• Braveland
  

  6 hours playtime

  15 of 21 achievements

This is a tactics game. There’s a linear overworld map with the occasional short split path, and most points on the map lead to a battle. Besides that, there’s the occasional shop that sells maybe two items tops, a few points where you can buy more soldiers, and spots that give you a little power-up.

The battles are pretty bland. Sure, the game introduces different enemy types, but the map is always the same size and shape hex grid, with the closest it gets to level design being replacing some move tiles with blocks. Once you figure out that spreading attacks among different enemies is more effective than focusing on one (since enemies’ attacks get weaker the lower their health is), you’ll realize there really isn’t any more potential strategic options: just put the strongest units in your party and buy as many of them as you can, and even on hard mode, you won’t lose a single battle (except maybe that one split path in the middle of the game that gives enemies late-game stats, meaning you just have to skip it and come back later).

Honestly, I’m not sure what the difference is between normal and hard mode; I started with normal for the first several maps and switched to hard mode right before the first boss, but didn’t really notice much difference. Yeah, I could’ve started over to get the achievement, but I didn’t feel like replaying an hour of boredom for something nobody would really notice, much less care about.

Not recommended.

P.S. Oh, and healers suck in this game. Unlike your units’ attack stats, your healers’ recovery spell doesn’t get more effective if you buy more of that same unit. I dropped them as soon as I got more units than the game would let me use. EDIT: Oh, and you can only use said healing spell twice per battle, even though it has a several-turn cool-down just like all the other units’ abilities. Despite all of this, their attack stat is way lower than all other units’ attack and the cost to buy more is the highest for any unit at that point in the game.