29.7 hours played
Written 1 month and 3 days ago
[h1]TL;DR[/h1]
A gorgeous tactical RPG with many improvements from Dark Deity 1 that set it apart as more unique and much less derivative. Featuring fantastic unit customization and another lovable cast of characters. The story was much better than Dark Deity 1, but it did feel like it had a lot of loose ends.
Playtime: 24.5hrs for a blind playthrough on Deity with no turn limits and random level-ups. Another 2.5hrs to tidy up missed achievements on giga-easy mode.
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[h1]Pros[/h1]
[b]Gameplay[/b] - It scratches a particular itch for me that's filled by Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, or even games like XCOM. You get attached to your units as you follow their stories and create your own.
[b]Characters[/b] - An enjoyable cast of characters, with some familiar faces from Dark Deity 1. I believe that anyone could find at least one of them that they like, whether it's their backstory, aesthetics, or gameplay.
[b]Artstyle[/b] - Much like Dark Deity 1, the fullbody character art is gorgeous and their design work was really well done.
[b]Spritework[/b] - A huge improvement from the first game. Combat sprites are much less generic and the map assets look fantastic.
[b]Animations[/b] - Everything is animated super smoothly and I never got tired of looking at the combat animations (albeit with them sped up).
[b]Unit Growths[/b] - Like the first game you can see your unit growths and changes on promotion. It's very nice transparency and good for beginners.
[b]Weapons[/b] - Ditching the weapon system of the previous game, they returned to a more standard "each unit has one weapon to use" format. They do get some customizability with two equippable Runes that have a pool of options depending on the weapon. With all the combinations you can do I found that even some of the lower tier weapons were viable for certain builds.
[b]Unit Death[/b] - Similar to Dark Deity 1, there's no unit permadeath. They also tuned down the penalties from permanent stat bonuses to a random one-chapter debuff. These range from starting with debuffs such as bleeding or limited movement, to having -25% less true speed, or starting the mission without any Mana to name a few.
[b]Campaign Customization[/b] - Similar to Dark Deity 1 there's lots of options applicable to any difficulty level. You can make the game harder or easier by altering base stats, gold/xp modifiers, or player/enemy aptitudes. There's also randomizer options for loot, class passives and abilities, enemy classes, and recruitment order.
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[h1]Neutral[/h1]
[b]Difficulty[/b] - I played through blind on Deity difficulty (no turn limits) and felt like everything was very well balanced. The game did have a bit of an initial learning curve that threw me off, but after that it was smooth sailing.
[b]Story[/b] - A massive improvement from Dark Deity 1 in my opinion. It still had it's fair share of loose ends, but the overarching plot was handled much better. I did however get a little confused at [spoiler]killing off Riordan after you most likely used him as a main unit for most of the game, and then getting a slow and chunky replacement in the form of Irving who doesn't share the same classes[/spoiler] and I can see that pissing some people off.
[b]Voice Acting[/b] - I personally enjoyed the voice acting a lot and felt like the direction they took fit each character's personality really well. It was a little odd to me that the Bonds weren't voiced.
[b]Bonds[/b] - I've always enjoyed peeking into the relationships between characters. A lot of the support conversations are interesting and help with a bit of character growth and backstory, but some of them fall flat. They serve their purpose by adding some flair. Additionally as mentioned above, they're not voice acted so they felt a little awkward to go through. They didn't even have the little speech-blurbs present in Dark Deity 1.
[b]Passives[/b] - Each playable character and each class have unique passives and they felt much better balanced than Dark Deity 1. Each one felt helpful and something that you could build around, with a few minor exceptions. On the other end of the spectrum, some of them are just downright busted and make the unit fantastic to use.
[b]Abilities[/b] - Each playable character also has a unique ability this time around that will likely define the playstyle you want them to use. They did feel like they shoe-horned you to build in specific ways, but you could easily ignore that. Each class has their own abilities as well which were unfortunately a mixed bag. At the start ability upgrade materials are kind of limited, so there is that silver lining.
[b]Mana[/b] - Likely added in an attempt to minimize EXP farming using character abilities and to encourage sparing use of resources. I didn't find it too bad, and it's hardly an unfamiliar concept.
[b]Rings[/b] - Replacing the "Eternal Aspects" from Dark Deity 1, you get two options for equippable passives. They're similarly a mixed bag, but I found that most of them were really good. From effects ranging from "add 50% of Might to Dodge" and "gain 1 Might on kill" or "heal 20% on kill" it was difficult to decide who to put them on.
[b]Class Promotions[/b] - You can mix-and-match from four Tier-2 promotions, and four Tier-3 promotions. You keep the passives and abilities when doing from T2 to T3 so there's a lot of customization compared to Dark Deity 1. Each class had some upsides and some downsides so they felt pretty balanced.
[b]Map Design[/b] - Better than Dark Deity 1 by far. They felt less like boxes and more diverse, and some of them had additional mechanics ranging from steady enemy reinforcements, needing to activate pressure plates, fog-of-war, or area-of-effect hazards.
[b]Terrain[/b] - A new addition that was previously absent in Dark Deity 1. It added a bit of flair to the maps, and sometimes featured as a bonus objective (use defensive terrain x-amount of times). Not mandatory by any means, but if it's there you might as well use it. With the added factor of having to plan around enemies using it.
[b]Training Chapters[/b] - Missions meant for grinding at the cost of paying some gold. I didn't end up using them much because I was able to manage my EXP distribution a bit better since I was playing without turn-limits. They're probably worth it for a more casual player if they want to get a bit overleveled.
[b]Challenge Chapters[/b] - One-off missions that pop up throughout the course of the campaign. Worth doing and not too difficult. Most of the time the reward is a weapon with pretty good stats, not to mention the "free" EXP compared to the Training Chapters.
[b]Controls[/b] - Mouse controls are much better than Dark Deity 1, and never made me want to pull my hair out. I didn't try using a controller, but I imagine it would work pretty well. There are options to change the default controller button icons, so that's a nice touch.
[b]Story Choices[/b] - The game features a few story choices during the campaign that mostly end up being narrative fluff. They offer different rewards and some different dialogue options for the most part, and ultimately don't change the major story.
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[h1]Cons[/h1]
[b]UI[/b] - It's very busy. It took a long time to get used to, and for some-reason the pixelart menus looked out of place to me.
[b]Turn-limits[/b] - I played with them turned off because it's something I'm not interested in, and I adamantly believe games like this shouldn't feature them. I do think they have a place, but should be used sparingly or they'll overstay their welcome. I'm glad that the choice to turn them off is there.
[b]Dodge Tanking[/b] - It's been heavily nerfed mainly because you get a stacking "exhausted" debuff after each combat that reduces your dodge. It's manageable as long as you don't over-commit too much, but I hate game mechanics that limit player builds and creativity, even if they make the game too easy.