I was about to give the game a 5/5 rating, but now I am on my 4th playthrough and the problems now outweigh the positives.

Positives:
+++++ Awesome character design. The only reason I bought this on day 1 is the ladies design (enemies and minions), breast bounce.
+++++ Game idea is very nice. Playing the opposite side of darkest dungeon and having different enough gameplay is fun

Negatives:
---- gameplay is linear, no grinding possible (which could be a positive BUT:), after losing an encounter you get some parts back and you never really know when you have lost the whole game. I don't think it fits a luck based slow paced game to have such a game over. I think even a clear cut game over doesn't fit, but right now it is just crap. It's totally wishy washy... you can keep playing for long, but lose so many minions or hp that progressing at some point gets impossible and you can't even predict it.
----- so I tried the hard mode after more pain! which seems impossible so I restarted another game on more pain! which I assume is normal. So on my 3rd playthrough now on that "normal" difficulty I encountered an impossible to beat mob. I tried all the tricks I learned, I lost so many minions to it without even killing a single enemy of that mob. The game is too slow for this kind of walls. I love hard games but this is not good design.
The enemies in that encounter are 4 elites that stun all minions, heal, use all the time wards, redirect attacks, it is so badly designed it wouldn't even be acceptable on the hardest difficulty. And Again, I am playing on NORMAL!

Here a video of the encounter:
https://youtu.be/qIi_8Z-Sb1I
Keep in mind that I started recording after I lost a bunch of my best armies to that encounter

I am not telling you how to make you game but this is what I call unplayable. Here my five cent of other things that would improve the game:
1.) clothing damage (would pay for that if it was an add on and looked good)
2.) Enemy and minion gallery for unlocked entities similiar to the humanoriun BUT with buttons to play all the different animations of the units

Aside from that all what I mentioned before. Make the hard mode possible. Less luck based. Give the player a fair way to win and not just have to cheat to beat the game.

EDIT: One more thing: the game should either pause when selecting the escape option OR even better start escape when a minion is active with that minion. Right now if you are too slow to check escape, a minion is active and IT DOESNT ESCAPE wtf, makes no sense

The problem with minions retreating is the following:
1.) The retreat menu takes time. The game keeps going while going through the retreat checkbox (it's multiple clicks). So what often happens is, I want my minions to retreat, but until I am done filling the "retreat form", it is one of my minions turns. And for some weird reason, this minion can't escape now, even though it is my turn. It would be able to escape if I had finished filling the retreat form faster, like a millisecond before it is that minions turn. So the longer a enemies animation is the easier it is to fill the retreat form in time. Which doesn't make sense. Time how fast I fill that "form" shouldn't be a factor. It is weird to make retreating a reflex skill based technique (how fast and precise I can move my mouse) in a turn based game.
2.) If it is my minions turn and I select retreat the minion does not retreat and awaits a attack command. This is weird, because if I had selected the escape option a millisecond before the minions turn, the minion would escape. This doesn't seem logic. This sound like the same problem as in 1.) but my point here is, that I would understand if I would automaticly escape for example at the end of a round if I choose escape. Then I would understand the "wait time". But right now there is no wait time. Minions escape instant unless one of my minions turn is right now. Then only this minion has to wait a complete round. All other can escape instant... it's so weird.

So 1.) and 2.) could be fixed by either:
-> minion escaping on their turn when retreating option is selected but also include the current active minion so it escapes instant if I haven't picked an action for it yet, instead of waiting a whole round
or -> make a clear marker in the time line where a round ends/starts and at that point minions escape.
Enemies should always take a turn to escape, as it is right now. So for enemies how it works it is totally fine right now. Just for my own minion it's weird when it's the minions turn when I select escape.

I remember one more situation that was unfair but happens very rarely:
I had a battle in the mines against a mob with two explosives carrying enemies. These enemies light themself up when they get into the first position and auto kill 2 units in front of them in their next turn.
What happened was, they both got into the first and second row after a while, and when the first died, the second one got into the first position and lit himself up. He was the last in the current rounds turn order and the first in the next rounds turn order. So he blew up instant. There was no way of killing or moving him away before he could explode himself.
I think that is a bit extreme for a unit in the first level that has a 100% chance of killing 2 of my units. I am not sure how that problem could be fixed. The problem is rare, but could be extended to, what if he lights up at last in the current turn, but is second or third in the next turn. That's also very hard to avoid 2 unit losses in that case in the first level no matter the difficulty setting.



PS: Keep up the great work. It's one of my fav games on gog :) If divinity original sin 2 had as good character design as Iratus I already had bought it.

Here two ideas for an action if you need some:
1.) ward bomb. Wards explode after a number (3?) of rounds doing 30 damage per ward. So the player or enemy needs to get rid of his wards. Probably would be an ultimate. Could either be an enemy or player action.
2.) Ward lock. wards get locked into a position. Could be on either of the 8 positions. Wards in that position are stuck there. For example the player could lock wards in position 1 of his minions. So if minions change positions the wards stay in position one. The wards don't follow the minion. If a minion with wards moves into a position with ward lock, it' s wards get added to the wards in that position and stack there. Minions that move out of a ward lock of course have no wards unless they move into a another position with ward lock. Could also be casted into the enemy lane. Same effect there. Enemies could cast it too.

Not sure if that is useful for your game. Just some ideas I had...

Hello, just wondering if anyone beat this game.
I managed to endure the bad balancing until the last boss but.. why the second phase there.. ? why bother if level 29 characters all die in the first phase..

I just beat it in easy difficulty, my chars were lvl 32, I only fought against the goodies morale, it was some easy, despite being shuffled then this second phase were surprising. I ended even without a scratch, full life (due to good protections and, and healing when ).

My chars (names from french):
_ offensive Wife
_ offensive Ghost female
_ protector Squeleton
_ defensive Knight

So, with starting dudes.

My Iratus never put a point in right tab Destruction.
My goal is to have fury/wrath to 100, for easier spells, and never let it under 50 so it can heal. It needs high skills from Alchemy and Magic

I feel the thougher is middle of the game, where I lost almost ten chars.

Maybe tactic is to guess if you'll go against life or against spirit or the enemy, then adapt your prefered squad.
If I went against life, I'll switch the "female ghost" with my Zombie back artillery.

Is this review for darkest dungeon?

Lol the OP is a joke. DD is unforgiving and has luck rng. Its linear too - you cant farm any areas you want, you are told "you are too high level".

IN DD you can choose which area to go, but there is no xp farming or anything really.

The point of OP is that when you loose against ennemies, there's nothing you can do but fight again, with not way to earn additional ressources. This means that you get weaker at each trial, which may lead to a complete game failure, without the game telling you so.
In DD, if you get your parties wiped several times in a row, you can just hire new recruits and raise them from scratch with easy quests. This is tedious and not a good design, but at least your game is not lost.