Trials of Fire

in library

4.5/5

( 16 Reviews )

4.5

16 Reviews

English & 6 more

Overall most helpful review

Posted on: June 26, 2021

Elkor_Alish

Verified owner

Games: 298 Reviews: 56

Mostly Fun, Slightly Flawed

This is a strategy game which uses the RNG almost flawlessly. For the most part the RNG contributes variability and difficult without heavily influencing outcomes. When it says 50% chance of an outcome, it seems more like 65%. 25% feels more like 30%. I wholely approve of a causal relationship between percentiles and expectation. The AI is competent, the encounters are balanced, the graphics are acceptable for the scale of the project, but I suggest you watch a video to make sure they are acceptable to you. I only have two complaints. The first concerns the story which is more or less insignificant. You can pretty much ignore and choose combat everytime and not worry you made a mistake or missed out on anything. Maybe that is a feature not a bug, but I like reactivity (a lot a lot) as well as seeing the relationship between choice and consequence play out and would have prefered a narrative which delivered. . .Anything. If you are going to have a story at all, go for broke, make it deep, meaningful, and impactful. Especially if you have gameplay decent enough to support it. Lastly, and most significantly, the food mechanic. You need a single food item to camp for the night, not camping comes with some steep penalties, but you have no control over whether or not you actually come across food. I found myself in a spiral a couple times where I would not find food until my party was in the red, I would camp and wake up tired necessitating another camp out only to find no food until I was back in the red again immediately after that. In a strategy game, I strongly feel luck should influence but never dictate results. Losing due to variables beyond the player control is always a disappointment. A possible suggestion would be making a "scrounge/scavenge" option for camping available for those with no food where no benefit can be gained by camping -no honing, health gain, meditating, or item bonding - and no penalty for not having the requisite materials.

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Posted on: June 29, 2021

Nознамас

Verified owner

Games: 97 Reviews: 1

It all comes together

The game combines tactics and card mechanics in ways no other game has managed to and made the rng feel good. It gives you 4 different options for dealing with cards you don't want, the game board generation doesn't randomly screw you and they actually did the math on the economy. There are increasing challange ratings and modifiers to keep you going. I am hoping they will throw in an expansion.

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Posted on: July 8, 2021

mothwentbad

Verified owner

Games: 916 Reviews: 25

Rewards familiarity with mechanics

While the graphical design is a little bland and sepia-toned, I felt like I had to err on the side of a 5-star review for some of the most strategic, mechanically intensive play I've seen in a while. While it's a tactical deckbuilder, the overall flow and feel is quite different from Slay The Spire. While some games try to do StS but sort of fail, this succeeds at being different. Aside from it clearly being a party TBS on a hex grid, there are other general flow-of-game differences: Infinites are harder to come by, you receive temporary dead cards when reshuffling, specific class cards are usually easier to come by, and your characters have equipment slots based on the character, which each accept one of two types of gear, granting more cards. Willpower (WP) plays the role of "energy" here. You start turns with 0 WP, and you can discard to produce movement, energy, or block, and each character can retain one card for next turn if desired, or a character can redraw a number of discarded cards once in a turn. So a bad draw on Turn 1 can be redrawn or partially redrawn, and discarded again for block and movement in the worst case. Discarding for an effect is, for the most part, a "worse" version of the effect of playing dedicated basic cards, which might produce movement and WP in a single card, for example, but the discard mechanic is very flexible, since you have to adapt to the shuffle luck. In my experience, the food and rest mechanic is fair enough. You have many opportunities to buy food or roll events for a chance of food, and it's usually a strong option up until you're near the limit. (Up to and including Hard at least.) I'm still losing on Hard most of the time and winning Normal only half the time. Deck size is a tricky puzzle because you are penalized for reshuffles, even if deck thinning in the genre is usually quite strong otherwise. Supposedly you can win on Cataclysm levels above and beyond Hard, yikes! Sounds scary. Time to get good?

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Posted on: March 8, 2023

AltinGavranovic

Verified owner

Games: 136 Reviews: 17

Splendid deckbuilder-tactical RPG hybrid

Ok, so five stars is a bit generous, but this is seriously good and deserves to be played more. The game is similar to RPG deck building games like Banners of Ruin, Deep Sky Derelicts or Darkest Dungeon (ie. you control a team of dudes that battles other teams of dudes using cards and levels up in-between fights, with this largely reflected in getting better cards), except it plays out on a hex grid with positioning adding an extra dimension of tactical complexity. The tactical battles are the heart of the game and are so, so much fun. Deciding which cards to sacrifice in order to generate power to play the remaining cards is a serious chin-scratcher in most battles. While there is an RNG dimension (mostly in what cards you draw from turn to turn, as damage is mostly fixed) the game has a generous redraw mechanic and the RNG will rarely get you killed. The excellent AI often *will* get you killed, however - it'll walk right past your armored tank and go for your squishy spellcaster that just did 20 damage last turn, if you let it. In between battles you travel around on a map, making your way towards boss fights, visiting various locations that contain shops, battles and text-based events that can help or harm you. You need to rest periodically so there is a tactical dimension to not running out of food and balancing risk and reward in the text-based events but it is pretty basic compared to the tactical combat. The story is nothing special, sadly - if you want a narrative-driven game in a similar setting, check out Vargus. Graphics are serviceable but very much low-budget indie with minimal animations, so check out some gameplay footage if that's important to you. The game is a roguelike, so each 'run' lasts a couple of hours (if you're good enough to get to the final boss, that is!) and there are a handful of different scenarios to try, with different bosses. Easily 30-40 hours of content, more if you want to beat the harder difficulties

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Posted on: June 30, 2021

pkk234

Verified owner

Games: 296 Reviews: 1

Tactical Deckbuilding Adventure

So far I am almost 2 hours in to a 'short' run, although the time includes tutorial and learning how to play. As a pre-face, I like StS and FFT. Although there is much more crowd control involved, tactically. Maybe it's more akin to Battle Brothers Lite + magic, although I've never played it. Also to note, I'm not particularly amazing at deckbuilders...I always let my decks get bloated because the cards look cool. And yes that has happened in this game too, but it seems likes it's a bit easier to streamline your deck and find a 'build' if you will, as much as I hate that word, since cards are gained mostly through loot you will find after battles, from shopping or exploring, or even through events. The gear also grants you some armor and maybe some buff of some sort if you are lucky, which is new to me. The fact that there is somewhat of an exploration aspect is also worth noting. It isn't very in depth, with the usual resources such as food, money, and meds. These resources are the limiting factor to what you can do when you camp, which seems like are able to do anywhere, with places with shelter giving you better heals and such. There is some jank though. The UI is a bit off visually, but not heinous, just lacks some polish. Which I honestly kind of forgot about after the first hour. There are some systems that don't seem to be explained very well too. The fights are fun, enemies can really mess you up if you don't have a bit of a plan. Watch out for slavers, they'll grab ya. Oh yea it's proc-gen, for people who are wary of that. Sorry if it's a hard read. This is my first review, it's late here, and I got lazier as I wrote. Anyways it's not just another deckbuilder. more involved tactical combat, cool gear/card system, and I like the art. Also when you continue your game the book opens right back were you stopped 'reading'. I like it.

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