This game is really wonderful. It's like a D&D campaign video game adaptation, with several custom campaigns with a central villain and story. As your characters progress through the world and campaign, they develop as characters, both emotionally/socially and physically. Relationships form - for better or for worse, characters get involved in schemes, or their personal backgrounds, stuff you wouldn't think affects the story ends up coming up later on, giving you that "wow the game kept track of that?"

While probably not a good example, the time the game won me over with the legacy mechanic was when my friend and I lost a character in combat. We were bummed out as most people would, but we shrugged and carried forth with playing. A chapter or so later (about 15-25 years later in game), we stumbled upon the son of that character who inherited many of the same traits and feature as their father, and ended up playing a big part in our story going forth. Characters that die or ones that survive a campaign may live as legacy characters, and you might even find them in future campaigns, complete with most of their stats and their gear!

The combat mechanics are also similarly not a gimmick, and they provide solid stat buffs depending on one's relationship with another person, which makes it really great. It makes you think more about the positioning of your party as to grant the maximum amount of buffs to as many people as possible.

Similar to FTL (and other roguelikes + roguelites), there is both a benefit and consequence for messing around in the story. Sure, you could clear out every tile and reinforce them to get more experience for your party or resources for crafting, but you run the risk of maiming or even permanently losing your party members (you get only one "redo" of death/0 hp PER CHARACTER, they will die forever if they go to 0 hp again) and your enemies will also get stronger. In some campaigns, this may even have worse repercussions for lack of spoilers. So, it may be in your best interest to leave some stones unturned so to speak.

Writing is done through the use of comic-book like panels, which provide a nice change of pace from the typical walls of text and cutscenes, and presumably helps cut down on character animations and other things like that. This format also helps visualize the actions you can make and the consequences of choosing one action. It also helps me develop an attachment to a character, which makes me think about certain actions especially in combat, as it's not just a "stat card" you're losing, but someone who might drastically affect someone else in the world, not just in your party.

Multiplayer is a mostly-functioning experience, which is impressive give the size of the dev team and it's recent implementation. It works well, every now and then a desync that might require the host to force an event, or to rehost. In the latter case, I didn't even have to leave the lobby, just reloading the save fixed it. Some windows aren't synced, which may be intentional, so if you use Discord or something similar, screen sharing might be a good option to see the windows aren't showing up, or if the text adventure windows don't appear properly. Achievements currently don't seem to work for non-hosts (only the host gets them), but that will likely be fixed in the future.

I would recommend this game even at it's full price. More so if you have someone else to play it with. It's one of those games that I'm sure will come back in conversation as it has for my friend and I, like "hey, do you remember Linius, the guy who absolutely destroyed that boss over one turn?"

Note: In multiplayer, I would recommend a maximum of 5 people for maximum fun; you can have way more than that but 5 characters can only be brought into combat at a time. You typically start out with 3, but you can recruit several more during the course of your story. There are also mods that will increase the starting count of heroes.

This game is really wonderful. It's like a D&D campaign video game adaptation, with several custom campaigns with a central villain and story. As your characters progress through the world and campaign, they develop as characters, both emotionally/socially and physically. Relationships form - for better or for worse, characters get involved in schemes, or their personal backgrounds, stuff you wouldn't think affects the story ends up coming up later on, giving you that "wow the game kept track of that?" While probably not a good example, the time the game won me over with the legacy mechanic was when my friend and I lost a character in combat. We were bummed out as most people would, but we shrugged and carried forth with playing. A chapter or so later (about 15-25 years later in game), we stumbled upon the son of that character who inherited many of the same traits and feature as their father, and ended up playing a big part in our story going forth. Characters that die or ones that survive a campaign may live as legacy characters, and you might even find them in future campaigns, complete with most of their stats and their gear! The combat mechanics are also similarly not a gimmick, and they provide solid stat buffs depending on one's relationship with another person, which makes it really great. It makes you think more about the positioning of your party as to grant the maximum amount of buffs to as many people as possible. Similar to FTL (and other roguelikes + roguelites), there is both a benefit and consequence for messing around in the story. Sure, you could clear out every tile and reinforce them to get more experience for your party or resources for crafting, but you run the risk of maiming or even permanently losing your party members (you get only one "redo" of death/0 hp PER CHARACTER, they will die forever if they go to 0 hp again) and your enemies will also get stronger. In some campaigns, this may even have worse repercussions for lack of spoilers. So, it may be in your best interest to leave some stones unturned so to speak. Writing is done through the use of comic-book like panels, which provide a nice change of pace from the typical walls of text and cutscenes, and presumably helps cut down on character animations and other things like that. This format also helps visualize the actions you can make and the consequences of choosing one action. It also helps me develop an attachment to a character, which makes me think about certain actions especially in combat, as it's not just a "stat card" you're losing, but someone who might drastically affect someone else in the world, not just in your party. Multiplayer is a mostly-functioning experience, which is impressive give the size of the dev team and it's recent implementation. It works well, every now and then a desync that might require the host to force an event, or to rehost. In the latter case, I didn't even have to leave the lobby, just reloading the save fixed it. Some windows aren't synced, which may be intentional, so if you use Discord or something similar, screen sharing might be a good option to see the windows aren't showing up, or if the text adventure windows don't appear properly. Achievements currently don't seem to work for non-hosts (only the host gets them), but that will likely be fixed in the future. I would recommend this game even at it's full price. More so if you have someone else to play it with. It's one of those games that I'm sure will come back in conversation as it has for my friend and I, like "hey, do you remember Linius, the guy who absolutely destroyed that boss over one turn?" Note: [b]In multiplayer, I would recommend a maximum of 5 people for maximum fun; you can have way more than that but 5 characters can only be brought into combat at a time. You typically start out with 3, but you can recruit several more during the course of your story. There are also mods that will increase the starting count of heroes.[/b]