No. of Reviews: 20
Review 1
Purchased!
The kind of game that everyone will have a list of game it is similar to, but
ultimately it's something very unique.
In terms of realm management and character recruitment, this game reminds me of
various KOEI games such as the Romance of Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's
Ambition. It also helps that it allows you to either play as a nation or play as
a character, which basically represent the top two ideas of KOEI strategy games.
In terms of combat, it's like Total war in that you have a separate map and a
real-time command system. However, then you realize that in this game,
high-level characters are often batshit strong. It's not unusual that a level 30
character can wipe out 100 units in a few seconds... which reminds of the
Dominions series where Supercombatants are a thing.
Setting wise, this game is a Japanese-flavored high fantasy setting, featuring
human, dwarves, elves, demons, beastmen, frog men and other fantastical races.
The game has generally Japanese anime-like aesthetics, and decent music.
And ultimately, the game is so cheap that you might just want to give it a try
no matter what. As long as you are fine with the nostalgic graphics, that is.
Review 2
Purchased!
I am trying with this game, SOO HARD.
Controls are a bit iffy, sometimes they straight up break. Other than that The
engine is pretty solid. Personally I dislike the Squad control and would have
gone with single entity as it just seems easier to control mid battle, (which
are real time) in my opinon. Other than that controls are great.
The gameplay is decent enough, but the unit balance is jacked to hell.
I can sum it up in one frustrating sentence. "The hard counters need to stop."
Now I am ok with Hard countering specific units, Like a basic paper rock
scissors for units Archers>Infantry>Calvary. But entire races are hard counters
for other entire races, and each race seems to have a hard counter or two.
I think the idea for that is to focus your heroes on the opponents that hard
counter you. But nothing is less satisfying than watching a 20~30 squad army get
wiped by literally a squad and a half of level one units.
I kid you not I watched around 40 musketeers lvl 18-26 Fire at one dwarf warrior
lvl 28 for an entire battle and he was still alive and I lost that battle. That
is not a hard counter, that is a giant screw you. Oh also one dwarf lord yeeted
all three of my main starter heroes in less than two seconds after making
contact every time I tried fighting him.
I watched a well balanced army of Dragon knights lose to a single frog hero and
his acoustic band.
I watched a full balanced stack(8) Squads elven army lose to a three stack
Lizardman army of just mages.
Now the strategies I have come up with and read about are "Wait until some one
else kills your hard counter and then take over the map if you can" Not gonna
lie that makes for a very boring part of the game.
Point is Make them Counters, not Nearly impossible to beat counters. I mean you
literally have to rely on chance that an AI faction will clear them out for you,
or you have to play an annoyingly defensive game for most of the game.
I admit I am still learning this game. I am going to keep trying because this
game is scratching a High fantasy strategy itch for me. But my goodness it
causes me some pain to watch an entire army die to one squad. If my experience
changes after some more time playing I will revise.
8/10 If I did not run into hard counters it would be 9/10.
Review 3
Purchased!
A nice tactical strategy game.
The battle tactics are pretty limited but still are there, counter units or some
spells causing large upsets in battles.
Overall though its a smash your stack into their stack affair.
The strategy layer on the map is only battle orientated. Having the right
numbers in the right places being crucial. There is no real management aspect to
the lands and its simply a conquer everyone else sort of scenario.
Pros:
The game focuses on what it is good on.
Action filled battles are fun. Counter units work as expected.
Stack management is pretty easy once you get the hang of it.
Stack composition is interesting and races make a big difference to what your
stack is good at killing.
Stories are interesting and well developed.
Cons:
Obvious one for English speakers is that the game is not fully translated. So
some stories are not available.
Translation of new sides is based on success of the games sales.
There is a lack of development of the lands, so other than collecting gold and
smashing armies together there is not much else to do.
Story aspects clash with what is happening on the map.
The translation negative is understandable, translation is a huge undertaking.
But it does mean a lot of the story paths I am interested in are simply not
there in English. Learning Kanji might be a harder undertaking than waiting for
hopefully in the future for everything to eventually be translated.
The point about story aspects clashing is a minor one, sometimes something is
happening in the factions story that seems out of place in the map. As you have
conquered almost all of the map to trigger the story to progress. It would have
been better to trigger the story with a separate mechanic instead of conquest.
Overall I recommend the game, its not that expensive and has a lot of content to
play, If you are into the story of each side its a bit harder to recommend
unless you know Japanese and are Kanji proficiently enough to simply switch the
games language over as that is still a valid option.
Review 4
Purchased!
For Chinese version of review please scroll down
中文版本请往下拉
First, very funny a game, suitable for casual players, while still have lots of
contents and funs.
For me, the most favorable point is the game mechanism. It looks more or less
like the "Sankokushi / Romance of Three Kingdoms" series, and the "Taikaku
Rishiden" series, both provided by KOEI. You can play as a sovereign, to enlist
heroes, build an army, capture cities and locations, and conquer the continent.
You can also play as a vandal, to find your lord, and fight for your position
and ration. But! It is neither a Three-Kindoms-again nor a Senkoku-Jidai-again
game, which both are already too much and can't attract me any more. Instead you
are in a new and interesting fantasy world, with stories stories. On the
continent it has various peoples: corrupted empire, hypocritical knights,
British- or Venetian-like republic, devoters in desert; and griffins, lizards,
aaaaaaaaand FROOOOOOOGS!!! (I sense a mysterious power from the East...)
Lost Technology can adjust each member of a squad, and each heroes and each
soldier can grow with new skills and magics. It reminds me of a PlayStation game
"Brigandine". Few games provide such option and it is another reason I recommend
Lost Technology (except tactical TBS e.g. XCOM and Jagged Allicance. And these
games just can control several team mates, not a lot of units). It is still OK
if you don't want to be into details, it is just extra fun but you still can
play the game with fewer micromanagement.
The game provides many different tacitic options. The frogs can jump into the
enemies (though it often just looks like kamikaze); mamuluks are good at hit and
run; dwarves can create barriers to slow enemy down; laborers have the most
endurance against enemy attack; and so on.
The heroes are also quite interesting. Some are compatible with others as
classes and races, and can join their squad, while some have to lead their own
squad. Some heroes are tactically powerful (imagine a snake heroe with healing
magic, and a plague mage that leads a healer squad), while some provides
strategic advantages (training soldiers faster or providing extra income). Some
are friends, that means you can persuade someone with his / her friend to join
your army; some are enemies, you would never been able to enlist them! (Say if
you are the ignorant empress, than you will never have the powerful
fan-of-R18-book lizard mage to help you.)
Music is better than expected, considering it was developed by a small team.
Graphics is OK and is on the average level of Japanese PC game. Good character
cut-ins, and the graphics of battles are so-so.
Again, it is casual game. Recommends for casual TBS players, and KOEI fans who
want to taste something different.
-----------------------------
首先,这是个挺有趣的游戏,适合轻度回合策略游戏玩家,同时也有不少深度可以挖掘。
对于我本人而言,这个游戏最吸引的地方在于游戏机制。总体而言游戏看起来有点像光荣的三国志和太阁立志传系列:你可以扮演君主招募英雄,扩充军队,统一大陆;也可以扮演一名封臣,到处为人打工。但是!这不是三国,也不是日本战国;你不会看到那些老茧都能磨出来的老故事,取而代之的是全新的幻想世界。这里面有着各方势力:腐败的帝国,表面正义的骑士团,商人共和国,沙漠里的宗教狂热分子;然后还有各种怪物,蜥蜴人,以及——重点来了——蛤!(我感受到了一股来自东方的神秘力量……我的生命在流逝,不断-1s……)
这个游戏的另一个特点是每支小队的每个士兵都是可以手动选择的。不光英雄,普通的士兵都能升级,并且获得新技能。这有点像很多年前的一个PS游戏《幻想大陆战记》。这么多年来我很少遇到这种类型的游戏(XCOM、铁血联盟之类的小队策略游戏例外;这一类的小队游戏能控制的单位太少,不够过瘾)。当然你也可以不用太去深究细节,这些只不过可以让你玩得更爽,但你一样可以统一大陆,而不用太关注队伍的微操。
游戏有很多战术层面上的考虑。比如蛤蛤都有蛙跳技能,一下就到你面前传授人生经验;马穆鲁克则是快过香港记者的好手。矮人战士可以扔出石头拖住敌人;劳工自带加血技能,同等级下非常能扛线。各种远程和魔法兵种同样有不同的技能。
英雄系统也非常有意思。因为职业和种族的限制,有些英雄可以加入到别的英雄的队伍里面去,而另一些英雄就只能自己带队。一些英雄有着很好的战术优势(比如能加血的蛇英雄,蛇啊、幺蛾子啊之类士兵都是没有加血的,这就很重要;而独一职业瘟疫法师可以在队伍里配牧师,这让部队进可攻退可守),而另外一些英雄则是提供战略能力(比如快速训练士兵,步兵训练+2的英雄意味着短时间就有一大批10级步兵可以使用;有的则非但不用领薪水还能补贴国库)。有些英雄之间是朋友,你招募到了其中一个就能拉拢另一个;有的则是仇敌,不共戴天(比如你选了帝国的话,那么那个总是在战场上大喊完蛋了我的小黄书还没收起来呢我死了怎么办的蜥蜴法师,就是永远都不会投靠你这边的了)。
音乐么,比预想中的要好。对于小公司来说算很不错了。
画面对于日本公司做的PC游戏来说也就是平均水准了。人物立绘精美,但战斗画面比较简陋。
最后再次强调这是个休闲游戏。推荐给休闲的回合策略玩家,以及喜欢光荣的游戏系统但又对三国啊、战国啊等题材感到厌烦的玩家。
Review 5
Purchased!
This game is a mash-up of the Total War games, the original Ogre Battle, and
Suikoden 3, with hints of the Warlords and Heroes of Might and Magic series. I'm
not kidding! Your life is not complete until you've played this!
Specifically, you need to play as Ishak, the leader of Castus: an atheist who
wishes there was a God, and has accordingly decided to set himself up as a false
prophet. Either he'll call down a lightning bolt upon himself (and frankly he
wouldn't mind if that happens), or he'll give others the simple faith that he
wishes he himself could have -- with a side of _Wind Waker_-style escape from
the deadly winds of the desert into the gentle winds of plains and woods.
I strongly suspect that the rest of the game is forgettably written (the only
other scenario I've seen so far is the dragon knights', which was eye-rolling),
but this situation is a gem.
(Ishak's/Castus' scenario is rated maximum difficulty, but it isn't as bad as it
looks. The game encourages you to go north; ignore it. Crush the beastmen and
lizardmen in the south; then establish a defensive position against the elves,
and take out any weak neutral factions; only turn north after that, once your
rear areas are secure. At this point either the knights or Musket will have won,
and will be fighting in the east against the dragon knights and the eastern
empire; cut their long spindly country in half, by first taking the knights'
peninsula, then cleaning out Musket's island while holding the line. Fight the
elves last; their foot archers can out-shoot your horse archers, but are much
weaker in hand-to-hand fighting than your horse archers are.)
Update: finished the game; Ishak's story is just beautiful. I'm not giving any
spoilers beyond what I wrote above (which you learn in the first 15-20 minutes
of gameplay); but you MUST slog through the campaign and see the rest of his
story... Make sure to recruit all the heroes you can, too, since there are some
scenes which only trigger when you have certain heroes in your faction.
Review 6
Purchased!
If you like strategy that resembles Dominions and Age of Empires but also like
anime stuff then this is definitely for you.
A bit over 20 hours played in just few days and I can tell this is legit fun,
even with its flaws but they're nothing that big to ruin general experience.
Also the developer team seems to be investing in fixing stuff so that's great.
Review 7
Purchased!
I have to admit, I did have fun playing this game. However, the longer I played
it, I began to realize that this game is very much unfinished. Judging by the
date it was released and it was last updated, it doesn't seem like the creators
care anymore to fix or update anything.
First, I will explain the concept a bit. I very much enjoy these kind of
strategy games. The kind where you are in charge of a nation of your choice,
have heroes and armies work under you as you try to conquer the lands. Since
this is a fantasy world, there are multiple nations and species to choose from.
So there is a little replay value in there. Plus, in addition to a couple of
these nations, there is actually a story mode to be played. Sounds fun right?
Well, it is almost fun.
Now this where the gameplay comes in. Firstly, I love that you are in charge of
heroes with their own different abilities. Plus, each nations have their own
kind of units. As you play, you will have to choose your locations wisely as
each spot has their pros and cons. One location may contain special units, but
those special units might be very weak. Another location might have a lot of
resources and increase your income, but it is heavily guarded by powerful
enemies.
However, the gameplay has A LOT of flaws. I know I expressed how you can play
other nations, but some of them just seem like they were made to fail. For
example, the elves in the game are very weak and the nation is pretty poor.
Speaking of poor, the location itself is poor. The surrounding areas have little
resources and don't provide much income. Now of course I have tried playing it,
multiple times in fact, but you have one of the most powerful human empires to
the north and a lizard nation to the west. To the east, no problem there, at
least for now. The toad nation expands and they will attack when they get close
enough to you. I even tried to lower the difficulty, but it is still difficult
to play. The diplomacy is almost non-existent and you can't try for peace or
anything. You can try being friendly and increase relationship status, but the
damage seems to be done behind the scenes. So the elf nation already seems like
a losing battle. In case you are wondering, yes there is a tutorial you can
play. However, I found the tutorial to be somewhat useless. It does explain the
controls, but it only explains it based on ONE of the nations. So when you try
to apply that practice on other nations, it isn't very effective because other
nations have other abilities. Remember that powerful human empire I mentioned?
That might as well be your main nation to play; they are powerful, rich lands
that provide high income, and you actually already practiced with them in the
tutorial.
The other thing I have to complain about is the battle scenarios. The layout is
fine, but boy are they annoying. There are castles and forts in the game. This
is great for being on the defensive, but if you are assaulting, you are going to
be in for a LONG and unfair game. There doesn't seem to be any siege weapons, so
you will constantly be hacking away at parts of the wall or going around
obstacles. Luckily, there is a fast-forward button. Also, if in a battle, you
have more than a few heroes, many icons will appear at the corner of the screen.
You have to keep track of all your heroes and their abilities. Also, they do
have mana limited abilities. However, a lot of times they seem pretty useless
and take up much of the screen. Even the army has their own abilities, but you
aren't really seeing much results. The game has the option of automatic battles
where you can watch your army fight as the A.I. takes control of them. Although
this makes the game easier, I DO NOT recommend using this as you will lose
automatically. The A.I. is so dumb that your soldiers will just charge into a
rain of arrows or fireballs. You are better off trying to coordinate them as
best you can.
As for the story mode, unless you are able to make progress, there is no story
to be seen. You have to constantly make progress and only certain moves will
trigger the story. You might even accidentally go out of order if not played
correctly.
Then lastly, the balance of power in this game does not make sense. Nations like
the elves, the wolf clans, the lizard people, etc. all seem to be doomed from
the start. Their choice in military power is limited. Where you start, the
resources are low and you can't really expand because there are other nations
that are ridiculously strong. Also, the locations make it even more difficult.
For example, one location can probably house around 10 units or soldiers.
However, another location can probably house around 20. So if you have the
unfortunate spot of the 10 units, then you are heavily outnumbered and you have
already lost.
The artwork is pixelated, which is fine. It isn't all over the place where you
might mix up your troops with the background.
The music is pretty generic. There is simply the peaceful music and then there
is the battle music. They are all the same and I wouldn't call them memorable.
So overall, this game had SO MUCH potential and I think it could have been a fun
experience. Now I have to admit, I probably just suck, but I tried my hardest to
play. So although I did find it fun for the first few hours, the rest of the
hours spent was the realization that I would never really progress. I hope that
I am wrong and the developers will try to complete this game. Right now, I give
this game a score of 3 out of 10.
Review 8
Purchased!
It's like Total War, Dragon Force(yes, the classic Saturn Game) and Romance of
the Three Kingdoms all got together and birthed a hybrid child.
You take control of one of the 12 factions of the world and vie your way to
complete dominance, through Diplomacy, JRPG-style cutscenes and recruiting
hundreds of individual generals, each with their own stats, levels and skills.
Battles are done in RTS style, in a way reminiscent of the Total War series.
There's a lot of depth in the way you mix and match units, generals, skills and
formations. The battles can become very large in scale, chaos and mayhem
ensuing, with armored knights charging into infantry and mages slinging spells
of destruction from behind. There are sieges in the game, and its entertaining
to formulate a strategy and watching it unfold as your soldiers storm the
castles.
This is a game I dreamt of playing as a child -it fulfills a lot of what I
wanted to see in a fantasy wargame back then- but the game isn't without its
faults. A better UI would have gone a long way and better graphic and resoution
options are much desired.
Review 9
Purchased!
Like Total War, but for a fraction of the cost, straight to the point, and with
good looking characters.
Review 10
Purchased!
This game is very mixed experience for me. I started playing as castus first
since they had horse archers. While they were really good on the desert maps
being able to kite everything they sucked hard when I was trying to conquer
other non-desert lands. Unfortunately for castus, all the nearby lands had
either water, mountains, forests or a big huge fortress that horse archer cant
be used effectively.
So the next line of thinking for a competent general is just not use horse
archers right? Too bad, you only get horse archers and clerics as your meat of
your fighting force. There's also snakes, rogues and poison mages but those are
limited to being recruitable in your comrades' squad(basically a sub commander
in this game), and you cant easily recruit more of those comrades at the start.
Since the most annoying but manageable enemy to beat was the furries, I went
down south and eliminated them. The mountain terrains were awful but somehow the
AI was just that bad that I managed to kite them and destroy them with horse
archers. It took a long ass time and you cant simply just a draw a circle path
for your archers like in total war. I had to constantly spam right click which
would sometimes make the game bug out from clicking too fast. So after the
furries died there was another threat approaching that was impossible for me to
beat, the lizardmen. Those boys do not screw around and would instantly delete
your army in the marsh and water terrain, along with having insane hp regen. At
this point I was forced to pull back my entire army to the desert and lose an
entire region to them because I had no fire magic users to destroy them and no
good tanky infantry line to hold them.
The lizards however were intent on trying to invade the desert, in which they
would be slowed to a crawl because of the desert terrain and slowly picked off
painstakingly by my horse archers and right click spam. Since I was allied with
cunits(who were useless), the only enemy I could fight was the musket faction
which straight up counters and destroys my entire army along with having great
defensive maps. At this point I was extremely irritated with the game, why would
the devs make a kusoge with terrible balance?
It turns out I had to complete destroy cunitz faction in a new castus game just
to be able to recruit more wandering commanders that can finally recruit
swordsmen with shields, long range archers, cavalry that were way better that
crappy horse archers and later fire mages which deleted lizardmen on sight.
While I could not openly recruit those units without those commanders leading
them, they made the castus gameplay much more manageable. I pretty much just set
the fights on autoresolve in the later stages of the game since there were just
too many spells or skills to micromanage in this game and it would incur small
or no casualties than if I were to openly battle them. Another reasons is that I
really hate the map design in this game since theres way too much rough terrain.
One annoying thing in this game is that commanders/comrades are essentially
invincible and if you beat them they will just retreat with full health unless
they have no safe allied area in which they become recruitable wanderers. Some
of them can get really powerful skills like one mercenary which casts a big wave
that destroys most of your soldiers or high stats/resists that are hard to fight
against. But this also works in your favour, if you manage to trap the leader of
the faction this way it will completely dismantle their entire faction. This
happened to me with the two last factions remaining and it was the most
anti-climatic thing I've ever experienced, but it saved me the hassle of chasing
every single occupied area on the map to clear them out.
The diplomacy in this game is rudimentary at best, you only get to either ally
or either give money to improve relations(which doesnt really stop them from
attacking like a peace treaty). If you managed to read this entire review so far
you probably came to the conclusion this game would be absolutely amazing if you
played it in the year 2000. The total war series already exists if you want to
play the same sort of game but miles better.
Interestingly enough the game has a modding scene but all of it is in japanese,
and I assume theres a lot of good balance changes or new content. There really
isnt much of a scene in the discord or forums to fully translate most of them so
that sucks but expected of a really niche japanese game.
I'll leave one good thing that I liked about the game which is the dungeon
master mode. It's a fun casual mode that starts you out with any commander in
the game clearing out dungeons for random drops,skills and other commanders.
Some commanders are definitely going to struggle in the first level but you can
always run away before losing exp, so you can continuously level up slowly even
with the worst characters.
Review 11
Purchased!
I have one simple thing to say about this game: where do I sign up and pay for
the fully translated version of the game?
In more detail: I wasn't expecting a lot about this game for this price, but I
quickly found myself totally proven wrong. From the awesome anime style
mid-combat speeches and interactions of characters who react to their
surrounding and the flow of battle, to the amazing music score, and the
surprisingly deep characters and their motivations.
If I could improve anything about the game it'd be to give each unit multiple
advanced class versions that you can upgrade them into. I'd make faction
affinity more understandable and I'd improve officer mode so that rebelling
against your faction is an actual option, because now raising your own flag can
only be done in neutral provinces, and you never have enough money shortly after
raising your flag to fight off established starter factions who are rushing
towards conquering all neutral lands.
Give this game a try, I promise you won't regret it, and the more of us who buy
it, the more likely it is, that we'll get the full version, which would be
AMAZING <3 <3 <3
Review 12
Purchased!
A steal at its current price. BUY IT!!!!
How dose it play?
Kind of reminds me of suikoden mixed with a 4x game with a bit of fireemblem
mixed in.
Pro's
- Battles are huge
- Alot of characters with really great art work
- battles are voiced ( jp voices)
- The game has some 4x elements but its pretty strightforward and easy to pick
up.
Review 13
Purchased!
+Fun game, reminds me of Dominions but 1/10 the price. Also quite similar to
Dragon Force on the Sega Saturn. Elements of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and
Nobunaga's Ambition. Good variety of factions to play as. World map seems to be
well constructed for interesting play.
-Need a better battle tutorial.
-Please translate all factions! (story... they are ALL playable but only 3 have
story modes so far)
-Let us zoom on strategic map!
-UI takes a little getting used to
-More zoom in battle would be nice too.
Review 14
Purchased!
Lost Technology is super cool and it's 3 dollars so who even cares.
Gameplay is a combination of empire building and a total war-esque war sim. Pick
a race/nation, build them up off the corpses of your enemies, and conquer the
world. This can feel pretty overwhelming at first, especially at the beginning
of a campaign, but gold is the only resource you need to worry about so it's not
actually as bad as it seems. There's like a hundred officers you can recruit and
while some are more useful than others (Dragon Riders lol) they're still
noticeably more useful than stacks of mooks so that's cool. You can also just
stack heroes together and that can be hilarious.
Factions have unique troops and, again, they're not all particularly balanced
but that's fine. It's like a secondary difficulty selection. Lizardmen and
Dwarves in particular don't have much for troop selection but their frontline
infantry are monsters compared to other factions.
A lot of the mechanics, as always, are mysterious. Figure it out.
Most of the factions don't have a story because they're not translated but I
guess they're working on it? The setting itself is pretty standard fantasy fare
except for the thing that's in the title.
The game is graphically simple but I think it works out in its favor. The
aesthetic is solid.
The music is fun but repetitive and I ended up turning it off after a while. All
the officers have unique voice clips and that seems crazy to me.
UI is functional.
I liked this game, it's 3 bucks. Who cares.
Review 15
Purchased!
It's a nice game overall.
The only problem I have is when you reach far into the late game. Even if you
overpower an enemy faction and corner them to their last remaining territory,
your soldiers will still easily get wiped out by a small force of high-level
unique characters with absurdly powerful skills. If you didn't spend time
recruiting and leveling your own unique characters, you'll probably find
yourself in a never ending stalemate; meaning you won't be able to beat your
current game.
I'm hoping there can be a few more balancing patches than can remedy this.
Other than that, I'm hoping that the rest of the missing content is translated
and released.
EDIT FOR UPDATE 11/2:
With the addition of the new modes, the game has become much more replayable
compared to it's previous state. I personally love the "Random Scenario" mode
since everything is now... random.
What I don't like about the "Random Scenario" is the fact that not every
character is currently available to choose. Characters from the demon faction,
as well as a few others that I don't remember appearing in the first main
scenario, can't be chosen by the player.
It's nothing that majorly affects the game, but I hope in the next update that
more characters will be available to choose for the mode.
Review 16
Purchased!
This is the kind of game I've been dreaming of for quite some time.
In short it's risk set in the fantasy era with less dice rolling and more
strategy, complete with multiple well written story lines.
For a longer description, we can break this into four categories.
Looks:
The art in the game is great. No doubt about that. Due to the massive scale of
the game (nearly one hundred units and at least as many "heroes"), it's
understandable that each individual unit has only a few assets. While the units
themselves aren't animated (apart from sliding), their attacks usually are. Most
importantly though, battles containing the maximum 48 squads of units will not
lag unless they all die at the same time, which probably won't happen.
While it may take a moment to get used to, the art fits well.
User interface:
With different windows all over the screen and numbers flying all around the
unit details, it can be hard to discern what things you need to look at or what
any of it means.
However, this is exactly what makes it useful when you understand it. Having
three tabs open for selecting units for an invasion makes it tons easier to
figure out who goes where. Having an extra tab open to tell you what a specific
unit is weak to and another to tell you who you might be able to bribe for some
help also helps. Best of all, you can move all of the tabs, even if you don't
think you can. Thus, the many windows don't have to be in the way either.
Once again, it takes some getting used to, but ends up providing fast access to
all the information you need.
Strategy:
I've always been looking for a medieval/fantasy era game with reasonable
tactics. Something that represents castles are tough places to capture and gives
value to tactics like flanking. This game does that and a little more.
Outside of combat the player positions their units and hires new ones. New units
are usually fresh recruits, meaning they'll need a few turns of training before
they'll be effective in combat. When it comes to combat itself, both sides will
(without extra information) choose reinforcements to help in the battle.
Terrain is critical in combat as having units in the right places wins fights.
For most battles, you will have to work around the terrain to best defeat your
opponent. Fortifications can serve as a front line for your ranged units.
Marshes might prevent a cavalry charge. More so, moving fast and wiping out a
wave of reinforcements or the defending garrison before they can group up could
sway the battle.
Lastly, it's important to know when to run. If the fight isn't one you can win,
or win cheaply, or one you don't feel like taking, then run. Your units will
exit the map and go somewhere else if they can make it out.
Ultimately, using the terrain well, positioning your units correctly, and making
well balanced/trained armies will win battles.
Writing:
Most importantly (and least expected), the writing in this game is exceptional
(by my standards). I felt that the stories would often take shape as a result of
the world rather than being layers and layers of convenient plot holes lining
up. The story was predictable in the good way. By that I mean you can expect the
characters to act based on their backstory. They are well defined and so are
their environments.
Yeah. I like this game. A lot. It's probably worth your five dollars if you like
good writing or appreciate fantasy tactics.
Review 17
Purchased!
This is a $5 indie gem which is pretty rough around the edges while still being
quite enjoyable for the price. It plays similar to a Total War game, but it
feels like the child of Mount and Blade and Fire Emblem with independently
tracked units, character levelling and job progression. Every 10 levels on a
unit will unlock new, cool skills.
It has that Mount and Blade feel because the player can also choose to serve an
existing faction, fight as a mercenary or be the leader of a faction along with
the ability to change which one you are several times over the course of a game
. It offers an extremely robust number of choices with a massive roster of
officers to choose from.
It uses a considerably different user interface than what we're used to in the
west. Clicking and dragging with the right mouse button, an irritating number of
pop up windows, left clicking can unintentionally send your army's shots to
where you clicked instead of hitting the tiny UI button you wanted, and a lot of
information which still doesn't make sense even after translation. However,
there are several user guides which attempt to make this process more
understandable. Once you get past the initial learning curve, this is a pretty
enjoyable game and I love just messing around in its sandbox, total war strategy
setting.
Review 18
Purchased!
Lost Technology as a game has its faults. The odd UI choices, in-progress
translation, middling graphics.
But it still remains a strategy game with great tactical battles, combined with
RPG like leveling and unit advancement. The diversity among factions, if a
little imbalanced, gives a range of difficulties to play at, and a surprisingly
large variety of strategies to employ.
Review 19
Purchased!
I suggest you read game's store description first before reading this (I often
don't do it myself), it's pretty informative regarding basic game process.
There are 4(5) gamemodes:
Prologue: Birth - basically a story mode where you get text based events by
capturing territories or fulfilling specific conditions. Writing is pretty
interesting for a doujin game, I find Reinald scenario in particular pretty
amusing, you don't see endings like that every day. You can also unlock new
characters or their stronger versions for random mode by completing certain
scenarios.
Free Mode - same as above only no events and castles have defences now which can
obliterate low level units with ease.
Random Mode - Factions and their positions are randomized, you can choose their
number (up to 32, I personally prefer 24), unit starting level, unit training
level (common units can get more levels if they don't perform any actions during
a turn), your character starting rank (ruler, officer, wanderer), enable/disable
unlocked characters and castle defences. 90% of my playtime comes from this
mode.
Dungeon Master - you pick a character and try to clear 100 dungeon floors with
various combinations of enemies plus nasty bosses with only one squad. By
clearing a floor you either get a new characters (they have gacha-like rarity
system, the only difference you don't waste giant amount of money on getting
them) or stat boost items. By defeating any enemy, you can randomly acquire
their skills and give them to your characters, so normally weak characters like
Jimmy the Invisible Man can turn into Jimmy the Invincible Demigod of Mass
Destruction. Fun mode in general.
Battle Scenarios - pretty much "historical battles", this mode is only present
in Japanese version at the moment of writing.
This game is focused primarily on combat, there is a lot of nuance like terrain,
movement type, unit skills and damage resistance, army composition and so on.
World map game process is much simpler in that regard, you get gold depending on
amount of territories you have, you use it to hire soldiers and characters
(recruitment system is rather unusual) and make alliances, then go to battle.
Personally I prefer this simple approach to what we usually see in "big" games
where half of features either don't work, just waste time with needless
micromanagement or locked behind DLC paywall.
Having said that, don't expect advanced AI from a doujin game, it's pretty
basic. In battle it's either uses all available summons/buffs and charges
straight or it waits for you to come if it's at a disadvantage. On the world map
it usually prioritizes attacking and defending provinces with the biggest income
(which usually have castle walls), so if it captures too many territories, it
may leave some of them completely undefended.
If you search for the legendary "balance", this is also a wrong place. Some
characters have abilities that can wipe several squads at once, while the others
are just slightly better versions of regular units.
Lot's of unique characters is probably my favourite part of the game. Great
artwork which gives "old school anime" vibe and all of them are voiced (well,
the ones who can talk). I don't remember playing another game where the amount
of voice actors is several times bigger than the amount of developers. While the
voice actors are rather unknown, I think they did a great job portraying their
characters. I feel more invested in battles where every character is not a
nameless mook.
Technically this game is a mod, so you can easily edit unit stats, skills,
territories in game files with a simple text editor. Think Sin faction is OP?
Nerf them to hell! Jimmy can't beat demon lords? Give him a gun! You can also
insert your own characters without a problem.
About localization. Outside of scenarios, the game is completely in English. At
the moment of writing translated scenarios are Reinald, Reinald alternative
route 1, Alfheim, Kingdom of Gug, Apoitakara, Castus, Makan and Dragon Knights
of Fenrir. Not translated scenarios are Lion, Alcatraz, Knights of Cunitz,
Musket, Crime, Reinald alternative route 2 + battle scenarios. You can play as
factions without translated scenarios (don't bother playing with Crime in story
mode yet), but you will not get any events. I'm personally sceptical about
Playism claims that this game has too much text so they can't translate all at
once without funds from sales (how do they even publish all those other games
without going bankrupt), but I must give them a credit for bringing this game to
the rest of the world in the first place with a price that makes it a steal.
In conclusion, I definitely recommend buying this game assuming you know what
you are getting into. I never thought that the cheapest game (base price) I
would ever buy on steam will become my favourite single player game with 600+
hours of playtime.
P.S. I made a badly written/formatted document about notable characters in this
game in case you are interested:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dU-SVB_AVJpEvOvbLoJBw4AbV4DIyih0O9H8BTjELUw
Review 20
Purchased!
Truly a great game, even if the amount of content is not apparent at first. The
core game is a turn-based strategy with real-time combat, very similar in
concept to the Total War series. At first it looks very simple in both gameplay
and graphics. True for the graphics, but not for the gameplay.
Strategic Layer: Looks simple and Risk-like at first, but eventually one
realizes that conquering territory is secondary to getting high-level units.
Both heroes and units in this game level up and a high-level unit can kill
entire armies of low-level units effortlessly. At first you hire swarms of level
1 units and use them in combat hoping some of them survive to become strong.
Later you can spend lots of money to get stronger units immediately or recruit
cheap low-level ones and put them on the bench as they passively level up.
Heroes have extra unique skills, revive if they die and can give a buff when
leading a small unit squad.
Tactical layer: Looks really chaotic at first and the UI is not your friend. So
putting all your units on auto is a good strategy at first. You eventually learn
to do things better - it's a very slow learning curve, but also quite rewarding.
The extreme variety of skills units have results in very interesting strategies
for making the best of them.
Story mode: As of now, 7 of the 12 factions have a story mode, which tells a
compelling story about the faction you're playing - the decaying empire being
exploited by two scumbags, the dragon riders trying to find mates for their
dragons, ect. The game differes very little, with 1-2 added mission battles, but
the story is really good at making you understand what your faction's hero units
are all about and what they're actually fighting for. The number of factions
without translated story content is slowly reducing but it's handled in a way
that's a bit unwise - letting you choose any faction you wish, with no
indication of any difference, and then giving you a pop up "Sorry no story
content for this faction".
Alternative modes: Story mode is optional and you can play the game without it.
But it's a bit boring compared to the more interesting and sometimes surprising
ways the game modes in which the game can be played:
- You can play controlling just a squad of heroes and units, while the AI
controls the rest of the faction's forces, giving the game more of a PRG feel
- You can play the above as either a faction hero or a mercenary hero, choosing
from more than a hundred heroes in the game. If you play as a mercenary you can
join a faction, or you can create your own custom nation to compete with the
regular ones
- An even crazier departure from the regular game is dungeon mode where you
control a hero squad progressing through a series of real time battles, grinding
levels and randomly finding equippable loot. Equippable loot is unique to this
mode and alters the stats and skills of heroes substantially to give them an
even more extreme power progression on top of the already extreme power
progression they have in the other game modes.
Overall the game has somewhat clunky UI and slow learning curve. But the amount
of content is amazing and everything is very polished and good, both in terms of
gameplay and lore/story. With better presentation it could easily compete with
the best RPG/strategy fantasy games out there.