Definitely recommended for anyone who likes SRPGs/TRPGs (e.g. XCOM) or wants to try one. Combat system is like a mix of XCOM2 and XCOM: Chimera Squad but also different from both (in a good way). Has a surprisingly huge amount of depth and replayability. I can already see myself playing this for a long time and it's still in active development!

• Everything is replayable (can choose challenge mode to scale enemies to your level when repeating lower level missions).
  
• Mastery system (adds passive skills, stats and various other things to character).
  
• Difficulty settings (actually hard on hard, didn't try cruel yet).
  
• Good story (might seem boring at the start but gets better later on in my opinion).
  
• A lot of missions (finished last story mission on hard after 100 hours).
  
• General gameplay is just really fun.

• Translation is not the best all the time but certainly still always easy to understand (wasn't sure if I should even put this here).
  
• Getting some of the materials for crafting is a bit grindy (wasn't needed to fully complete all story missions on hard though).

Randomly saw it on my discovery queue, bought it, and "finished" 2-3 weeks later in 117 hours. I say "finished" because while I did finish all the story missions, I'm still going to keep playing to get higher level characters, craft more powerful gear, find new masteries, try out new mastery sets, play missions on cruel, play missions on cruel with challenge mode, get the remaining achievements and just generally have fun while replaying my favorite missions. I only played on hard so didn't try cruel (hardest) difficulty yet and also can't speak for the easier difficulties. Hard has been a really good difficulty for me though (as someone who got 100% achievements in XCOM:EU/EW and XCOM2:WOTC) but I can see it becoming too easy once I'll make my characters even more powerful than they are right now.

I'd say the balance between managing characters, reading VN and playing missions is pretty good since it's mostly about playing the missions. VN parts are short enough that I always thoroughly read them. The story might sound a bit boring at the start but it gets more interesting as the game progresses and by the end I actually wanted to know more about multiple characters than what was told. Story missions could probably easily be finished in like 60-80 hours, especially on normal, since I did replay quite a few missions already during my first playthrough.

It might look like there's a lot of RNG because it has the hit%, crit%, dodge%, block% etc. but somehow it almost never feels like anything is up to RNG unlike it does in (at least early missions of) XCOM. Most missions were just fine on first try on hard but a few times I failed and only succeeded after retrying because I learned some things from the failed try (or tries).

The missions are really good for the most part. I'd say there were just a few I disliked.The training missions where I have to fight my own characters because they were just too good by the time I did the second training mission. I had to cheese it by unequipping masteries and gear from the characters I was fighting against. Also some medium/high level missions where I had really limited squad since finishing those did seem to be partly about RNG unlike the rest of the missions.

I didn't do a lot of crafting but the system seemed good. Basically I only used it to cover for the occasional upgrade that I needed but didn't get as a drop from a mission, like a new weapon for a certain character. Beast & drone systems both seemed good but also didn't try them out that much yet.

I've really enjoyed playing this game so I feel the price is really low even without any sale. Easily my new favorite TRPG!

Update 2021-11-25: Currently I play when new updates are released and I always love them. Also as you can see from the hours, I've played a lot more now than what I had at the time of the review. Devs are also just as amazing as always and even answered my email within a day.

Update 2022-11-22: Another year and I love this game even more than before. New additional options are great (even more challenge for those who want it), all the new content is great and I like the costumes too (and wouldn't mind buying just to support this amazing game!).

Update 2024-11-27: In the last two years I've done the new story missions, a bit of farming/grinding to get "perfect" gear for some characters and unlocked almost all masteries. Still an amazing game and I can't wait for their second game. :)