Imagine if Sin City, H.P Lovecraft, X-Com and Ciri from the Witcher merged together into a tough roguelike strategy RPG and you get Othercide.
Othercide is set over five ages, each age with a boss at the end your characters known as Daughters have to defeat. If you lose you can reset your run from the start but using resources to add modifiers making your daughters stronger such as dealing more damage, starting at higher levels, resurrecting characters from previous runs etc. so that you can progress further each time.
The combat can be tough at first. (I played on easy, not gonna lie). You can choose up to 4 classes for your daughters, a Shieldbarer, Blade master, Scythe wielder and the Soulslinger. Each class has a variety of skills they learn as they level up and depending on what level they are and their actions in battle they gain permanent character traits which steadily make them a force to be reckoned with.
Skills are pretty varied from direct attacks, buffs, area of effect attacks and even attacks that interrupt enemy attacks in some way. As you kill enemies they drop Mother's memories which are both equipped for bonuses for your character skills as well as lore notes to give background of events to explain story elements of this cosmic horror tale I enjoyed.
The highlight of the combat is balancing your skill and movement usage with the turn based system to abuse taking turns by stacking and planning ahead. It's a great fun system but it does make the Soulslinger (duel wielding pistols) unbalanced to the point at the end it was the only class I used due to their power, range, traits and interrupt attacks allowing them to absolutely crush enemies and bosses.
The big flaw for me though is simply the genre of the game itself. some battles can take a while and runs even longer for a turn based strategy game and this simply does not conduct well as a Roguelike. Levels are pretty repetitive with only a certain amount of maps and though some events pop up occasionally they do nothing but adjust some stats giving no variety to the repetition. Though you can save resources to skip ages or start with higher level Daughters it just raises the question of why have it as a Roguelike at all except for to pad out the experience?
It's a bizarre game in a lot of ways but I must say it absolutely nails it's mostly monotone aesthetic. The games character designs and level visuals are absolutely gorgeous. The voice acting is also of extremely high quality matching the tone of the game perfectly and some of the music is simply sublime. The first boss theme as it builds up to a crescendo at the end is just sublime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1EEfy9OVng
Overall I had a really good time with this I'm not going to lie. It's exactly my type of indie / AA game trying out something a little different. It doesn't nail everything it tries but it's really unique and for that alone I would always say to give it a try.
+ Great turn based battle system.
+ Presentation is superb.
+ Excellent voice acting and music.
- Not sure the Roguelike aspect is really suitable as a strategy title.
Othercide is set over five ages, each age with a boss at the end your characters known as Daughters have to defeat. If you lose you can reset your run from the start but using resources to add modifiers making your daughters stronger such as dealing more damage, starting at higher levels, resurrecting characters from previous runs etc. so that you can progress further each time.
The combat can be tough at first. (I played on easy, not gonna lie). You can choose up to 4 classes for your daughters, a Shieldbarer, Blade master, Scythe wielder and the Soulslinger. Each class has a variety of skills they learn as they level up and depending on what level they are and their actions in battle they gain permanent character traits which steadily make them a force to be reckoned with.
Skills are pretty varied from direct attacks, buffs, area of effect attacks and even attacks that interrupt enemy attacks in some way. As you kill enemies they drop Mother's memories which are both equipped for bonuses for your character skills as well as lore notes to give background of events to explain story elements of this cosmic horror tale I enjoyed.
The highlight of the combat is balancing your skill and movement usage with the turn based system to abuse taking turns by stacking and planning ahead. It's a great fun system but it does make the Soulslinger (duel wielding pistols) unbalanced to the point at the end it was the only class I used due to their power, range, traits and interrupt attacks allowing them to absolutely crush enemies and bosses.
The big flaw for me though is simply the genre of the game itself. some battles can take a while and runs even longer for a turn based strategy game and this simply does not conduct well as a Roguelike. Levels are pretty repetitive with only a certain amount of maps and though some events pop up occasionally they do nothing but adjust some stats giving no variety to the repetition. Though you can save resources to skip ages or start with higher level Daughters it just raises the question of why have it as a Roguelike at all except for to pad out the experience?
It's a bizarre game in a lot of ways but I must say it absolutely nails it's mostly monotone aesthetic. The games character designs and level visuals are absolutely gorgeous. The voice acting is also of extremely high quality matching the tone of the game perfectly and some of the music is simply sublime. The first boss theme as it builds up to a crescendo at the end is just sublime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1EEfy9OVng
Overall I had a really good time with this I'm not going to lie. It's exactly my type of indie / AA game trying out something a little different. It doesn't nail everything it tries but it's really unique and for that alone I would always say to give it a try.
+ Great turn based battle system.
+ Presentation is superb.
+ Excellent voice acting and music.
- Not sure the Roguelike aspect is really suitable as a strategy title.