Ironblood

My experience with this is similar to this other reviewer. Tutorial pops up, tells you a lot of things and then its gone and you're left with like 12 menus and not a lot to go on. It feels kinda obvious. Oh, i select the button here that leads me to another menu and I make a fight event by selecting fighters. So i hit the auto-generate button because im not sure who to choose exactly. The button the bottom right to schedule the event is greyed out with your cursor changing when hovered indicating its blocked. Okay, maybe i have to select one of the listed weeks on the left of that button. Nope, still blocked. hmmm... guess i'll come back to this. Head over to the Sanctum tab and select one of the other options like Spying and it takes me to another menu. Now im seeing a list of Rivals and they've got tiers 1-4. The T1-3 Rivals look to have better quality fighters and the T4 ones are Red fonted and more like locations to scout fighters rather than spying on rivals for theirs. Also the T4 are clearly weaker, at least thats the feel im getting from the menu. Was unsure what to do here too... The other option let me scout fighters via gold/negotiation. I ended up progressing t…

Two things to get out there. This is an autobattler, you have no direct impact on the fights (and if there is, it's not obvious). Secondly the battles have no animations, so "watching" them is boring. The entire UI revolving around the fighters could use some improvements. Scouting rivals is bugged, it failed to load every time. Additionally I bought at 50% off but even at that price, it feel too costly for what was offered in the game.... so there's a lot of reasons I cannot recommend this game.

[strike]I don't have any idea what I'm doing. The tutorial explains very little and when trying to set up a fight card, it refuses to allow me to lock in the card and schedule it. Just gives me an "out of order" symbol with no explanation as to why it can't be saved. There's not enough direction to actually know how to play or what to do.[/strike] Dev has added much clearer and more helpful tooltips for knowing what does what, and what's missing. The game is still a bit barebones and I didn't realize it was almost entirely text based. The battles are just sprites with health bars that raise and drop as combat plays out, but it's entertaining enough. If it's possible, I'd love to see some basic animations during the fights, or at least during the major fights, like title matches. The concept is great, it's just not very flashy.

Had quite a bit of fun in my first 90 or so minutes enjoying learning the game. Already been messaging you on discord with a couple of bugs I've found, but heres a few of the suggestions I thought of and some of the smaller tweaks. - Starting as the top tier 1 house is good for learning the game, but later on in future saves I think it might be kind of boring, would like to be able to start as a tier 4 house and work my way up. - On top of the last point, would also be cool to start a house from scratch, no champions no roster no history, and then build from there. - The calendars a bit confusing with the months, assuming there’s still 12 months and they are just renamed? - After getting a raven notification about a rising star, I clicked their profile to be taken to it and couldn’t find any way to negotiate with them from their profile menu, and had to go to the Badlands to find him and sign him there. - Had a notification that said “I want my money back. That card was a disgrace” before I even hosted my first event. - Would be nice to be able to choose FOTN and KOTN ourselves instead of it being automatic. - 2 of my fighters keep calling one another out and demanding a match…

This game has a lot of potential and it's great to see a competitor in the MMA simulator world. The fights are fun and when fighters actually die in combat it really holds some weight. The menu is clean and intuitive, the generated fighters are cool, and it's crazy how quick you can build your own lore. I have to say I hate the commentator and I really need to be able to turn him off permanently - none of the sound options seem to be able to mute him. In the future, I'd love to see the scouting/contract negotiation mechanics fleshed out a little, I'd like the option to start a promotion from scratch with no history, and I'd love to occasionally be able to recruit fighters from "far away lands" i.e. Asian/African/South American-type nations. Loving this so far and I can't wait to be able to sink more time into it!

I think the game has good bones. I have had fun messing around. The premise is absurd, but it sets the game apart. I think the game would really benefit from some quality of life updates. Currently everything is nested in a menu, the UI for creating cards is clunky, and you start off with a champion in every weight division. It might improve the experience to start with two weight divisions and then build up to having all 6. I think there is far more good than bad and these could just be growing pains. I look forward to seeing this game as it is updated! Update: The developer is updating the game with improvements based on player feedback and doing so quickly. It is awesome to see. Many of my issues have been addressed and I am certain futures concerns will be assuaged quickly as well.