I'm a huge fan of tactical RPGs and have lots of experience with other titles. My favorite thing to see is class trees and customizable stats/skills, and this delivered on that front. This has a lot of promise and seems perfect for me, but I noticed very quickly that the difficulty is... off.

The easy difficulty is way too easy for me, and removes permadeath on characters. It doesn't really feel challenging at all, though it's still fun enough.

The medium difficulty, though, is already bordering on brutally hard. Money is constantly tight while you try to pay your troops each week, people are constantly injured and having to either sit out battles or go in at 50% health, etc. If I need 2000-3000 gold every 2 weeks to pay my team, I make 200-500 per fight, I can maybe squeeze in 5 or 6 per week if I'm lucky and no one is seriously injured, but then also have to pay for rations and gear replacements when weapons break for units... Yeah, it just doesn't quite add up.

I didn't even try the hard mode.

One thing that I think might help to offset this is some adjustments to the scheduling system. Each in-game day you select an activity to do during the day - either enter the arena and fight for a paycheck, or spend your money recruiting new units, buying gear, or paying for training for them - and you can only do one per day. There is a definite lack of things to do during the day of you are either strapped for cash, have injured units early on, or both... And it feels really, really bad to just waste a day to recover and gain nothing for it.

As a suggestion to the devs, a few things that might help:

1) Allow us to choose a difficulty of fight in the arena each day. We can fight and easier team for less reward but a safer win or, if we're healed up and ready to go, risk it on a harder encounter.

2) Give us some more "free" options during the day. Maybe some sort of work or scouting/hunting system where we can either earn some money sending our units to work, or at least bring home rations so they aren't starving.

3) Re-balance rations/food requirements, or bundle them up into the bi-weekly pay system. It's weird to need both. I see what you were doing, but it ends up feeling like I'm paying the team double to keep them remotely happy and healthy.

4) Make the shopping option not require the full day to complete so we can also enter the arena that day and offset the cost. If you want going to the market to take the whole day, maybe make an option to devote a full day to it in return for "haggling" the prices or something.

I'm not really feeling the game right now, so I refunded, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it and picking it up later to see if things improve because there's a lot I like! I just don't see myself giving it another try in its current state.

I'm a huge fan of tactical RPGs and have lots of experience with other titles. My favorite thing to see is class trees and customizable stats/skills, and this delivered on that front. This has a lot of promise and seems perfect for me, but I noticed very quickly that the difficulty is... off. The easy difficulty is way too easy for me, and removes permadeath on characters. It doesn't really feel challenging at all, though it's still fun enough. The medium difficulty, though, is already bordering on brutally hard. Money is constantly tight while you try to pay your troops each week, people are constantly injured and having to either sit out battles or go in at 50% health, etc. If I need 2000-3000 gold every 2 weeks to pay my team, I make 200-500 per fight, I can maybe squeeze in 5 or 6 per week if I'm lucky and no one is seriously injured, but then also have to pay for rations and gear replacements when weapons break for units... Yeah, it just doesn't quite add up. I didn't even try the hard mode. One thing that I think might help to offset this is some adjustments to the scheduling system. Each in-game day you select an activity to do during the day - either enter the arena and fight for a paycheck, or spend your money recruiting new units, buying gear, or paying for training for them - and you can only do one per day. There is a definite lack of things to do during the day of you are either strapped for cash, have injured units early on, or both... And it feels really, really bad to just waste a day to recover and gain nothing for it. As a suggestion to the devs, a few things that might help: 1) Allow us to choose a difficulty of fight in the arena each day. We can fight and easier team for less reward but a safer win or, if we're healed up and ready to go, risk it on a harder encounter. 2) Give us some more "free" options during the day. Maybe some sort of work or scouting/hunting system where we can either earn some money sending our units to work, or at least bring home rations so they aren't starving. 3) Re-balance rations/food requirements, or bundle them up into the bi-weekly pay system. It's weird to need both. I see what you were doing, but it ends up feeling like I'm paying the team double to keep them remotely happy and healthy. 4) Make the shopping option not require the full day to complete so we can also enter the arena that day and offset the cost. If you want going to the market to take the whole day, maybe make an option to devote a full day to it in return for "haggling" the prices or something. I'm not really feeling the game right now, so I refunded, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it and picking it up later to see if things improve because there's a lot I like! I just don't see myself giving it another try in its current state.