Judgement: Recommended
View review on Steam
As a fan of the Turn-based Tactical RPG, Sword Legacy: Omen is plagued with a lot of quality of life issues that prevent it from being great.
- Pathing when outside of combat is bad. It's jittery and often performs moves incorrectly. It has a hard time distinguishing movement from change of player. This is made much worse because of the dark maps littered with traps.
- Camera only allows a limited shift, no rotation. It also locks up at certain edges of the map to prevent you from going too far, which makes looking at corners of the map difficult. Don't try to path while moving the camera, your input will likely register incorrectly.
- Maps don't follow a defined map shape, and also has invisible walls. The dim lighting of certain dungeons makes navigating especially difficult, as you'll likely have to hug the invisible wall to find your way out.
- Battles begin when a specific secret tile is entered, but due to pathing, your teammates will sometimes walk into it and start the battle.
- There's not a lot of documentation on mechanics which means you'll be restarting the stage numerous times as you learn.
- Enemies can face in 8 directions which determines your hit chance and damage inflicted, but it's difficult to see which direction the enemies are facing, this makes getting into position for a back attack a coin flip sometimes.
There are a lot of good parts too.
+ Game is nicely balanced, the game is difficult, but fair. Always feels like you can clear a a stage without getting hit with the right strategy.
+ Willpower system is an incredibly fun balancing act. Trying to constantly consume willpower for the added benefits while staying above 0 to avoid the harsh penalties is rewarding. I love that enemies have willpower too and that breaking their spirit can serve as a good defensive maneuver.
+ Skills are incredibly well thought out and fit each character archetype well. You can customize your character to mainly use active skills or passive skills.
+ There's not much grind unless you want to, in which there are easy random encounters between cities.
+ The equipment system is interesting, each weapon feels unique and choosing one depends a lot on that character's build. Do you go pure damage or status inflicting?
+ I like the focus on terrain and positioning, being able to push and pull enemies into traps, and sometimes off the map entirely is super satisfying.
I would recommend the game for fans of Turn-based tactics genre, but it wouldn't be a good entry point for newbies.
- Pathing when outside of combat is bad. It's jittery and often performs moves incorrectly. It has a hard time distinguishing movement from change of player. This is made much worse because of the dark maps littered with traps.
- Camera only allows a limited shift, no rotation. It also locks up at certain edges of the map to prevent you from going too far, which makes looking at corners of the map difficult. Don't try to path while moving the camera, your input will likely register incorrectly.
- Maps don't follow a defined map shape, and also has invisible walls. The dim lighting of certain dungeons makes navigating especially difficult, as you'll likely have to hug the invisible wall to find your way out.
- Battles begin when a specific secret tile is entered, but due to pathing, your teammates will sometimes walk into it and start the battle.
- There's not a lot of documentation on mechanics which means you'll be restarting the stage numerous times as you learn.
- Enemies can face in 8 directions which determines your hit chance and damage inflicted, but it's difficult to see which direction the enemies are facing, this makes getting into position for a back attack a coin flip sometimes.
There are a lot of good parts too.
+ Game is nicely balanced, the game is difficult, but fair. Always feels like you can clear a a stage without getting hit with the right strategy.
+ Willpower system is an incredibly fun balancing act. Trying to constantly consume willpower for the added benefits while staying above 0 to avoid the harsh penalties is rewarding. I love that enemies have willpower too and that breaking their spirit can serve as a good defensive maneuver.
+ Skills are incredibly well thought out and fit each character archetype well. You can customize your character to mainly use active skills or passive skills.
+ There's not much grind unless you want to, in which there are easy random encounters between cities.
+ The equipment system is interesting, each weapon feels unique and choosing one depends a lot on that character's build. Do you go pure damage or status inflicting?
+ I like the focus on terrain and positioning, being able to push and pull enemies into traps, and sometimes off the map entirely is super satisfying.
I would recommend the game for fans of Turn-based tactics genre, but it wouldn't be a good entry point for newbies.
Review posted on 13/01/2020, 02:35:00.