Vivid Knight

I have no idea what I am doing with symbols and synergies almost all of the time, but alot of the characters but as long as you follow the logic of "The cuter the character, the stronger they are" you'll be fine. This is a game that basically requires you to dungeon dive multiple times in order to progress unlocking new characters via a gatcha mechanic, whose currency you earn by playing the game. Not the F2P gatcha systems where you need to pay money to get a character, but actual playing to earn it. There is a bit of RNG, but since each gatcha books have a set item list, you will earn everything eventually. Yes, that means grinding. Tis a Roguelike after all. Overall a very fun game to play offline on the steamdeck when you're traveling and have no connection to play anything else.

I tend to drop auto-battlers pretty quickly, but Vivid Knight managed to hold my interest. It isn't fully automatic and instead features a turn based system which makes it easier to see how your setup is doing while your protagonist provides tactical support. It also has some unusual team building mechanics that help set it apart from other titles and it is this aspect that I found to be the most fun. As with most games in the genre, duplicates can be used to upgrade your units. The neat thing about Vivid Knight is that the symbol power of upgraded units will permanently apply to your team even if they're sold. The price of buying a unit is the same as selling a unit regardless of rarity, so you will always be able to replace an upgraded unit with something new which will apply its own symbol power toward team buffs. My experience with other autobattlers largely involved focusing on getting the most value out of a single strong unit, so rotating through team members in Vivid Knight was quite refreshing. There is more to the game than just gaining symbol power and cycling through units. Upgraded units have enhanced strength, so you may want to keep the good ones around. They c…

A very fun roguelike. I like this art style even more than the one of the second game in the series.

It kind of feels like those old gacha games during the time when they haven't figured out 3D graphics just yet. It feels nostalgic somehow.

If you like Teamfight Tactics (Dota Auto Chess) this is basically a singleplayer version of it. Your units fight by themselves and you have "runes" (abilities with cooldowns) to heal, buff them or damage/debuff enemies. The meat of the game lies in the color/traits of upgraded units become permanently available for the run so you can upgrade weak units and sell them while keeping their faction bonuses. Units abilities are all interesting but heal is basically essential for sustain (you don't get healed between floors and healing costs your movement resource) while everything else is secondary since you rely on your truckload of buffs to progress. Very simple game with a decent amount of playtime until the loop becomes stale.

A hidden gem ;)