Twilight Wars

It's a straight meeting of Xcom and Darkest Dungeon, with the former being the upper layer of gameplay (your infrastructure, stable of heroes, recovery modules) and the latter being both the middle (dungeon navigation) and the ground floor (the combat). The result is fine to look at and it has a lot of clear analogues to darkest dungeon. Some of the abilities are just reskins, some of the heroes are just repackaged from others with a wildcard here or there. I especially like the houndmaster-but-bear. The game is fine to look at, has okay music, struggles a bit with the writing, and needs work with the gameplay. The events between the fights were good, more or less, and the share consumable loadout is a pretty good constraint. I just struggled to feel engaged with the fights and just lost interest on a crowd of tanky guys that apply stacking poison, with only one squad member who can heal poison, and with her back at base. Might be better with time.

Wow, euhm,... where to begin. First, this game could be MASSIVE. It is a great 'Darkest Dungeon' style game with a terrific vibe and great gameplay. I can only guess that poor marketing has stopped from being more popular. Some players have already started calling the game abandoned, and if that is indeed true, that's really a crime. Because it does need improvement in one area, and that is balance. *UPDATE* The game has not been abandoned. Devs are working on an update. As it stands, I think most people will give up at the second boss fight. It is just not fun. The devs will tell you that you are doing it wrong, but following their advice exactly does not change a thing. And it breaks the game. UPDATE - I got lucky, and the game plays just fine after this mission. So while this could be a double-thumbs up game, at the moment the balance will make it unplayable for anyone who doesn't get a streak of luck in the second boss fight. As such, I cannot recommend it.

I had another 6 hrs w/this game on another PC. it's interesting & I like most of the design choices, but the difficulty makes it hard to recommend. it's just not all that fun. if you must, get it at a steep discount & play it on easy.

The combat system is terrible. 100% hit chance and enemy 0 dodge still miss.

Difficulty ramps up WAY too fast. I was already losing people on the rank 1 missions and after 1.5 hours into the game it was sending me into rank 2 ops. Hell, I haven't even gotten used to the game, the combat and overall mechanics. I haven't even built another room in the base except for the one the tutorial forces you to build. Normally in this type of game, you would expect a bunch of missions to choose from.... maybe 3-6. Some standard stuff to let you learn the game. Nope. You are shoehorned into 1 or 2 pre-made ops that you have no choice but to do. Art is cool, music is cool. But to be already ramping up the difficulty to the next rank after only an hour of play and about 4 missions....no.

At the start of Chapter 2 I have 9 mercs and 1 robot. The majority of the mercs are not good. There are 5 that are significantly better than the rest that it makes taking any others a handicap. The 2 healers are not even close one is significantly better. There is a Hybrid character whose heal is better than the male healer. The Bomber who is damage does less than the Tactic role merc with a lightening gun. None of them get along and they all annoy each other lowering morale. All but one of my mercs has "Antagonism level 1/2" trait which is a character flaw. I built a therapy room and guess what this flaw can not be removed and its hurts there morale. Morale is so hard to keep up. You win an engagement and you get "1", your merc farts and you lose 2/5. I like the idea of the game, but it is frustrating. I wouldn't recommend it to someone without telling them the above.