Telepath Tactics Reviews

Besides a few 'new' gimmicks like the push pull mechanics and traps Telepath Tactics really doesn't do anything to stand out from other strategy RPGS. There wasn't enough happening to keep me interested, the story didn't grip me at all and the combat was tedius. There are many other RPGs for the same price offering so much more. But this didn't feel close to the quality of other games in the same price bracket. To sum up, Telepath Tactics has good ideas but very badly presented. Unless you are a big fan of the genre I would steer clear of this title

This game needs a LOT of time in the oven, nothing worse than 30 minute long missions, and then the game freezes and you need to start over. Will definitely be worth your time in 6 months to a year.

I'm still playing through the campaign, but I think I've played enough to write a mostly complete review. I haven't played any multiplayer games, nor modded it at all, so I won't be reviewing those aspects of the game. Summary: Telepath Tactics is a strategic turn-based RPG, with many ways to complete each mission. The game has no random chances* (e.g. critical hits, varying damage/damage reduction), and so the only unknown variable in the game is pure strategy. With a variety of different classes, weapons, armour, and items, you have to out-think, and out-fight the enemy AI. Once you learn more about the AI through fighting them, you can start building new strategies to combat the AI more effectively. But the enemies get more tricks up their sleeve as they go, so it's up to you to do your best and keep your troops alive and fighting effectively through superior and adaptive strategy. *Technically there is one random element; psy attacks have a 50% chance of inflicting their respective status effect (see below) Pros: + Through the varying classes, equipment, and items, almost any strategy you can think of is possible to defeat the enemy: · Destroying bridges, or making your own bridges, or barricades to direct the enemy to where you want them to go · Weapons of varying lengths/ranges allowing multiple characters to attack the same enemy from a line formation · Psy abilities causing varying statuses (50% chance of effect) based on their element (as well as their base damage) (Light = Blindness, Dark = Softness/Slowness, Ice = Freeze, Fire = Burning) which can be taken advantage of to great effect if planned well. · Creating a completely defensive position with healers and ranged units protected by strong melee units in front or surrounding them. · Using flying characters and/or high mobility characters, you can rush the enemy and try to defeat small groups before they have a chance to gather against you. · Using Emma Strider's Motivate or Inspire abilities grants other units a second turn, which can be, and usually is one of the best abilities in the game, allowing for many more strategic capabilities. · And so much more can be accomplished with what's available to you. + The campaign's story is straightforward and quick to the point, and is much more down-to-Earth than most game's stories (where the starting characters discover some inner hidden talent and end up being key to the world's survival against hordes of enemies in an endless war). This story is simply about two sisters escaping from the slaving Shadowlings, and trying to return one day to save their father from captivity. + The music is very nice, with Classical and Medieval tunes to fit the game very well. + Lots of replayability; if the mission didn't turn out the way you would have liked, you can restart, and try out other strategies and see what works. And once you've learned more about the AI, you might decide to start another new campaign and see how much better you'll do now. + The Sinister Design forums for the game ( http://sinisterdesign.net/forum/index.php?board=35.0 ) allow you to interact closely with the game's development, to report bugs, and suggestions which all get looked over closely and/or implemented if they look good. Neutral points: = The art of the character portraits is hit-and-miss; some are done fairly well, but for some (e.g. the golems, the art looks very messy) = A number of small (and some not so small) bugs. However, the creator, Craig Stern keeps close tabs with his forums and address and fixes all bugs and issues very quickly. = No in-mission saves; the only saves are just before events and missions. While not good or bad in of itself, it should still be noted. I believe the game is best like this, otherwise a player could save and reload once they know what will happen. = There is no wandering in towns, or random encounters. The game simply goes from mission to event to mission. Cons: - Some persistent bugs, such as an equipment-swapping bug, and animation slow-downs over long missions can cause some inconvenience. - Sometimes a bug may cause your game to crash, losing your progress of the mission. It's not the end of the world if it happens though, just press 'L' to produce a log, and make a bug report on the steam forums or the Sinister Design forums, and Craig will fix it as soon as possible. - The fact that there are no in-mission saves means that if the game crashes, or you decide a mission is taking too long and you want to finish it another day, you aren't able to keep that mission's progress. **Overall I would currently rate this game a 9/10** While this game does have some kinks to work out, Telepath Tactics is an exciting, mentally-challenging constant struggle against the AI. I personally love how this game has turned out and how unique it is, in that all damage is static. For people who don't like a tough challenge but still like the game's concept, the Casual difficulty is strongly recommended, where killed characters don't die permanently, but lose some permanent maximum health instead. For those who like a good challenge, and who like to think tactically and outsmart their opponent in various cunning ways- this game is definitely for you. ~Thaecrasis

Telepath Tactics is a pretty decent strategy game. It can be quite unforgiving if you don't carefully plan your moves/attacks, but thats what makes it so fun. The story was quite simple, but who plays these games really for the story anyway. The only issue i had , that apparently others experienced as well was the lag, that seemed to occur later on in some of the missions. Especially if you were dragging out the mission to loot chests/talk to npc's to recruit. It wasnt completely unbearable, but it did start to get quite aggravating at some points. An easy way to somewhat counter this slow lag, is to turn the AI movement speed to instant. There will still be some slowness, but it won't seem as near as bad. The character classes all seemed pretty balanced and synchronized well with each other. The maps are pretty well designed as well. Which makes it even more challenging. Since you can push characters into the water/lava for constant damage per turn (until they swim out), or pushing characters off cliffs, one shotting them ,unless they had flying/levitate(I think there was only one map with this capability, but still funny). It's also quite a short game, but i still enjoyed every second of it. Overall i think its a pretty well made game, that deserves to be played, if you're into these types of games. 4/5 stars

This is an amazing game in the style of Fire Emblem which I unfortunately could not finish due to cripping slowdown bugs. These unfortunately get worse the further you get into the game. I've emailed the developer and he says he's remaking the game in an entirely different engine, but who knows how long that will take. Still giving it a thumbs up because what I was able to play is amazing, but still, the game as is is so buggy it's unbeatable and you get 10fps sometimes even with a monster $2,000 gaming PC.

If you love Fire Emblem, you will probably love this. If you hate Fire Emblem, you will probably hate this. The design decisions that are likely to be controversial are * permadeath * durability * grinding is (almost) impossible * simplistic leveling Fire Emblem makes most of the same controversial design decisions. You can turn off permadeath by selecting "Casual Mode" when starting the game, just like in recent Fire Emblem games. This acknowledges that nobody actually plays Fire Emblem with permadeath. The games are too long for such setbacks to be acceptable, so you always retry the battle until all your characters survive. Choosing "Casual Mode" (thankfully) does not make the combat easier. You (unfortunately) cannot turn off durability. There is nothing so anticlimactic as having your equipment fail mid-battle so that the character equipped with it is useless. Finite money with limited access to vendors makes this worse. The number of battles are finite, just like in Fire Emblem. I enjoy not being required to grind. People who like fighting easy battles over and over so that they can win battles that were intentionally imbalanced to pad play time may object (these people exist). The simplistic leveling cannot be excused by the Fire Emblem ancestry. Fire Emblem allows characters to be customized. This should probably be improved, but you can command a large number of characters at once and there are a large number of classes, which helps to reduce the perception that characters are generic. Some people are complaining about the graphics. The portraits are static, but that is not unusual. Appearances are reused, but that is not unusual. Most of it looks like typical western animation style. The graphics will impress no one but are not offensive to me. Some people are complaining about the user interface. Movements and attacks are communicated with colored tiles and icons, as is typical in turn-based tactical role-playing games. Most icon choices are reasonable, and they all have helpful tooltips. I am not seeing the problem, or even the difference from the norm, here. I agree with the reviews that mention the music is good. The style is what you would expect in a fantasy setting, but it is well above average. What I have seen of the plot is average to above average. Daughters on a quest to rescue their father is a pleasant diversion from all the teenage boys on quests to rescue women. The text is far too small in the user interface and conversation dialogs, and it is not possible to adjust. This is likely to be an accessibility problem for almost everyone middle aged or older and a significant portion of youth. That you cannot save at will is a legitimate complaint. Combat that is won via reasoning ability instead of who ambushes who first, stat bloat, build hard counters, or luck is a very nice thing to see in a genre that is often dumbed-down in those ways. I also love the ability to (de)construct the battlefield and move opponents. I look forward to the author's engine improvements and future games.

Anyone who knows me will know that RPGs and turn-based strategy are what I like the most and that I primarily go for stuff that is stongly story driven. This game handles both elements very well and it's a testament to its strategic depth that, for once, I can honestly say that the combat is more engrossing than the plot (even though said plot is humorous and well written). I was very sceptical at first due to the recent FLOOD of indie rubbish and that the screenshots don't exactly make you want to rush to buy. Don't be put off by the graphics, the gameplay is SO good that it renders them irrelevant. If you only buy one indie game this year then I would strongly suggest it be this one. *edit* It can be unforgiving too. Only skip it if a strong cerebral challenge is not for you.

Definitely worth the price for any turn-based over a grid fantasy RPGs lover - where tactics really matters to win the battles. A lot of classes, environment intereactions, very nice mechanics, and an OK story. It's definitely a great tribute to FFT/Vandal Hearts/Tactics Ogre, considering the whole game has been written from a solo developper. Buy it and support the game..so we may get new campaigns ;)

This game has neat ideas but isn't executed well. For starters, every sprite looks the same (this makes it hard to talk and befriend a former enemy because they look the same as all the other archers/fighters/etc unless you right click on everyone to see their name/stats) which leads to confusion, the game gets incredibly slow at times...I'm talking you see every single frame--It's not object limit--it's probably memory leaks or something because the more enemies I took out the slower the game became. The explanations of the skills in the game are kind of poor, it would be nice if it would tell you if you still get an extra turn or not afterwards (pushing/pulling takes a full turn but casting 'sprint' or building barracks doesn't). As far as I could tell, it doesn't show what the attack range is for enemies just where they can move. The "instant" setting for enemies moving isn't really instant, it's just a faster version of them moving. If you surrender you have to read the dialogue all over again (a retry would probably be better where you just start with where you position your units). I think if a lot of these problems were cleared it would be worth playing (the memory leak slows especially), but I can't recommend this to anyone who likes these types of games.

Great game from a series that has come a LONG way. I remember playing Telepath RPG via the Armor Games site years ago, and even then I really liked the originality of the setting and the tactical feel of the combat. Fast forward to this game, and I am really impressed with what the author has done. This game feels very polished and fluid. The world is well-concieved and enjoyable to be a part of. The portraits/graphics are great (for a lower budget indie game), the music is also stellar as well, but what really stands out is the strategy and tactics! It also reminds me a lot of Battle for Wesnoth more so than SSB, but to each their own.