Live by the Sword: Tactics

The game is too focused on the puzzle element (relatively simple at that) and the character classes feel way too barebones to bother with. It does have a roguelike mode that might be interesting but the few campaign missions I did bored me so much the incentive to play this again got depleted to less than nill.

I enjoyed this game. I still think about it from time to time. It's great if you want something like Final Fantasy Tactics, but more focused on puzzle solving and less on itemization. The spritework was really beautiful, the combat puzzles were enjoyable. It sacrifices some of the complexity of other games in the genre in order to prevent you from item scaling or level scaling content into being trivial. There are pros and cons to that of course, but over all it's a good trade off. Story was nothing to write home about but serviceable and set up lots of fun combat puzzles. Both story mode and adventure modes are a good time. It's clearly a love letter to Final Fantasy Tactics with some nice tweaks to alleviate some frustrations with the genre. I'd love to see more from these guys, rather it's more content for this game or something new. Can recommend it, especially on sale.

Very fun game. Reminds me of Vandal Hearts.

I love srpgs, if you like things like FFT, Tactics ogre, Fire emblem, etc. then keep looking because this one is garbage and boring. Closer to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ puzzle game than a RPG

6.5/10 TBS in fantasy setting TLDR: The fairly simple gameplay and several game modes are nice. Though the UI/controls seem to be optimized for a Steam controller and play poorly with a keyboard/mouse Good: + the battle system is pretty well balanced, with 7 fantasy unit types + aside from the story (which has 24 pre-designed missions), there is a skirmish mode, a puzzle-like mode, a level editor, and an adventure mode (where you "grow territory" by winning battles and buy upgrades/new characters for the party) + some of the graphics (the tavern and the world map) look nice + fantasy music is pleasant + online multiplayer (though, as usual with indie games, no one online) + quiz-like question in the tutorial which check if you've understood the basic concepts are a nice touch, as well as the context of a dad teaching two teenage boys So-so: +/- forgettable fantasy story +/- graphics of the characters are passable though there isn't much variety of portraits. Their eyes look asymmetrical. +/- characters are stuck in the "walking" animation even during the deployment phase (bug?) +/- UI elements are a mix of crisp fonts and pixelated elements, this looks shabby +/- characters can…

fun little game, I heard about it a few years ago on nick rekietas stream, thought I would try it out. Definitely not an easy game to win but it is interesting.