for example:

• They seem to have removed content from what was in the demo. The flail weapon is gone, the electricity spell you found after the first mission is also gone (you still get blue mana runes in this release, but you don't get any sort of spell to use it). They even removed the boss fight that was at the end of the demo for whatever reason.
  
  
• Overabundance of item drops. In the demo I remember item drops and gold drops from breaking barrels and crates was low, so you had to conserve the ammo, mana and items you had when fighting enemies. Now, almost every single crate or barrel you break open drops mana runes, ammo, health, or gold, ruining the fun of trying to decide what weapon is best to use in each situation. I also ended this "demo" with more gold than I knew how to spend, since the blacksmith only sold the 3 weapons I already found in game.
  
  
• Physics glitches and missing VFX. My fire spell had absolutely no visual effects beyond the fire symbol on my hand when I cast it, and on what it hit. No flames were shooting out of my hands like the demo had and it didn't even seem to be doing any sort of damage to enemies (probably just a bug to patch out). The physics however glitched out on me multiple times, once climbing down a ladder into water, I reached the end of the ladder and just fell to the bottom of the water like it wasn't even there and died. Along with whenever I would walk over and "kick" the skulls from slain enemies my character would freak out and randomly spin in any direction, making it very confusing to retain your bearings on where you're going.
  
  
• The AI feels like it's been extremely dumbed down. The dog-like monsters stutter along the ground half the time trying to correctly path to you, and every attack you do against them interrupts any attack they're trying to make. Since you attacking with melee doesn't use any stamina or have any sort of cool-down, you can just spam attack all the monsters until they die without worrying about taking any sort of damage.

The "extra missions" they claim to have added is one mission. ONE. After an extra 4 months in development since the demo, the studio literally only added ONE new mission in that time frame? I've seen all the concept art of new monsters and music for new areas, but they're nowhere to be found right now.

I would think within this time-frame they'd have more content than one new mission added in with this release (and yes I get COVID and all that going on, but that doesn't explain any of the changes or problems I quoted above), this feels more like the devs don't have an idea on what direction to take the game beyond this beginning story point and are struggling to come up with a solid plan for the rest of the game.

Charging $23 for a "release" that has less content than the FREE DEMO you gave out earlier this year makes this game feel like a huge cash grab, and is gonna be a hard pass and a definite not recommendation from me until full release (if it ever gets to that).

Nothing beats running around completely naked chasing down other players and stabbing them with wooden sticks until they die.