Dragon Lair Depths Reviews

It's kinda sad to be first review of game in English, especially negative, especially for small abstract indie, but some things must be adressed. Into the Breach is not ideal tactic game by any means, but it's quite old, popular, got variety in mechanics, graphics of enemies and locations. It also takes best from small fields and abilities to push/pull enemies and abuse surroundings for your goal. Why I mention Into the Breach? Because obviously this game is quite similar in mechanics, at least tries to be so. It's cost is two thirds of Into the Breach in my region, so I waited for at least two thirds of quality of it to be good game. Even third of quality could have been fine. Sadly, there are many game design decisions which make this project feel very weak. - You start with two heroes, instead of three in ItB. It makes early game quite boring and lacking synergies. Getting third and fourth takes time... and each still got only ONE ability. You can't combine stuff for synergy. - Each unit got progression limited by six upgrades, last are quite expensive, while not being that cool. You also got one slot for relic on each unit. Some relics are interesting, yeah, but when all my units have attack damage 1, relic for "-1 attack, tie enemy with grass" feels like garbage. - There is no pushing or pulling. Whole game is dance around enemies which are dancing around your "piles". You need to overdamage them, hoping their AI will stand into flammable grass/electrified water - otherwise, boss fights are disaster. - AoE skills for your heroes are seriously lacking. Terramorfing, which lies in base of getting synergy in this game, is slow and costy. And AI is partially made to get themselves damaged by your "traps". They feel stupid and winning by sheer amounts of them and, in case of bosses, cheating abilities. 8 hp with ability to heal 4 hp per turn? Throwing bomb from half of field right into your "piles"? It's first boss fight variations. Second act slime boss is even worse. - Each turn you get energy for whole squad, 4/5/6, depending on act. Yeah, it's kinda cool system to have option to repeat action for more cost. But some costs are crazy (3 points to heal 1 hp and remove debuff), and your team is limited. You waste some points to deploy heroes at first turn and their positioning is not that critical. Compare it to ItB (one movement AND attack/ability/defence for each mech) and you see how your tools to get enemies gone are lacking. - Injury system, due to which dying by unit during battle makes their hp lower by 1 until end of run. It's very harsh and unreversable punishment, which feels unfair when your hero MUST to tank some damage for sake of saving "piles". It was weird and sucked in recent Wildfrost, but this game implementation of it is much worse. - As far as I can see, you CAN'T stop enemies from entering field. Meaning you always have to face whole bunch. - Options on map are "get 2-4 resource for free" or "fight for your life hoping you will keep 4 piles intact and won't injure your team". Even getting new member of party is optional (!) and shop with 3 relics supposes you weren't spending your resource to upgrade units directly. And even then, half of relics are junk. - To get three more families of units you need to farm your way with starting bunch of two families (six heroes). So there are 15 heroes total and even starters feel very boring and a bit similar. I don't have wish to see how mediocre unlockable heroes are. - Like with "2-4 resources" on map, one starting hero skill is "25% chance to heal 1 on attack". Random is NOT welcomed in pure tactical genre. You already make tragedy on level of "95% chance miss" like in X-Com. - Ranged units/enemies are MUCH more effective than melees and even higher HPs/MPs of melees don't help. - Graphically, this game is not quite appealing, especially since tiles are all same and some units feel like reskins. So, overall, this game is hardly reaching even 1/4 or 1/5 of Into the Breach gameplay beauty and graphical appeal, story is not existent basically (even worse than most other roguelikes), and whole hour which I spent on three runs felt like hitting my head with wall which becomes more harder with each bump. Better go and get Into the Breach itself, if you haven't, and get much more fun, diverse gameplay right from start.