This is a gem.

You build a team of heroes starting with 3 and ending with 5 at the third act. Since all of them are always available, a big part of the strategy begins right at the starting screen, it's even quite possible to plan your full 5 man team there and have it actually end up be as you imagined.

The variance comes from the items you find along the way. There are like 40 of each rarity and it's hard to trust you'll find a specific uncommon (let alone a rare), or at least find it by the time you really need it. Most items are radically different, and their upgrades are big power spikes. Items are really what define your run: they force you to modify your hero picks and layout, they define who'll be a beast and who'll be support, they turn gold into an interesting resource.

The game balance is quite good, and randomness in battle is very mild. I really enjoyed how the lose condition is handled, you can lose a streak of fights and still make a comeback.

The game just clicks beatifully. This is the first auto-battler I played and it's great, great, fantastic.



The heroes feel distinct and play out their power fantasies. But this also creates a bad thing: I feel that almost all of them feel too stuck on the roles they're obsviously designed for. It's either damage, tank, or healer, while everyone can do some support role in a sense. And your team (almost) always needs to cover the roles, there's very little flexibility in that.

And finally some of the enemies feel a bit bland, like I've beaten the game at max level and I think I never bothered/needed to really understand what some of them do.

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8/10 I still come back to this game once in a while

7/10