Ancient lands: the Tsar awakening Reviews

[h1]8/10 - Steam Deck Review[/h1] What a "hidden gem" ... literally. No idea why I've not seen this before. I search for "turn-based" games regularly and have never seen this. For that matter, I actually stumbled on the dev's upcoming game which led me to find this one. It deserves more exposure on Steam. Only 5 hours in so far but I find it absolutely beautiful, sounds great, and plays well (on Steam Deck). Not perfect, but I'd say it as "above par" for an indie game at this price. Being unfamiliar with this particular style of turn-based tactics, I would have liked more of an explanation of the mechanics. It took me a while to figure out things like how line-of-sight is an important factor. I was also beating my head against a wall for a while unable to beat a level before I realized I could go back a replay earlier zones to "grind" coins/cards to build better decks. Better "on-boarding" for new players would make the game better ... but not an insurmountable problem. It's just a shame this seems buried deep in Steam's algorithm because people are missing out on something really nice. EDIT (Follow-up): Took about 20 hours to complete ... although I will confess that I got stuck playing one level for quite a while because I wasn't sure what to do. Really enjoyed it and my opinion of the game just kept going up. It may deserve a replay or two! [i]Played entirely on Steam Deck. I did change the right track-pad to "mouse" because I'm not of fan of trying to navigate with a d-pad. But that's all I changed.[/i]

It's a fun little gem, I am surprised it has only this few reviews. I am enjoying it very much, especially because it's matching for my usual thinking-and-using-possibilites-wisely tactic, instead of the rush. I like as you can use the environment to your favor, you can trick the bad guys into traps with pushback cards or tricky kiting, or as you can whirlwind down your own people if you don't pay attention. The music is also very good, and while the story is not the strongest, the characters, the animations and the speeches are fun. This game should get more attention.

The adorable graphics and the challenging gameplay manage to work well together. Combat is deterministic (not RNG) and the AI seems fairly solid (good enough to beat me regularly on some of the early level).

I have owned this game for at least six moths and today finally decided to play a bit. While graphically it's not superb, it's a VERY GOOD game indeed. Three different heroes, sixteen enemies - each single one with interesting and unique skills. The game itself is really challenging. One question - did anyone crack the third nest level (with Living Weapon)?