I am very confused. I see a lot of people writing bad reviews. I spent a lot of time playing this game, and clearly it is not yet finished. HOWEVER to tell you "this game is bad" is stupid. Lemme break down what you can expect from this game.

1. You will get a kingdom.
you will have to decide what things you want, and how you want to play the game. do you want to focus on hunters? or maybe have a few Caberjacks backed up by Alchemists. its all up to you. all of your upgrades and buildings will need to be well timed.

2. You will get an army.
Though you may only take 5 units into battle, you will have a TON of other people to manage. in later game each house begins getting rediculously large. you will have to choose which people are worth being in the group of 5 and which arent. you will have to retire your heroes and have them train your next generation, or let them fight untill they die. Basically you get to be George R.R. Martin and this is your world, and these are your characters.

3. You (can) get a story.
NOW some people might dispute this. i disagree. The story you get IN the game is pretty much constricted to the very beginning and the very end. however, that is not to say you cant make up your own ledgends. a 16 year old girl took up an heirloom weapon went to battle, and defeated every last cadence on the feild... she ended up retireing at the age of 24 in order to bring up the next generation. NONE of that had to do with the chalice, but you can make some very interesting stories out of this game, if you want to.

4. You will be entertained. I spent 16 hours or so in this game, 16 hours and its not even a finished game yet. there are still things being added, bugs being fixed, new bloodline effects being put in place. so to anyone who is thinking about buying it i suggest you keep an open mind, because this game will only get better.

Alright. Giving credit where it's due, Massive Chalice is a pretty ambitious game. It takes the best qualities of XCOM: the R&D aspect, the top-down tactical combat system, and that fun little dance on the knife's edge as you try to level up your favorite character while avoiding that permadeath. All those qualities and throw it in with elements of a fantasy kingdom simulator with the whole 'kingdom in peril by a mysterious corruption that taints the land' plotline and the system of marrying off your heroes to produce heirs to continue your war on this corruption. All those things are great. Also? The Cadence enemies? Pretty sick designs and it totally showcases the unnatural corruption feel of what the Cadence is all about.

All those things are what makes Massive Chalice a pretty interesting game to check out... But not for thirty dollars.

The eugenics system feels like it creates a funnel where eventually you want to marry off all your heroes together to create better heirs with the right traits and personality and the right stats. (Hard enough as it is to find the right hero with the right traits and personality to marry off at the right time, but that's another thing.) Eventually the relationships between your later-gen heroes become incestous as in order to preserve the genes you want, you'll have to start marrying off cousins togeher. Which is something wrong that I can't seem to wrap my head around.

Continuing on the subject of the eugenics system, let's talk about the bloodline relics. I haven't found the right pattern to create a relic reliably yet, but it seems to come from either the number of enemies you kill and the number of missions you do. Either way, trying to build a relic is frustrating as the Cadence attacks are infrequent through one hero's lifetime. It basically creates a weapon based on the stats of the hero's weapon that you can level up with the heroes that come afterwards. In the period of time you can level the relic, you can pretty much research the next tier of weapons and it would generally surpass the relic.

Last thing I want to talk about are the Cadence Pawns, I have already acknowledged that the Pawns are pretty sick looking but then there's their performance in combat. You see, each of the Pawns have a special ability. Cradles have the ability to spawn more pawns to throw at you; wrinklers can age your heroes with an attack; Lapses can effectively drain your HP... You get the picture. Now my problem with the Pawns are that they are one-trick ponies. They have their little special ability and then the rest of their movesets are routine for every one of them. It makes combat monotonous and repetitive after a while and that's just a bummer.

To recap. Cool and ambitious project, but it falls short of expectations. Nonetheless, it can't be called an XCOM clone because it does take a unique approach to the genre and I do hope that it can straighten itself out when it comes out of Early Access.

I don't understand some of the negative reviews, every game has faults. But especially here the good outweighs the bad.

Good:

A great Tactical Turn Based RPG/Breeding Simulator. Aside from units seemingly not having "Facing". I'm not always doing the same thing with my capital either so far, a few times I've researched more pools of heroes to have more people to breed due to an irritating loss due to a few mistakes in combat facing a new type of enemy. This one time one of my forts was empty, so I set a 1 year old as the regent and married him to a 3 year old girl because I was low on choices (despite not knowing how likely they would be to breed). Then they had babies twice right away at ages 16 and 17. I was like "Success!". I feel the game gives you "enough" choice. For example, I had the choice of defending an area with no blight but I would get more XP for killing stuff, whereas the other place already had blight but I would only get a baby girl for defending it. It would be more risky to let the blight spread where it is already, but more rewarding for my heroes to take the non-blighted land.


Not Good or Bad:

Some people complain about the graphical style, saying it has "Bad graphics". At first it was jarring for me. But as I played about an hour into it, the style just works. It reminds me of some of the art in Civ, just in 3-D. As your heroes age, it shows in their faces. This simplified style works wonders here, as you can tell they are older just by looking at their faces. The style remains consistant throughout the game and works well in most if not all areas. It also gives it more of a painted fantasy storybook look. I wouldn't change it, but adding some new particles or lightning might further boost the look.

Things I would improve:

Free equipments. I think the research time should be cut and you should have to "build" equipments consuming monster parts. If you lose a group out in the field you lost those equips, if you lost one dude out in the field, but you won, you get his equips back. It just bugs me a little that once you research something, you immidiately get 100+ free items through the course of the game.

Bad:

Crucibles are too hard. There are ways of dealing with every enemy and situation in the game (so far) that I've found out by using each class's different skills (Clobberjacks for stunning things at right times, bombing enemies from around structures, using the hunter to scout ahead a bit, etc). Except for Crucibles. They seem to outrange you, and not only that they can kill any ranged person in one shot because they do like 14+ damage. If you use both actions in your turn and "ran" into the sight of one, you are dead as soon as it's their turn. Even Clobberjacks like level 5 with the second teir armor seem to go down to like 1/3rd hp. Since they are ranged it is sometimes hard if not impossible to get to them in time to stun them too. You either catch them around a corner and stun/bomb/kill before it's their turn, or you get unlucky and have to fight them in the open. I found on a level where there are more than 2 Crucibles, I should always expect to lose a guy. Even the brute kockback teleporting fist dude can be dealt with, but these crucibles...

I really can'ty recommend anyone buy this game at any price. The combat is highly derivated. Just buy XCOM, it is 20 times better than the ripoff this game is trying to be. The breeding system is poorly executed. The graphics are bad by even mobile phone standards. This game is nothing like Final Fantasy Tactics like promised in their kickstarter. This game is just another Double Fine failure. Spend your money elsewhere.

It's basically fantasy XCOM with eugenics and it's not even fully developed yet!

People are being kinda harsh on this game. Personally, even if it's in beta, I think there's a lot to it. It's difficult in a fair way, the graphics (not that graphics matter) are cool and stylized, and I'm a sucker for strategy games that feature lineages. It's innovative and only getting better as time goes on.

Do not get the game because there is no depth to it.

I was expecting Fantasy XCOM with a bit of a Game of Thrones feel. Instead, it was lacking on all fronts.

There is only a minimal amount of strategy to this game. There is no cover or overwatch. No bonsus for surprise or sneak attacks. Instead its dancing to avoid enemy units charging you first and crossing your fingers that your Hunters don't miss their shots (they will). Enemies like Ruptures will only frustrate you instead of giving you a challenge.

As far as the lineage system, its there but it you dont feel the impact of it yet. I think you may have to dedicate a lot of time to the game to see a noticeable effect but I'm simply unable to put myself up to doing so.

I hope the game gets better next year but for now I don't think I can force myself to try it more. I get more strategy out of XCOM on my iPad than this game.

This game is being worked on intensely and things are changing all the time, so much of this is subject to change.

Short version: It's fun. It's hard. It's relatively bug-free.

MC seeks to address a lot of the issues with squad-based tactics games like X-COM, primarily by making character death less of an issue. The fact that even your best warriors will eventually die of old age means that losing a few in battle doesn't NECCESARILY require a restart of the entire mission. Heck, if they die in battle they might turn into a magical weapon for your other warriors to use.

That being said, there are issues, though most of them just come with the territory in this type of game. There are a lot of things to research and build, and all of them take a long time. If things start going badly for you, don't expect them to stop. Sure, you have a crucible to train your new recruits, but without someone to staff it, it does no good. If you find yourself low in units and your birthrate isn't good, you can go scour for new recruits, but it takes years.

i'm one of the Bloodline ackers of Massive chalice and seldom ive seen team with that much competence and organisatorial skills.

The game is now not only in a playable state which is something a lot of EA titles dont even reach no its fully playable and great fun indeed most of the finished games nowadays are really bad in comparison regarding content. At the moment its not even Feature complete a lot of stuff will still be added, Polished and improved.

The game is so good that i can just say Buy it if you are interested in TB strategy games. Its irrelevant if its still EA its worth that money already.

I Kickstarted the game and I am writing this review not of the full game, but the current early access version.

And as it is now - I would not recommend anyone to get it. Yet.
The game clearly has huge potential, but overall lacks in content.
The turn based combat is rather fun. Not that many options, so sooner or later it will get repetetive, but unlockable skills help in that regard.
Outside of combat, you are managing a very small group of lands, on which you can build one building, to improve the building times, hero training or just add keeps for your existing heroes to breed. As you pass years, not turns, your heroes will drop like flies. I personally don't like how fast that happens, making one generation of heroes fight from 1 to 4 times usually.
When they die, they can leave a heirloom to improve other hero from thier house.
The game is about limited resource management (heroes) and combat proficiency (again, heroes).
Outside of that simple mechanic (to not die out...) there is nothing else to do. If you do that, your heroes will eventually level up and get stronger.
He story wouldn't exist if not for the two "voices" of the Massive Chalice, that bring some falvour to the, otherwise lifeless world.
Events (text + choices) happen, to help with that. So far, I've seen mostly negative outcomes though.

I would say the game would be quite awesome, if there was more lands available, more building types (3!?), more hero types, customization of houses and heroes... Maybe item crafting? The game is begging for those,

The game does provide a bit of fun, and while it certainly IS PLAYABLE and enjoyable (if for a short ammount of time), the potential for it is so, so much greater than what it currently is.

So, no. I do not recommend the game at this point.
Wait a little while, maybe they will improve the game in the places that it's lacking?

If the game was already finished and the price was half what it is now, I would recommend it. But there is still time to release date.

A EA review after a single playthrough (next to several failed attempts) which took just under 20 hours.

Let's clear up things right away:
-The game is titled Early Access, but according to the developer it's pretty much finished content-wise and they mainly intend to do open beta testing (in EA) and bugfixing, as well as UI improvements now.
-Despite some... questionable history of this game's dev regarding other Early Access games, this one is fairly playable, so there's no threat of it being stopped before release.

Now, on to the actual game. Imagine a crossover of a light dynasty-simulation, some light text-RPG, and a light turn-based tactical game. Yes, it's actually not very deep in any of it's components. And whilst the concept of mixing those is quite good (and the prime reason why I got this game), but it clearly has weak points.
Effectively, the game comes down to managing your heroes and nation on a strategic view (not unlike managing your base in XCOM) and managing a crew of five heroes in a tactical turn-based battle, which is both affected by your strategical decisions and does affect your strategical situation.

However, whilst the whole "breed your heroes to genetically engineer the next clan of super-warriors" is very interesting and the various mechanics like tutoring, personalities and inheritable 'relic' weapons definitely add onto that, the system still feels a tad flat when it comes to content. Most traits are just "+X of stat Y" (or, in negative form, the opposite). Personalities often are similar, albeit here we see some more interesting concepts, like boosts when sticking to the group, or opposed a buff when a hero is alone. But, across my entire gameplay, I felt like ignoring those traits was a good bet, given their actual impact was minimal compared to the additional movement it would have required to actually set up their situations. In the end it really came down to just breed "whoever is the most fertile and has the most positive traits" of the right class and then let RNG throw something useful at you. Across my entire game I tried to specifically create distinct classes (f.e. long-sight, high-dexteriy rangers and quick, extra-strength warriors) but somehow ended up with a wild mix of traits and 'Quick learner' on pretty much everyone. Which apparently was enough to beat the game with ease.

Because, yeah, it took some failed starts, but that was mostly because the game does a rather bad job at explaining things to you. So, effectively you play, mess up horribly, are forced to restart, repeat a few times, until you grasp the basics. And then the same problem as XCOM kicks in: Past a certain point, you are either already dead or so absurdly strong that the tactical battles become tedious and uneventful.

Which brings us to the second part of the game, the tactical battles.
Rudamentary movement system with an occasionally clunky UI and initially confusing controls. Likewise goes for the 'cover' system and the AI. At some point you get into it, and it's not bad in itself, but again, casual players would probably need a tad more help early on.
A big problem, in my oppinion, is the complete lack of a time limit and the fact you start with free stealth scouts (think of Mimetic Skin of XCOM) from the start of the game. It's trivial to sneak around, wait until a single enemy wanders off, then alphastrike him down. Rinse and repeat, unless you mess up it's not uncommon to end missions without even taking damage. This only gets worse as the game progresses (as mentioned) and your characters become more and more versatile and accurate (because, really, the only times where you take relevant damage is either because you make a big missplay or all 3 90% attacks miss).
Shortly summarized, the game really needs some more balance tweaking, both in between little details like classes and weapons, as well as difficulty wise. Which is already on the list of the devs, according to the last info I read.

And then there are a handful of bugs and weird design issues. F.e. hitting a group of Bulwarks with an acid vial of an alchemist. Bulwarks will form a layer of armor whenever they take damage, reducing all further damage in the same turn to 1. The problem is, that each hit bulwark will perform the 3-second 'IMA GROWING ARMORE!' animation SEQUENTIALLY. And then, once their turn starts, the armor will break, they take acid damage and the animation will PLAY AGAIN. There are other occasions where the game puts in dumb pauses (even within your own turn's movement) to point you at any kind of buff triggering or disappearing. Which definitely takes time and becomes annoying later in the game.
As well, there are a few skills with issues, f.e. Flarrow not actually triggering the blinding explosion, or not revealing the map (or sometimes neither of both).
But I'll assume that will be patched at some point.


Now, would I recommend this game?
Nnnnnnot sure. I got 20 hours out of it, but I got to say that I doubt I'll play the game again. Simply because the only 'fun' laid in figuring how the shallow, obfuscated gameplay mechanics work. It was a real drag to play through the last couple decades of the game, simply because one fight was as simple and boring as the next, all further research was legitly pointless... you get the point.
Result : 6/10
It's not bad, but it's not really good either, and despite heavy RNG it doesn't really feel replayable to me.
I would really say this needs some more spice, in form of mutators or content, possibly steam workshop modding. Buying it won't feel like a complete waste, but for the price you can get better stuff elsewhere.

I can't say that the game is bad, rather that I expected more. My greatest dissapointment comes from my expectations of the game being more akin to an Ogre Battle title with long term bloodlines. What was delivered was a very blatant X-COM clone changing the setting, and switching the time scale to years. Becase of the small squad size, you would think you would get invested in the development of individual heroes. I found I tried to, but by the time I did, I had moved on to the next generation. Fights only seem to happen every 4-8 years roughly, heroes are viable from say ages 15-60, An active hero that you don't send to do another job might last 8 fights before dying of old age.
I only saw 3 types of heroes, if there are more they were either difficult or unclear on how to unlock them. Caberjacks, Alchemists, and Hunters.
The game did not seem very well balanced between the classes. Caberjacks are strong all around in offence and defense.
Hunters hit a bit weaker, and can't take a hit, but at least have ranged attacks. they seemed a bit weaker than the cabers, but on facing the exploding enemies, I saw a clear reason for using them.
Alchemists have bombs, but they bombs tend to be embarrasingly inaccurate, short ranged, and mediocre in damage, not to mention limited in supply. When they run out the have a mediocre melee attack, but no durablity to speak of.
Game dynamics seemed like a stripped down Xcom engine. They have similar controls, but with less classes, and lack of cover mechanics (best I could tell anyway) I found myself thinking If I get in the mood for this kind of game, I'll just fire up X-Com again, and play the better game.

So in short, not a bad game, but an inferior X-Com clone.

The game is very promising, but not fun in the current state. The combat system needs more work to aquire a tactical dimension (currently it's mainly gambling: you hope that your unit will hit, and you hope that the enemy will miss...). There are only three classes for the moment and your prowess in the early game depends only on your luck. The late game is better but still lack a little smething that would make the tactical combat interesting (a special mechanics like there are in other tactical RPGs: the weaknesses triangle of Fire Emblem, the cover system of X-Com, the combos of Agarest...).

I thoroughly enjoy this game in its early phase. I'm also a backer on kickstarter. I'll tell you why.

The art direction of this game is great. I'm not sure if "low poly" is the correct term but it's very clean and refreshing. All of the visual elements work well and complement each other. It helps that the creatures are so distinct from each other. Shadows and colors really pop.
While characters are somewhat devoid of expression due to the style, I feel attachment to them. The postures and animations in battle and outside have character.
The game is hardly graphic intensive but makes up for it with a beautifully rendered art style that is reminiscent of a painting.

It feels a lot like a streamlined xcom, and I mean that in a good sense. Combat is pure turnbased-- you have the choice of movement, attack, offensive abilities, defensive abilities, and utility. Positioning is really important; you need to anticipate the enemy's turn based on your knowledge of their moveset and movement speed.
Part of the metagame is in constructing buildings and making decisions of where to place your nonhero characters. You appoint regents, standards, and sagewrights all call for certain attributes. Every time I appoint a new regent I have to deal with the dilemma of appointing someone who would make a good hero. If I make him or her regent, I increase the chance of passing on favorable traits to the bloodline. But I also lose a potential hero.
Buildings matter as well. Currently I tend to place 3-4 keeps near the Chalice, while rushing Crucibles which help your trainees gain experience faster.
The three classes in this game are Hunter (ranged/dps), Caberjack (melee/stun/tank), and Alchemist (mage/utility/aoe). I've gone through the entire game with two keeps pumping out Hunters, and one keep Jacks. The other keep I've reserved almost exclusively for nonhero characters or reserve heroes with High intuition and High intelligence. While Alchemists is strong in the right hands, I've found no significant advantage to them over another Hunter in my playstyle.
It's a great gameplay experience with enough of both strategic and tactical thinking. Really scratches my itch for a certain type of game.

I'm grouping these two together because of how intertwined they are. The two forces personified as two voices, male and female are infused into the titular Massive Chalice. From my understanding, they were two great heroes, a Hunter and a Caberjack (if I recall). They are trying to charge up power to fight back the Cadence invasion. I enjoy the background banter between the two during battle and when I'm making important decisions. It was hard getting used to at first, but over time (literally over centuries in the game) I grew accustomed to their voice. I especially like how personal it feels to be addressed. If I'm correct, the player is supposed to be yet another force that guides the kingdom, all the while receiving guidance from the Chalice.
Music is great. That much I can say. You'll have to experience it yourself. Combat sounds are also well done.

Overall, I'm really impressed with how the game is coming along in its Early Phases. I believe since Massive Chalice is DF's main project, the issues with funding like Spacebase DF9 can be avoided.
The criticisms I have are as follows. Due note that these are heavily discussed in the DF forum community and consider reviewing the discourse between other users and the development team before coming to a conclusion.

• Hunters are seriously strong. The Veil armor that makes you go invisible is pretty much all you need for early to midgame dominance
  
• Min-maxing seems to be the only way. There isn't much room for error when picking combinations for regents. You need to thoroughly consider the advantages and disadvantages. If you ever have a couple with low accuracy, get ready for a wild ride. It's not a bad thing per se if you like powergaming, but it might turn some people off.
  
• The last battle is somewhat lackluster. I won't spoil it.
  
• Dialogue gets repeated a lot and it gets tiresome. Hopefully they'll add some more.

9/10 The highest I ever rated an Early Access Game

I'll make sure to keep up with the development and add in edits for major updates.

EDIT 11/11/14: I'm already beginning to see the expected backlash from upset owners of Spacebase DF9. I was surprised to see Massive Chalice on Early Access so early in development. Currently it's a premium backer alpha. I disagree with their decision to release a game in its alpha stages. Their decision was brought on by some fans who missed out on the kickstarter campaign. With the reputation Early Access has, especially of bad vaporware games that tarnish a truly effective model to support development, it would make more sense to have a Paypal option on their website rather than put it on Steam. That way, if someone who's interested in supporting the game will reach out themselves. Otherwise, they're just going to get bad publicity from people who disagree with the Early Access model.

I backed this game due to interesting core ideas. But the ideas didn't produce a worthy end result. Do not buy this game if you want or expect an interesting strategical or tactical challenge. The options you have are extremely reduced, flat and boring. (3 classes, extremely simple or no skill choices, extremely bland upgrades etc.) The game can be difficult, but mostly because you have so few factors you can influence or strategy routes you can take, which is the BAD kind of difficult.

The biggest atrocity within this product is the straight, shortsighted copy of the (bad) 'activation' mechanic of XCOM: Enemy Unknown as soon as Line of Sight is established. The battles are supposed to feel like a wave of demons attacking one of your provinces. In a blatant failure of design, enemies are just standing around, akin to braindead animals standing around in a forest. (If you use the close combat class a lot, it's often impossible to avoid activating multiple groups at the same time, just by approaching an enemy, while the ranged class allows you to easily snipe them from afar).

The one interesting aspect of the game, the management of families, is still interesting, but as far as I know can be exploited as soon as you understand how the system works.

I was simple not able to stick around for later stages of the game. It was just such a MASSIVE FAILURE.

I still stand by the fact that it still requires balancing tweaks. This is a 'Revised' early impression and I'm just going to continue my list of concerns before post-beta where I'll give it an actualy definite review...sorry.

Progress: 13 hours into the game and I've peak 151 years.

Time management is the essential core focus of the game as your units are more likely to suffer mortality from old age than in battle.

You have access to three classes Alchemist, Hunter and Caberjacks. So far it seems like Hunters are the most effective class as they can stealthily scout ahead, stay out of range and of course shoot from afar. In fact the only reason I was able to get to 100 years is because I had a reliable mid-level all hunters party.

The difficulties of the enemies in the first 100 years are skewed as you face the age speeding Wrinklers to teleport-swapping melee heavy stunning Twitchers. These encounters eventually moderate themselves but it can cause the players to resort to cheap tactics and in these cases repeatedly abuse the save and load function (that are available mid-battle) to get the best outcome.

My previous complaint about the bloodline system still stands. While I think it is a good idea that the bloodline system allows two of your good units to produce more effective offsprings. I however hates that it also occupies them from most battles. Good luck with the upcoming battle when you're left with sub-par rejects!

Most events are oddly scaled. Some events rewards your character with a minor positive trait the other extreme cases outright kills them and even increases corruption in your lands. I've yet to see an event that truly rewards you for your faith.

Complaints being said, this is truly 'Alpha' and they cannot go wrong from here. I suspect the upcoming patches will balance the game quite nicely, adding more content and hopefully a difficulty setting ;). However while I personally think this is a competent product I truly cannot recommend it just yet.

I've been watching the development of this game since the Kickstarter and it's turned into everything I hoped. On my first play I managed to barely scrape through to the end with several close calls that really had me sweatting. The choices that you make on the strategic map really influence how the battles on the tactical map go, and a mistake in either area can really cost you. I love the "keeping all the plates spinning" feel it gives me and I expect it will get better as they tighten down the balance and add the promised hybrid classes.

In this case Early Access doesn't mean "barely a game," it really means "almost finished."

This is not a carbon copy of XCOM, it's more like inspired by XCOM, as well as much more difficult. The main thing this game has in common with XCOM is the combat mechanics and permadeath and these are not bad game mechanics so I believe it's acceptable. Every choice matters and your soldiers (named Heroes) WILL die and you will have to accept this. I love this game but not because of its combat, (which is very light strategy and needs some fine tuning to be satisfactory) but because of everything outside of combat. You rule a kingdom and control when time starts and stops. Time means everything in this game, as well as the age, experience, fertility, and traits of your heroes. Even some enemy designs revolve around these subjects, a type of enemy can cause you to lose experience, or make you older by 5 to 10 years, or even make you sterile. Your people WILL die on the battle field. Accept it. The artstyle is fantastic and the gameplay outside of combat is very intriguing and interesting. Now for the enemy types, the only thing I have a problem with is how powerful the enemies are. I don't mind a challenge but I believe some tweaks would improve their combat mechanics, such as for example, the Lapses who when hit a hero they drain experience, the amount of experience should dialed down. Also the variability of hit success can be infuriating at times, (f.e. 87% chance to land a successful hit and misses can be very frustrating.) This game is a work in progress for sure, however despite it's flaws it is well worth the price and extremely fun, satisfying, and very challenging. 9.5/10! In case you don't think this review is helpful because I may be confusing in how I feel about this game, it's worth the money if you enjoy strategy games like XCOM. If you don't enjoy those types of games then you won't enjoy this one. Simple as that. For thirty bucks though this is worth it.

This game has me spending way too much time than what I should be (in a good way). Once I start playing I have difficulty turning it off as there is always "one-more event" that I begin counting down to and the battles are engaging and well designed.

I really enjoy the "recruitment" process of marrying off your heroes and having them found dynasties to continue producing heirs and playable heroes. It's a great twist on how heroes are usually recruited, especially with the ability to breed for particular traits.

It's great how much the game is actually affected by this mechanic, as you need to decide when to essentially "retire" heroes in order to benefit from their strengths in future generations, without them dying before their time.

It would be good to see one or two new classes be brought into the fray, there would obviously be alot of work required to maintain the excellent balance that already exists, however the addition of extra classes would prevent it from getting stale too quickly.

I also enjoy the random events that require decisions to be made and years later the full repercussions of these events are revealed, for good or bad, it really makes you take the time to think on your choices, as you can't simply save / load a file to rethink your decision.

I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good turn-based strategy with roguelike elements, a gameplay and difficulty similar to the likes of X-Com, however it is certainly by no means an X-Com clone.

The game is still early access at time of review. I've completed my first playthrough in ~15-18 hours, I believe.

Overall, I really like this game because it provides consistently difficult choices which are only going to last a short while before you have to make even more. I should have restarted once I got the hang of everything because you're semi-pigeonholed once you're up and running with the initial choices - however I won and it was fun seeing how far I could get and seeing what I can do with it all.

There's a really big timeline which I believe is ~300 years. The ultimate goal is to hold off the monsters for 300 years until the Chalice can do something epic and cleanse the monsters (the Cadence) forever(?).

Any time you need a building/research/item for your people/weapon/armor to be made you can only pick 1 of those things. Often research takes anywhere from 5-20 years and you cannot research anything else during that time. You can only hit the "fastforward" button on the timeline and hope nothing bad goes down. Once something occurs the game pauses and you can deal with it, whether it's research or an attack on your lands.

You've got heroes from different houses and you appoint a male and female regent & partner so they can create offspring. The templates of their traits and tendencies for stats come together and create children that are then trained to be fighters. Your characters are constantly dying from battle but more often from old age, and you have to continually supply new ones to keep things running smoothly. The big battle here is to make sure you appoint people who are very fertile with good stats so you can supply enough for upkeep. You can sacrifice 7 years to recruit new heroes. Deaths of any kind are permanent in here. It's actually a tad depressing, because I actually found Brad Muir (Thed esigner) as a character and watched him grow old and die.

The combat itself is very reminiscent to a partially simplified XCOM which is not a bad thing at all. It provides challenge from the get-go, with enemies that you absolutely do not want to get close (they'll explode, they reduce your XP on hit, or their melee makes you 5 years older every swing), enemies that keep their distance and snipe, or enemies that create other enemies and you're in a mad dash to kill them so the flow of creatures stops.

You can save and load throughout your timeline so there's no real pressure if you make a terrible mistake - you can load an older save you'll get an entirely different scenario all together. This is a bit of a player crutch but it's not unwelcomed since I'm 7 hours in and I'm still not through the whole timeline..

The art is cool and the UI is fairly basic in a good way. All you really see is the damage spread you'll do and the amount of HP left on the creature. Moving and attacking are fairly simple.

Characters in your ranks gain abilities as they level, each one being a "one or the other" choice down the chain. I've never gotten down the entire chain before dying of old age, so I don't know what some of them do.

The classes are hunter (ranged stealth DEX), caberjack (melee, knockback tank STR), and alchemist (mid-ranged finite amount of bombs being thrown --- honestly this class seems to be a bit weak, I can't find anything very good about it. INT).

You deploy up to 5 at a time, and really, less than 5 heroes is often going to be a tough challenge.

I just bring hunters and caberjacks due to the types of enemies I've been encountering. I generally don't want them anywhere near me so I just try to snipe them all before they close any ground. I also like using the hunters to go invisible and scout out the territory so I know how I want to set up. You can lead enemies into traps if you just set up your hunters and have the caberjack as bait.

So yeah, totally pleased with my purchase on this one. It's got its kinks, especially if you've appointed characters of different ages offset in such a way that it'll keep stopping you and asking you to appoint people to thrones or roles. Stop, transition animation into building, click on a guy from a list, exit from menu, fastforward on timeline (repeat x5). The kinks, though, especially for an Early Access title are very small and the overall thing has felt solid.

And yeah, the art is solid and simple. The environments have breakables/exploding stuff/hazards. It looks good.

A word of warning at the time of writing - DO NOT TRY TO WIN THIS GAME. THE ENDING IS CURRENTLY IN FLUX AND IT WILL MURDER YOUUUUUU. Check my screenshot to see my experience there :)