I honestly want to recommend this. But as it sits I just can't. There are Rogue-likes and then there are utter grind-fests. And this is the latter. Combat is just like Lost Eidolons, which I loved. But it just feels like some things are off just a hair. You are constantly battling 10-15+ enemies, all of which have the same health level and damage output as your 5, which makes for some really unbalanced combats. Oh and as a bonus they can use their skills endlessly, but all your stuff has a cooldown period. There is almost no tactical bonus to facing or even positioning. Plenty of places give you a negative, but there's no point to holding your ground.

On top of that, the upgrades are almost utterly useless. Even the class upgrades. You unlock slight, and I mean so minuscule that you won't even notice, upgrades. Your pool of potential "cards" gets bigger, but that means things are more random and chaotic. There is just such a lack of well everything here gameplay-wise.

The story, sounds, and graphics are all good. I have no complaints with how things look or sound. But god is this unbalanced. I really wonder if anyone inside the company has bothered to play test this at all.

I want to start off saying, this is a great game. Not everything will be perfect or to everyones liking.

So my issue is with having to die or end to expedition for certain parts to be unlocked at the altar, or even the promotion system and such. Maybe i will check again when i stop at a camp and see if i can, but i'm sure there wasn't a means.

I don't mind not being able to manually save at points, makes the skill choices and attribute options i go for more meaningful to tried and beat the boss. Even if i progress on to get my ass whooped in spite of the resets realizing i will not be winning that play round. Don't want to ramble. As it is 4/5 for the game imo

It's a good game but it has its flaws.

I won't go in the grind aspect of the game as I don't mind it.

The flow of combat isn't exactly very exiting, it's a combination of many factors such as buff having their effect being too short and consuming your action, squishy range characters will almost always get hit back in the following turn in they get in range of attacking/casting, too many useless skills, a companionship system giving unreliable bonus (+1-3% chance to trigger a CD reset who.. care? especially as the next turn the target is gonna be dead), sustain being heavily mandatory regardless of the comp, and some more.
You end up having really 2 viable options each turn: you heal, or you damage with your strongest ability available and that's it. (putting aside bosses where there are turns where positioning matter).

The flow of navigating the map is also off. Every other options than combat and stones is a net loss, as all skills, stats and upgrades are tied to stones and/or combat. Camping to heal? who cares, if you don't have a healer (and specifically an AOE healer with debuff removal) you're dead the next map anyway, upgrading ur skill with +1 range? who cares your backline will get overrun anyway, etc.

Finally your NG+ difficulty system is completly off track. Trial 1 is doable with a careful selection of malus, I can't phantom how trial 2 and 3 can be done without heavily cheesing the game. Maybe I'm just bad but some malus are ridiculous for the small amount of points they give towards the trial, like the +2 passive on enemies for 5 points (passive that we can't see unless we manually inspect every single ennemy btw, not ideal). Or the no resurect unless you visit a camp, you're already crippled by the loss of exp when a member die during a map, if it's only to res them 2 or 3 maps later when they'll be -20 all stats behind their companion, there's just no point really.

Anyway that's my rent.
I would say there's a solid 20-40 hours of enjoyment before you begin to notice the flaws, and for the price asked, I think it's fair to review positively considering it's in EA.