After pouring 150 hours into the game and progressing through a little more than half of the content of this game, I am rather split on whether to recommend this game or not. It's clearly a small developer on a budget, cutting corners where they can, and ultimately overestimating their own abilities. That said, the core of the game does manage to be just barely fun enough to keep stringing me along. Ultimately, after really breaking down what I think are good and bad design decisions, I've decided to settle on a negative review.

First, let's summarize the things the game does right:
- Combat is quick and brutal, leading to shorter time spent in stages than your average cover-based tactics RPG. This is largely because cover doesn't reduce damage, but rather being out of cover enhances damage received. As a result, enemies that are flanked or engaged in melee will often be obliterated very quickly (usually in a single attack).
- Classes and the mastery board is a great system for encouraging significant build variety while still operating within restrictions. The differences between classes themselves aren't huge, but when they are combined with the various mastery setups and set bonuses available, there emerges a wealth of depth for anyone who is willing to puzzle out their ideal setup.
- There are multiple avenues to acquiring specific items, equipment, and masteries through crafting, purchasing, and enemy drops, with a wealth of stackable boosting options for getting the crafting resources, specific drops, or just money that you may need. Player convenience was definitely taken into account, though some of these methods for boosting specific gains are gated behind story progress (more on this later).
- You've got a lot of options to turn off various audio and visual elements or display more info to your preference. I highly recommend speeding up animations and turning off the dynamic camera zooming stuff. In a game of this genre, it's going to get old seeing the same half dozen or so attacks being performed thousands of times, and they clearly understand this.

These are all highly valuable things that keeps the game enjoyable at its core, and I think the game could have been a real top quality game if not for the negatives.
- The pacing of the game and its story is GLACIAL. Absurdly slow. I have done almost no grinding whatsoever, and have only managed to progress through 4 chapters (8 stages each) of content, along with the various side quest content presented along the way. A big part of the reason for this is that the game was intended to have episodic content, with the entire arc of this game's story being only episode 1 of many. Instead, as was explained in the April 18th news update, they're stepping away from this game to make a sequel set in an entirely different region of the world. This really puts on display a lack of foresight in both visual design, scope, and progression elements. For example:
- - There are UI elements that explain a ranking progression system that doesn't exist in the game yet, and now likely never will.
- - There are some districts that have bonuses for five jurisdictions within the same district being under your control, yet you only ever get a maximum of four official troubleshooters, so you're never able to get more than four jurisdictions under your control.
- - The progression of unlocking new systems and mechanics does not account for when they are actually opened up to your usage, so sometimes you'll get beginner tutorial missions 50 hours after you've already been engaging with a system.
- The level of expected grind to even just get all of the masteries (the core element of character building) or unlock higher tier crafting recipes (the most reliable way to get quality gear for your level) is really despicable. There are numerous instances of specific bosses gatekeeping masteries, which then either have to be farmed for their drop or farmed for their troubleshooter progression to unlock the researching (crafting, basically) of their mastery list. Either way, there are methods to help aid in the farming, but the expectation is still that you WILL be farming if you want their stuff. There's really no excuse for forcing people to replay missions in a game that is already expecting such a heavy time investment for just story progression alone.
- Gear has procedurally generated affixes, further encouraging a mindset of grinding out the "right" gear. Considering that the various classes and mastery sets have very clear differentiation of roles and specializations, why is it acceptable to include equipment that doesn't also just support this design? All that this equipment does is fill your inventory with trash that must be either sold or scrapped for crafting materials. It does not support the genre or gameplay in a meaningful way.

All in all, the game is a grind and feels unfinished, but at least the fundamentals at the core of the game have some fun to be had. It would have benefited greatly from doing away with all of the grindy systems and side content, and instead focusing on shorter, snappier story content. Their characters are interesting and the world has the potential to be rich and lively, if not for the slow pacing that drags it down. Here's hoping the sequel takes some of this into consideration and comes out all the better for it.

After pouring 150 hours into the game and progressing through a little more than half of the content of this game, I am rather split on whether to recommend this game or not. It's clearly a small developer on a budget, cutting corners where they can, and ultimately overestimating their own abilities. That said, the core of the game does manage to be just barely fun enough to keep stringing me along. Ultimately, after really breaking down what I think are good and bad design decisions, I've decided to settle on a negative review. First, let's summarize the things the game does right: - Combat is quick and brutal, leading to shorter time spent in stages than your average cover-based tactics RPG. This is largely because cover doesn't reduce damage, but rather being out of cover enhances damage received. As a result, enemies that are flanked or engaged in melee will often be obliterated very quickly (usually in a single attack). - Classes and the mastery board is a great system for encouraging significant build variety while still operating within restrictions. The differences between classes themselves aren't huge, but when they are combined with the various mastery setups and set bonuses available, there emerges a wealth of depth for anyone who is willing to puzzle out their ideal setup. - There are multiple avenues to acquiring specific items, equipment, and masteries through crafting, purchasing, and enemy drops, with a wealth of stackable boosting options for getting the crafting resources, specific drops, or just money that you may need. Player convenience was definitely taken into account, though some of these methods for boosting specific gains are gated behind story progress (more on this later). - You've got a lot of options to turn off various audio and visual elements or display more info to your preference. I highly recommend speeding up animations and turning off the dynamic camera zooming stuff. In a game of this genre, it's going to get old seeing the same half dozen or so attacks being performed thousands of times, and they clearly understand this. These are all highly valuable things that keeps the game enjoyable at its core, and I think the game could have been a real top quality game if not for the negatives. - The pacing of the game and its story is GLACIAL. Absurdly slow. I have done almost no grinding whatsoever, and have only managed to progress through 4 chapters (8 stages each) of content, along with the various side quest content presented along the way. A big part of the reason for this is that the game was intended to have episodic content, with the entire arc of this game's story being only episode 1 of many. Instead, as was explained in the April 18th news update, they're stepping away from this game to make a sequel set in an entirely different region of the world. This really puts on display a lack of foresight in both visual design, scope, and progression elements. For example: - - There are UI elements that explain a ranking progression system that doesn't exist in the game yet, and now likely never will. - - There are some districts that have bonuses for five jurisdictions within the same district being under your control, yet you only ever get a maximum of four official troubleshooters, so you're never able to get more than four jurisdictions under your control. - - The progression of unlocking new systems and mechanics does not account for when they are actually opened up to your usage, so sometimes you'll get beginner tutorial missions 50 hours after you've already been engaging with a system. - The level of expected grind to even just get all of the masteries (the core element of character building) or unlock higher tier crafting recipes (the most reliable way to get quality gear for your level) is really despicable. There are numerous instances of specific bosses gatekeeping masteries, which then either have to be farmed for their drop or farmed for their troubleshooter progression to unlock the researching (crafting, basically) of their mastery list. Either way, there are methods to help aid in the farming, but the expectation is still that you WILL be farming if you want their stuff. There's really no excuse for forcing people to replay missions in a game that is already expecting such a heavy time investment for just story progression alone. - Gear has procedurally generated affixes, further encouraging a mindset of grinding out the "right" gear. Considering that the various classes and mastery sets have very clear differentiation of roles and specializations, why is it acceptable to include equipment that doesn't also just support this design? All that this equipment does is fill your inventory with trash that must be either sold or scrapped for crafting materials. It does not support the genre or gameplay in a meaningful way. All in all, the game is a grind and feels unfinished, but at least the fundamentals at the core of the game have some fun to be had. It would have benefited greatly from doing away with all of the grindy systems and side content, and instead focusing on shorter, snappier story content. Their characters are interesting and the world has the potential to be rich and lively, if not for the slow pacing that drags it down. Here's hoping the sequel takes some of this into consideration and comes out all the better for it.