This is an auto-battler take on the Slay the Spire/Monster Train type rogue-lite. You pick 3 heroes initially (and 2 more over the course of the playthrough) from a decent sized roster (~15), and then progress through a game board with various types of nodes, much like in the aforementioned titles. Being an auto-battler, your decisions are in which heroes to select, what to equip them with, how to position them at the beginning of battle, and when to use consumable potions during battle. There's a surprisingly good depth of gameplay for the simple concept. As with the other games in the genre there's an incremental difficulty increase unlocked as you beat the game each time. I've managed to make it about halfway in (8/20) without repeating the same strategy twice so far, so there's a great variety of options that are viable.

I'd definitely recommend giving this a shot if you're looking for another rogue-lite fix. I've already put in 11 hours this week, and see myself jumping in for a run or two here and there for quite a while.

I liked Final Fantasy 12 quite a lot early on. The combat and character development systems were just different enough from what I was used to to pique my interest. The story had a fairly strong start, and I liked all of the characters (even Vaan and Penelo). The presentation of Ivalice was excellent, and I actually liked trudging around the deserts.

However, as the game progressed, I found myself losing interest and becoming more frustrated. Once I had decent gambits set up, combat largely became a matter of just letting the game play itself. I don't think this is actually a bad thing in and of itself. Being able to operate at such a strategic level has its charms. Unfortunately, the combat animations were just flat out boring. This was further worsened by the lack of interesting abilities. Technicks just weren't cool or useful, and the magic system was quite standard. The martial classes felt far too similar to one another to feel like there was much more diversity in the party than "casts spells" or "doesn't cast spells".

Unfortunately, my growing dissatisfaction wasn't limited to the combat and character building. The main party interactions felt very limited -- I really wanted to see the characters play off each other more. I may have had this feeling in part due to the extraordinarily large amount of dungeon crawling that separated each tidbit of story. Even on x2 or x4 speed, it ended up feeling like an eternity between story elements. Now, this is partially my fault. I don't think I should have hit as many of the hunts early on as I did. I think the story also hit a pretty hard lull about halfway in, which didn't really resolve itself until the very final portion of the game. On top of that, there were several story elements that just felt like they came out of left field or were cool but didn't end up playing into the storyline nearly enough for my liking.

In the end, I don't think it's a bad game, and I think the people who love it are justified. It just didn't really click with me the way I would have wanted. I lost my motivation to keep slogging through the dungeons in the penultimate dungeon. It was just too damn long for me. I ended up reading a synopsis of that dungeon's story elements and then watching a lets play of the final boss and ending FMV. I have no regrets about making that decision-- I actually ended up enjoying the ending of the game, but don't think I would have if I'd spent another 5 hours slogging through dungeons to get there.

This game is pure pseudo-idler crack.

You essentially manage a city in support of sending out groups of 5 adventurers to explore different realms and fight monsters. The adventurers automatically use their basic skill to attack enemies/heal/buff, but also have a tactic that has a larger effect and can be manually used after building up 'rage' (though you can also set up some very basic logic to automatically use tactics if you desire). There's a wide variety of adventurer types and equipment with effects that can legitimately change how an adventurer functions. The balance is surprisingly decent until you start pushing into hundreds of hours played, so a wide variety of combinations of units are completely viable. Thus, exploring new strategies is surprisingly enjoyable. As you get further and further in the game, more and more mechanics upon up to interact with. The rate of introduction is well managed, allowing you to always have something nearly in your grasp, but never overwhelming you.

All that said, the localization is... not great. The story is almost incomprehensible and every apostrophe has bizarre spacing around it. Of course, story and presentation aren't really the main draw of the game. Unfortunately, the language issues also carry over to gameplay descriptions, causing occasional confusion on important issues like "Does this trigger when I take damage or deal damage?". It's usually fairly easy to figure out, but still frustrating.

All in all, if you like seeing numbers going up and fiddling with party compositions or equipment load outs, Dragon Cliff is definitely worth a look.

Steam's recommendation algorithm kept pushing Infinite Adventures me, so I decided to grab it on sale. It's a perfectly fine blobber/dungeon crawler experience in the Wizardry/Etrian Odyssey style. It's at a good price point and made by a small indie team, which always gets some bonus points from me.

Combat is standard JRPG fare, and on the better side of average. There's a nice range of viable classes with meaningful passives, plenty of active abilities, and differing methods of resource management. Buffs and debuffs are meaningful and worth using, and even end game bosses are usually vulnerable to few that'll make the fight much easier. There's no particular mechanics that really elevate the game beyond standard menu based combat, but it's nice to have well executed traditional mechanics from time to time.

The story is decent enough for a dungeon crawler, and its fully voice acted. The voice acting isn't top shelf, but it's a very nice and unexpected touch for a small team. The side characters brought some extra charm to the game, which was appreciated.

My biggest complaint is that the dungeons are just not that interesting. They're not bad, but, when the game is focused around dungeon crawling, you'd think every floor would have some type of unique set piece and/or there'd be some sort of unique mechanic. There are a few things that show up, like wind tunnels that push you and ice that you slide across, but they're all very simple and standard affairs. There's also some block pushing puzzles, but they're exceedingly basic, with only the last puzzle or two requiring any forethought whatsoever. There are field skills, but they just let you find hidden walls and gather resources from nodes -- you'll generally be able to keep these up to date without too any hassle and they don't really provide much interactivity. Hunting down treasure chests is also generally not that rewarding. More often than not, it's just some gold or items that you've already purchased.

In the end, though, Infinite Adventures is a solid experience. If you like these sorts of dungeon crawlers, you'll almost certainly enjoy your time with it.