Of Gods and Men: The Daybreak Empire Reviews

I only finished this game because I was going back through my steam library to avoid buying new games and seeing what I hadn't finished and this was on the list, and when I started it up I happened to have a save pretty late in the game. It brings me no pleasure to disparage a game made by, as some of the comments below say, first time developers. I love indie games, I love turn based tactics, I love pixel art. Sadly, I can't recommend this game for anyone but children. The art style is nice, the music is not so bad but it the game itself, the content, is horrendously boring. There are a bunch of fantasy name locations and names for the countries and kind of pun humor about the different races, I could not be bothered to care about any of it. I expect a paper thin story in most strategy games by indie developers but the uh... strategy part is the thing that's supposed to make us forgive the NES level graphics, and there is no strategy. You can win every single battle except the final boss by just ending your turn until the enemy bum rushes you and slaughtering them, usually only one by one. I saw afterward there is a difficulty slider but I was playing on normal, the default setting. The default setting should not be mind-numbingly tedious. I hate to crap on what was clearly an early attempt by developers with some promise but no one should play this game ever, for any reason. There is no there there.

This isn't the most complex of tactics games, but I appreciate the efforts by the developers and hope they are able to make something more substantial in the future. I would recommend removing the manual quick time event for attacks and just balance around dice for hit accuracy.

After playing through the main campaign on normal difficulty, I can safely say that this game is pretty fun. The turn based combat is fairly straightforward and easy to understand, and the minigame you play every time one of your units attacks is not too difficult where you constantly deal no damage and not easy enough that you crit every time. The story is nothing special but does it's job well enough and is never too intrusive to the core gameplay. However the game suffers some major setbacks that stops it from being great. First of all as I;m sure you have seen throughout the other reviews, this game NEEDS a free play mode. My playtime in this game would be much higher if such a mode existed, but it unfortunately does not. Being a turn based- nation building strategy game every region in the game lacks depth. Yes there are unique maps for all of them, but you only see them once (with the exception of the starting area) unless you do a very poor job of guarding your borders. The maps rarely change much anyways, I found my approach was always the same regardless of the amount of water or walls or trees. The game is also very unbalanced. The standard units are almost completely useless once you get an army full of heroes, and at the end of the game the entire military is just comprised of heroes as the AI will just have a bunch of max level units (which can easily be destroyed by the many heroes you will get). It might be useful to make high level units but that is also nearly impossible as you can only recruit units from areas where you have a barracks/archer tower/stable. In my play through the war never stayed in one place and it was always just move army full of heroes closer to the army of other heroes, fight them, then move to their capital and move to the next chapter. Seeing as it takes turns to produce units from the different regions, you'll already be far away from there by the time they are produced, and even if you did manage to get a full size army full of max level units, they would just be eradicated by the heroes of the enemy army. The standard units might as well not exist in the last 2-3 hours of the game. If you want a deep strategy experience from this game, you definitely will not find it here (unless you are on the harder difficulties, I have not played them yet but I do not intend to as there is no replay value and the game never changes) but I found my time in this game enjoyable, despite all the shortcomings. If you want a game that is a few hours of decent fun, I would say it is worth it.

Really enjoyed this game; lovely sprite work and nice variety of maps for combat and a nice world map that builds in size each chapter in a way that helps it feel like you are expanding ever outward from where you started. Character variance is really nice; while in essence there are only 3 troop types the variety you get in these 3 is really nice and adds some variety to how you play. Ended up having 3 separate armies of completely different configurations and liked being able to switch to fight different opponents. Story works fine it enough to keep things moving forward with some form of logic. Maybe it could have done with some more but there was enough to acknowledge but not to much that if you didn't care you'd be stuck in cutscenes. While the game is good the balancing might need some work [spoiler] Most things die in one hit [/spoiler] : >Hero characters a overpowered and normal units are rather weak. >A single level changes how strong a character is is to much, it would be nice if the curve was lower and leveling the basic units was simpler. Most things need health increases or damage decreases to trying and make things smoother. Really did enjoy the time spent playing the game; shame the last two achievements are bugged it would seem. [spoiler] Can't believe I bought this game and then waited years until it was free to finally play it [/spoiler]

Sadly, this is not even worth the discount price. Characters are meh and thrown into the story. Why should I care for that girl that is my main hero? Why for that other girl that suddenly joins the fight? But that isn´t the part that breaks the game. It´s the gameplay and technical aspects. First off the game does only support a VERY pixelated 4:3 aspect radio, meaning it is very staining to look at. And by that I don´t mean ugly, but that I literally had to take a break because my eyes were staining, which is something I haven´t experienced before. But I could forgive the graphics if the controls were smooth. But those are staining as well. Everything takes more clicks then necessary. To move a unit you have to click it, then click move, then click where you want it to move and after that click "wait" if you want it to stay there or "attack" to attack. Why not just click and then click where to move, with a click on the enemy starting the attack and simply right clicking making it end its turn? That is a whole click that is unecessary every time I want to do anything. The camera movement is wobbly as well. To move it you either click the middle mouse button or use the arrow keys. But sometimes it won´t work, move too fast or snap back to another position if you use thos two methods one after another. Balance is an issue. You can upgrade buildings to get units of a higher level. But its cost MULTIPLIES with that even though its strengh only minimally increases. For example a soldier with 10 hp, 5 attack will cost 100 for level 1. For level 2 you have to pay 200 for a hitpoint and an attack point more (in addition to upgrade the building itslef, which already costs a lot). In the campaign (the only gamemode) you are forced to attack a territory each turn, so you can´t build up your army. Have you upgraded your barracks two missions back and now can´t afford reinforcements after an enemy hero oneshot your level 3 unit? Well better load up because there is no way to save that. There is also no point in having multiple barracks or archeries or whatever since all units can move through all your owned territories at no cost, so it would be a waste of money. Also the world UI is pretty bad so to keep things organised you want to build everything in one spot anyway to find it later. Basic units follow simple rules: Cavalery beats archers, archers beat soldiers, soldiers beat cavalery. Except for when you soldier gets oneshot by a cavalery for some reason. But then there are special units. Problem is that they are poorly explained. For example the enemy in one mission has giant spiders, which count as cavalery, but are said by one character to be good against other cavalery. Does that mean they lose their bonus against archers? Or are they simply good against both? I don´t know. Even if it was said somewhere you can´t look it up if you missed it or forgot which unit does what. There is an enceclopedy, but for me it only has entries for various character backgrounds and one entry for your first special unit: The cavalery archer. However that entry only has a header and is empty elsewise. Also has its share of bugs. For example when a unit stands in a spot that borders the uper end of the map you can´t attack with it since the pop up I complained about earlier pops up right beside the unit, meaning the attack button is outside of where you can scroll, making it unclickable. So all in all I refunded the game because honestly, after one game session I didn´t want to open it up again. I have seen enough.

After 4 hours of playing through this game, I cannot recommend it. Everything seems to shout "look, we implemented another feature just for the sake of it, balancing and polishing can be done later" while the player tries to figure out what is going on. Most units one-hit other units, so ranged units beat melee units. Horsemen do not have enough movement to catch up to archers before being one-shotted by mages. The starting unit is a horse-archer, which combines the higher movement with the ranged advantage. After meeting a dozen NPC with no backstory, one wonders "why not just add 2 or 3 NPCs and give them a proper story?" - just to be welcomed by a weird world map and economy that just feels wrong because all the units you can hire are one-shotted anyway. So you stick to the 12 heroes you find in the campaign and one-shot every enemy until the game shoves the big bad evil end boss in your face which can only be defeated by one strategy (poison + wounds) which makes it easy as cake or impossible to beat. Leveling seems to be a part of the game, however levels do not make much of a difference. Just keep killing everything with your horse archer to win. The sound and design are a bit nostalgic but the interface is so weird that you cannot select the "attack" command if you move a unit to the top-most row of the combat map. Or if you click on the wrong button during the tutorial, the reduced screen size forces you to close the game and restart the tutorial. We do need more tactical role-playing games, but please polish them before releasing them. Play test them. Iterate over and over again.

[b] Of Gods and Men [/b] is a tactical RPG that incorporates some strategy elements, such as building units and controlling your territory. Surprisingly, the game has a decent narrative and enjoyable cast of characters. For the most part it resembles games like [i] Shining Force [/i], largely because it has a turn based combat that takes place on a grid board. You start with 2 heros but you will eventually get about 10 of them, even though you can only hold up to 8 units in one party. The first 90 minutes of the game is essentially a tutorial on how to play it, during that phase the computer will only do scripted moves. However, after that initial training, the game starts to play as you would expect, where each faction freely fights for the map control. The game has black borders making it less enjoyable to look at, although I do like its art style and the character design. I found its user interface to be somewhat underwhelming, as the character info has a tendency to be in the middle of the screen. Also, the developers needs to add more intuitive hotkeys because the combat is unnecessary hard to control. It is worth noting that game has some serious balancing issues because the regular units become obsolete when you have a full roster of heroes. The AI cannot compete with your army because his hero units are camping at the capital city, saying that, the developer should add more hero units for the AI in the attacking parties (otherwise there is no reason to split your overpowered party). [h1] Pros: [/h1] + fun mixture of genres + many usable heroes and regular units + decent narrative + nice pixel art, creative factions + relatively enjoyable gameplay + many achievements [h1] Cons: [/h1] - the UI can be annoying - black borders - balancing issues - could really use a custom sandbox [b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b] Aside from those UI problems and black borders, I think it's an enjoyable game that takes about 4 hours to beat. Unfortunately, you cannot play as any of those cool factions in the story. I really want to have a custom sandbox so we can play as all of the enemies and their heroes. Even if the devs don't do any further updates, the price is low enough to recommend it. [code]Review By: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

It's alright. Good balance between global map strategy and local battle tactics. The combat gets a bit repetitive after a while, but your unit levelling mechanics and introduction of new unit types as the game progresses make it an interesting experience.

This game plays like a corrupt-a-wish. You want a fire-emblem-like? Okay, sure, but it's janky as hell. Wide variety of units? Right on, but unless they're heroes or shield maidens they're useless. Risk-style property-development metagame? Be prepared to be locked into long linear sequences that are simply not designed to work with the metagame at all. You control which units you create across your multiple armies? They all start at level 1 and die in one hit, even in the early game, unless you specifically invest in making them more expensive---and even then, you can only raise them to level 5 via building upgrades, whereas enemies spawn at much higher levels than that even by midgame, and to add insult to injury you can only generate one unit per turn and you have to move your armies slowly, tile by tile, across the Risk map. Even if you do generate an expensive unit that can survive more than one hit, the enemies zoom at mach 10 across the small, narrow maps, their AI prioritizes confirming kills, and EXP costs to level are exponential. You can get shield maidens and heroes to stick around, but that's about it. Alright, well, how about a smooth, simplistic interface? How about quicktime events to do even a basic attack, with the CPU being very good at them and sometimes one-shotting your heroes with "supercritical" attacks? How about not even being able to select the "attack" option if your unit's in the highest row on the screen due to interface jankiness? This game's a mess. The writing and art are really cool, and I love everything it's aspiring to be, there's just a critical bit of design jank sabotaging every single thing the game tries to do. I hope the devs keep at it, but I can't recommend buying this game on anything short of 50% sale.

7/10 I have played this game to completion now and even replayed it to toy around with it a bit. Having gotten what I feel is the full experience, now is a good time to reflect on whether or not this game was a success. It is worth noting that this is a first attempt by a team of amateurs, so much of what they did must and will be analyzed from a basic, textbook-like level. Let us start by looking at they did well. 'Of Gods and Men' is a war and strategy game that follows the story of girl who conquers a fantasy world. The narrative is simple without being distasteful and is free of pretense. While not the most engaging or thought-provoking, it provides the necessity of a context for the gameplay and a satisfying sense of a beginning, middle, and end. The diversity of characters and locations are a plus to the narrative we are given. The visuals that were used to give life to the world laid before us meet essentially every requirement and are perhaps the game's strongest point. The design of the characters as seen in the cutscenes are distinct and original, and their avatars in the gameplay are easy to recognize. Moreover, the sprites of all units were well made and easy to distinguish, which is very useful in a game of tactics and strategy and where the player does not want to make errors due to confusing or misleading factors in the game's presentation. The same was true of features on the battle maps, and the visuals of the interface in combat complemented this very well. The tactical and strategic elements of the game also provided adequate challenges. There was some requirement to think about the composition of one's army before entering battle, and defeats, when they do occur, force the player to rethink their approach. In the overworld, constraints on movement and the confinement of special units to regional capitals even (to a point) put the player in the shoes of history's kings and warlords, making them consider what they must prioritize in a campaign. All that said, there were some things not done well or that could have been done better. The strategic elements, with their strengths, also had weaknesses. I ultimately found that every battle could be won by following two basic approaches: A) putting a shieldmaiden/strong unit at a choke point while my ranged units picked off the AI units who ran into the meatgrinder; or B) overrunning their armies with a larger force. Unique army mix-ups or peculiar deployments are hardly necessary, and this becomes more of the case as the player accrues more champions, who make the player almost overpowered late in the game. The diversity of the units, which was a strength, unfortunately never felt important to utilize or explore in depth. At the overworld level, the AI factions mostly never posed major threats, and losing territory, even capitals, rarely felt consequential. It became somewhat too easy to accrue the necessary funds to fight wars. When the overworld reaches its largest scale, while the AIs seemed not to utilize cash gains to build up a force, and they often spread their forces out, which made them easier to pick off. The battles, which can only feature eight units at most per army, feel a bit too small and simple, where a larger size would create more room for complexity and maybe tactical creativity, as would a slight reduction in unit movement. Certain behaviors programmed into the AI, to maximize their units' traits or give their units bonuses, might also help. The game almost seems as if it is crying out for a non-story campaign mode, in which the player can choose any faction and fight the world all at once. Such an addition would allow for many more novel situations that perhaps do not require a radical change to the AI's coding. Moving on, the music, while decent enough, feels as if it does not know the 8-bit genre as well as it could. The music of this genre and era of gaming is traditionally incisive and melodic, where most of what we hear in 'Of Gods and Men' feels more atmospheric and without as much character. Compositions that really capture the spirits of major plot points, such as the final battle, seem absent. In the final analysis, I give this game a 7/10. It is a successful, first project by a budding team of developers, and its shortcomings are understandable, given the time and resources at their disposal. The skeleton of a great game is laid before us, and it is clear that a sequel with proper focus and lessons learned could be something truly special. In the meantime, we get a game that meets the minimum of being fun and that is worth the cost of purchasing it. I look forward to Dead Genre's release of 'Of Gods and Men II.' - Joe