Regalia: Of Men and Monarchs - Tanks seriously suck

This is another generic kickstarter game. Tactical TBS game, "comedic" storyline, pathetic main character, it basically checks every generic criteria for a kickstarter game these days. What makes this different from the others is that its actually fun to play. I was in awe at how fun this actually turned out to be. When I saw the trailer for this game I thought I was watching something from Wakfu, a tactical TBS MMO. The artstyle was similar and combat looked similar. Then it went into detail of everything else the game had to offer. Town building, choose your own adventure quests, personal bonds, multiple party members with unique skills, and a whole bunch of shit. I was hooked in and gave it a try right away.

Before we get into the details of the game we need to talk about the story and the main character. What is up with the sudden influx of loser protagonists. You start the game as Kay, a whiny punching bag loser who ends up being the heir of the House of Loren, the next in line to be king. You along with your two sisters, the younger Elaine who is a giant bubbly airhead and the older Gwendolyn, the grouchy haughty sister who is probably the only competent one of the family. She is basically in charge. Then there is Griffith the family servant/bodyguard who is all about justice, honor, and all that garbage. If this was another game he'd be the stereotypical main character. I know people want to avoid being generic heroic manly protagonists but now that there are a lot of loser protagonists it isn't very unique anymore. Either way as you progress the game the characters all grow. Kay actually isn't that bad compared to the beginning. The only issue I have with the main cast is you don't really see Elaine or Gwendolyn do much. They don't help you in combat and they're only around doing behind the scenes stuff. You don't even get to raise personal bonds with them. I'm not talking about incest or other weird shit but siblings definitely don't get along all the time.

What the hell is a personal bond. They are basically the social links from Persona. Every character has their own schedule at where they will be and what they will be doing. You can look up the calendar to see if they are available to hang out or they are away on leave or on a break. Spending time with someone will take an entire day. Since there is a time limit in the game as well as a set schedule, you should try and plan out in advance what you are doing. Monday I'll talk with Griffith, Tuesday I'll talk to Theo, Wednesday I'll hang out with Haksun. Then I'll go dungeon crawling on Thursday for 12 days. Shit like that. There are over a dozen people you are able to bond with and each person has 5 levels to their personal bond. Acquaintance, Buddy, Friend, Confidante, Admirer. Each level requires bond exp gained by spending time with them, picking the right choices in adventures or events. For example choosing to loot dead bodies during an event will drop your personal bond with several characters. These bonds all give bonuses depending on the person. Party member bonds will unlock skill morphs and skill traits. Personal bond with NPCs will usually give a bonus like extra DLC, Dilac the currency for the kingdom, gained from all sources to allowing the crafting of better gear. They will also unlock skill perks. This is a very good way to improve your team's fighting prowess. Your only gear is a weapon and 2 relics and leveling up adds small stat boosts. Each level will unlock a skill perk slot. Skill morphs change the effect of the skill in some way, usually for the better. They can take from 1 to 4 perk slots to use. While skill perks are just stat increases like damage boost, bonus accuracy, and like skill morphs also take anywhere from 1 to 9 slots. You'll end up with a max slot/level of 20 so pick and choose wisely what you want.

Outside personal bond you also have to manage your kingdom. Usually through the form of completing kingdom quests. You are given the time limit of two months to complete 5-7 kingdom quests. These can be done in any way you like. Constructing buildings is a kingdom quest, as is building bonds with many people. Crafting, fishing, you name it. Then there is the dungeons. Outside of the kingdom are a wide variety of dungeons. These take days to travel to and clearing out the dungeon will usually take a week or more. Inside the dungeon you have little action blocks you can progress through. A sword block means its a fight, an exclamation point is a choose your own adventure section, two speech bubbles is a rest area where you can resurrect fallen teammates. You must progress through the dungeon in order from block to block. If your teammate dies inside a dungeon they cannot be used again until you find a rest area. You cannot backtrack to a previous block so if you had to go though a rest area to another and someone died after then you're fucked. Hopefully your others can carry the slack. However the game is lenient, you can restart a battle with no penalty if you fuck up. Dungeons also have varying difficulty, from easy to moderate to difficult. Dungeons also need to be cleared in order like the dungeon blocks. You cannot do the dungeon behind the ones in front of you until you fully clear it. So the later dungeons in the far corners of the map are the hardest while the ones immediate to the castle are the easiest. However that is not the case as sometimes you find moderate level dungeons locked behind difficult ones. The game is well balanced if not a little easy near the end. Start off you might find yourself dying all the time and trying to get over the hump from easy to moderate dungeons will take awhile. But as soon as I unlocked the blacksmith and got a few bonds for skill perks it really started snowballing in power and I had no more problems with the game. You will still die if you fuck around and mess up. Its not walk in the park but you really shouldn't have any problems if you're min maxing your characters.

Combat is tactical turn based strategy. There really isn't much to say about it. There are a bunch of monsters they attack you, you move around the map in little cells and attack them and you win. You can bring up to 6 party members with you in a party and deploy 4 in a single battle. You can check the elements of enemies or skills to see who you should bring or replace for certain fights. A lot of ranged guys sniping you down? Don't bring fucker tanks, send in the assassins and destroy them. Bunch of fire trolls? Don't bring Aliss shes full fire, bring in Theo and have him rain ice on them since they have no ice resistance and will die in two hits. You might be thinking, what only four people at once in a single battle thats so little. Think about it, Final Fantasy Tactics only allowed you four to five people at a single battle too and everyone was fine with it. Each character comes with 5 skills that can be morphed in some way. The final one is always an ultimate with a long cooldown and cost authority points. Each turn you gain an authority point that can be saved and use for ultimates or used for a second turn, letting you move in kill someone and get out with an assassin or needing the extra turn to kill an opponent at low health. Its very flexible and is part of why the combat is so fun. Every character you have in unique, not just in personality, but their roles all differ from each other.

Kay - He is probably the strongest character in the game. He is the only healer. At the start he may feel weak. but once you get his skill morphs in he's the most powerful character. He has command, which can either Shield an ally for 20% of their health or Mark an enemy preventing the target from dodging. This should be morphed asap to ignore line of sight letting you heal allies while hiding behind walls and other safe spots. There is no way to heal in the game other than gaining shields which are permanent. He has a pistol shot and a basic slash attack, pretty garbage. Then he has the banner which gives all characters a 30% chance on the start of their turn to gain empower which is a 25% damage boost. With skill morph that chance becomes 100%. This thing should be dropped whenever its off cooldown and is the single strongest buff in the game. His ultimate is a 60% shield, and when morphed becomes 100% and reset all cooldown on the target to 0.

Griffith - The tank. Pure physical damage. He is slow, his attacks are weak, all he does is single target damage and he has a long range single target taunt. There is really no point using him after the initial few stages as he gets completely overshadowed by everyone. He does get a charge that lets him run in quicker but he just dies because he can't kill the enemy fast enough before he gets killed. His ultimate is even more trash. Its basically an execute letting you do bonus damage on targets below 40% health on a single target. Just no.

Signy - The assassin character. Shes probably my favorite character and one of the strongest. At first she ends up dying really quickly but later on her dodge gets so high that she becomes tankier than a tank as well as having the mobility and damage of an assassin. Her basic attack is a leap attack that does 60% of your weapon damage. It looks really weak at first until you realize that the leap hits all adjacent cells next to her. When morphed lets you ignore line of sight letting you hop over walls to assassinate targets and pounce out when done. Its both a strong mobility move and a good AoE move. Whirlwind does 90% lightning damage to all adjacent and diagonal cells next to her and apply sundered. Lowering their defense by 25%. Empower is a self buff that boosts damage and movement speed. When skill morphed this skill doesn't take a turn when you cast it so you can empower run in pounce into a pack of enemies, whirlwind, then pounce out. Savage roar does pure AoE damage, ignoring shields and causes enemies to panic. This forces them to run away. Her ultimate does 4 high damage hits to random enemies within a huge AoE. Its a good AoE attack and if the target is alone, as very powerful single target attack. Great debuffs, great damage, great AoE, great mobility, best overall character.

Aliss - Fire mage. Shes not amazing but she does have one skill that can make or break her character. She suffers from severe accuracy issues and until you have skill perks to boost up her accuracy you'll find her weak as shit. Her basic attack is a fireball that chains to nearby targets. This will also mark them causing them to take bonus fire damage from Aliss. Its a very weak single target nuke for 60% of attack but once you can start chaining two three and even four enemies at once the damage adds up really fast. Inferno is a big 3x3 cell aoe burst but the main power comes from blazing barrier. Its a firewall you can put down that when enemies walk though take 50% of your attack in damage. Since AI in this game can be stupid you can strategically place it so all the enemies must walk though the wall from end to end to get to you and you can watch them walk through the wall go "oh shit I'm on fire, then walk backwards and burn themselves to death one by one. Its broken beyond fuck and the only reason I use her. She has a fire shield that reflects damage for a turn and a summon for an ult thats meh.

Levant - Another tank. I hate tanks in tactical TBS games. My strategy is always to kill before you get killed. He's better than Griffith defensive wise but honestly what is the point of a tank. He can leap around the battlefield with his skill and he takes up 4 cells meaning he gets stuck in narrow passageways and move at the pace of a snail. He sets up walls and his ultimate is a full map one turn silence. I would call him the worst character in the game if he didn't have slightly more utility than Griffith. He does shit for damage though. Avoid.

Theo - Ice mage vampire. He has the best mobility in the game in that he can teleport anywhere within range of his movement squares. His basic attack has long reach and deals pretty significant single target ice damage that applies Victimized. Batswarm is a weak AoE that applies Blind. Captivating Gaze is a single target nuke that applies Silence. Seeing a trend here? Pure harvest does 50% + 40% for each debuff on the target in pure damage to everyone on all adjacent cells next to him. Can be skill morphed to be 60% damage per debuff. This is fucking disgusting damage. But the weakness is he has to be next to the opponent and he's squishy as shit. If your team has a lot of debuffs you can easily blow up someone in a single shot with the skill. His ultimate sucks though as it picks one random effect and applies it to every enemy in the battle. Basically letting you use Levant's ultimate if you really wanted to. Overall solid character.

Diego - Physical damage archer. His damage isn't too bad and he really needs to stand at max range to gain overconfidence from his main attack. Depending on the distance you get more overconfidence, up to 6. His other skills will do effects based on how much overconfidence he has. He has a strong low and poison but neither are very powerful effects. He's really not that bad but is overshadowed by the two mages and the other ranged character.

Grenn - Stealthy assassin character. Why pick him if Signy exists. Really what is he good for? Almost nothing. He can stealth and his basic attack applies poison but poison is really annoying against you but really useless against enemies because they die too fast for the poison ticks to do much. He has a bunch of debuffs that do no damage so there really is no point in using him over Signy. Pretty shitty.

Esther - Engineer character. She's odd but powerful. You can drop turrets that can tank and do damage. Set them to self destruct for big AoE damage and stun. Her basic "attack" is tinker which lets you buff an ally or buff your turret. She gets a stun grenade for big AoE damage and push back. And when I mean big I mean biggest AoE in the game. Her penetrating round attack hits an entire line with unlimited range for 150% physical damage. 50% less for each target. It looks strong until you realize you rarely hit more than one target in a line. Thats where skill morph comes in and changes it to a single target sniper shot dealing 250% damage. Thats stronger than Griffith's ultimate and can be used every other turn with unlimited range. Usually one shotting enemies. What the fuck. Her ultimate is the aeon clock that stops time and lets her move around and do shit without ending her turn. Pretty crazy strong. She is only available if you side with Shedu in diplomacy.

Henrietta - Lordemar's representative. I picked Shedu so I can't get her.

Mifune - Samurai Dwarf tank. Fuck not another tank. Tanks suck ass. He moves slow he hits for no damage and he is a pure piece of garbage. Every turn he gains a Laido stack and each Laido stack lets him perform an attack. This can be saved up an unleased all in one turn for pitiful damage since he is a tank. Don't pick him. Only available if you side with The Empire.

Valen - Pirate elf prince. Alfheimr's representative and probably better than Mifune but I don't know because I can't get him.

These are your party members. They are all pretty unique and you can build them in whatever way you want. Make them tanky with perks, boost their damage, their move speed, go full sniping team. You can beat the game with any strategy you want except mass tanks. I hate tanks.

There are a few issues to this game though, a few bugs here and there and the diplomacy options being completely garbage. Diplomacy lets pick an ally between two different nations and you get 4 chances per alliance. You need to ally with one faction at least 3 times to unlock the character but you really have no idea who you are unlocking, who your allies really are and why you are allying with them. It felt added on for the sake of adding it in and does nothing to help the game. The other party members and NPCs you get don't interact with the main story because you are able to avoid picking them up if you want to by not triggering their event. Which means its just the four of you throughout the whole game and the rest of the people are just there when battle happens. It also doesn't expand on Elaine and Gwendolyn. Voice acting is a little off sometimes for some characters but overall pretty good. There are a few bugs that lock up the game in battle I've encountered but not really replicated. It makes you restart the battle and thats when you find out the drop rates are RNG. If you don't get good gear you can never go back and farm the dungeon again. You have to craft at the blacksmith but the best items are found.

As you can tell, after typing all this shit that I really like this game. I was looking for a game with diverse classes and tactical TBS and I stumbled almost accidentally onto this gem. Unfortunately the game was released without full content and the developers have said they will patch the game after release. They also said the game will take around 30 hours to play and I finished my play through in about 20 hours but I've only done around 70% of the dungeons and missing a bunch of personal bonds. Once I go back and finish them it should be around 30 hours, which is more than you can say about other shitty kickstarter games. If you like tactical TBS games do not miss this one. Its filled to the brim with fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFQmu5HlTJY

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.