Massive Chalice - Massive Shit

This here is another kickstarter game from Doublefine. You may know them from the tragedy that is Broken Age. The game is a tactical TBS game mixed with kingdom building and a human breeding simulator. Basically you take the role of the immortal ruler and there is a massive talking chalice that tells you that people from heroic bloodlines are needed to fight off the cadence. The cadence are unknown evil things that attacked out of nowhere and normal people get killed off too quickly so you must have people from heroic bloodlines breed with one another and have as many children as possible so they are sent off to war. However this game tries to do too much at once and you really wish they focused more on one part of the game because the game play is really shallow.

Lets talk about the breeding simulator first. You start the game by creating 5 houses where your bloodlines will start at. Each house will have their own motto, their own standard, and the founding male and female. Then the rest of the heroes you get will come from one of these houses. You can build keeps and then assign reagents and their partner to one. The two you choose will marry and try for kids as soon as possible. The personality and traits of the parents will determine the one the child gets. So don't put dimwitted, slow, or even asthmatic people on the throne. Its just going to end up with kids with shitty traits. Sometimes, you don't have any ones with good traits so you'll have to end up with shitty kids. Another thing you need to look out for is the fertility of the hero. Some are infertile and are useless. They should be sent off to battle and die as soon as possible because they're worthless. Low fertility can be used but they really suck because you want as many kids as possible to keep your hero supply up. The best is a high fertility trait because they'll be popping out kids year after year and passing that gene to their kids which you use to breed even more. You want the reagent and their partner to be as young as possible as well. Not only do younger heroes have higher fertility, but they'll live for longer to create more kids for your army. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to pick either bad traits, marry a younger person with someone much older to keep decent traits or commit in a whole bunch of incest to keep the best traits in one family. If one of them dies you can marry them off to someone else to keep the bloodline going. You want to do that the minute they die so you don't waste any time in child making.

Heroes, if they die during combat or any of the random events, will disappear for good. So you're always looking for a fresh supply of heroes. Once the reagent and their partner have a child they will be trained at the keep and be a hybrid of the two classes of the parents. So that is another thing to look out for. You don't want too many of one class so if you have a bunch of caberjack reagents you want to start looking for some alchemists to become reagent to breed with other alchemists or hunters. Once the kids reach about 15 they will be sent to the capital and will be able to participate in war. Heroes once they reach about 50-60 they will start dying off. If they have children they will pass off items to them and those items will become relics that will be handed down by each generation of the same bloodline. If you're like me the first time playing this game you'll end up not building enough keeps, not having enough fertile heroes, and having too many heroes die in combat. The first few decades were pretty simple then suddenly all my heroes started dying of old age. The dumb reagents weren't breeding fast enough. They have gotten old and the children stopped coming. Unfortunately, the new children were too young to breed and the other heroes were too old. Most of the younger women died off in the war so I had to start matching 19 year old men to 50 year old women to get them to breed. This failed horribly as the women had low fertility and died too fast before kids were out. This led to a population crisis and eventually the death of the entire nation as I ran out of heroes and the cadence destroyed everyone.

The second time, I built keeps as soon as possible and got them started early on making kids. I spent extra research time to find heroes from the population. This will fill in the gap so you don't rely on your reagents doing well on their jobs at making kids. Seriously look for high fertility rate among your heroes and get them fucking as soon as possible to pass on that gene so their children can fuck more people and pass that on so you have more fucking and more children everywhere. And being the second time playing this, I was more aware of how to play the game and more heroes survived the attacks. Combat is a tactical TBS style and you bring in a total of 5 heroes per battle. Its better to put in infertile or older heroes so they can get some use out of their lives. Leave the younger ones at home to make kids. However, age affects the hero's combat stats as well. Younger heroes are faster, while prime aged heroes have better stats, and old heroes suck ass. You also need to choose if the reagent born kids with good stats should be used as breeders to create super powerful bloodlines or take them into battle so they die and waste all your time spent on them. Remember, a single death is many years wasted on raising them. Do not let anyone die.

Combat is really simple, you have the three main classes. Caberjacks are melee fighters with giant battering rams, hunters with their big cross bows, and alchemists with exploding flasks they can throw. Enemies are simple, they're either melee or range and that's about it. Some have bonus armour, some drain exp on each attack but most things die in a couple of hits. But so do you. So get a lot of hunters and alchemists and fuck caberjacks because they're slow and they're melee. Every time you walk and see an enemy, you will lose control the screen will shift onto the enemy and giant letters "ENEMY SPOTTED" will appear over them. Then you shift back and regain control. EVERY SINGLE TIME. So if you only saw one monster when you poked through that fog, the next guy to walk closer will see another and the same thing will repeat. Then the next guy walks closer and you see another monster and then again. Are you fucking insane. Why the fuck do you need to keep reminding me that I spotted a monster. I have eyes, I don't need you to take away my control and waste 30 seconds moving the screen over to fly a dumb text over them and then scroll back. Every fucking enemy. That alone makes me not want to do the combat. That and the simplicity of the game. Enemies either run back and forth or run straight at you. You shoot them before they reach you and you walk further into the fog and waste time seeing enemies. Then you snipe them and keep going. I hope you don't have any heroes with slow traits because they move at 1/2 the distance of a normal person. While everyone is off fighting that last guy is trailing behind being a burden on everyone. Just have him die alone and don't bother sending him to battle or breeding because he'll pass on shit genes.

The entire game takes place over 300 years. You probably get into combat every 10-20 years so every time you battle you basically refresh your entire roster of heroes. You never really get attached to any of the heroes. Someone dies? You go who the fuck is that. You don't really care about any of the heroes because they just die so quickly. Years pass by with absolutely nothing to do. You are just waiting for a keep to build so you fast forward the years when suddenly it goes "a hero has died of old age." Or suddenly the cadence decide to invade! There you do a short battle then its back to the waiting game. Sometimes a random event will appear and you have to make a choice. A lot of these events will randomly kill off a hero for no reason. There are just way too little to do between the years and you have no attachment to the heroes. You'll use them for combat once or twice then they die of old age. Or they sit in the keep pumping out as many kids as possible and you'll never hear of them again. For a game that spans over 300 years there is very little to do.

Overall, it has a lot of interesting ideas but none of them are complete. It feels like its still in early access than a full release game. Unless you really like TBS games, the very basics of a kingdom building game, or a human breeding simulator, just pass on this game. Its not a terrible game, but its just boring. Extremely repetitive and boring.