A Legionary's Life

This game should be a called 'A Legionary's Death'. TLDR - great combat system, atmospheric, author is a decent writer and they appear to know their Roman history! Game is let down by over-reliance on RNG leading to over-repetition of same largely fixed sequence of events which gets dull (i.e. - you will see the same thing a lot). In more detail - It is a good game! But highly repetitive. Basically it boils down to creating a character, sitting 'in camp' for a period doing training and occasionally tackling a storylet, then heading off to a battle drawn from the Punic Wars period of Roman history (and a third campaign involving Philip 5 of Macedon, I think that's it. I have got as far as that third campaign before dying due to being a little overly ambitious and getting terrible luck). After the battle, you head back to camp, train and see stroylets maybe, and then off to next battle. Rinse and repeat. The problem arises from the b*tsh*t RNG which will kill you stone dead very fast indeed if you have mundane stats, and probably even if you have great stats and are making good decisions. This is the game's greatest flaw. Supposedly the enemy play by the same rules... maybe, but if you end up fighting two or three guys, which is pretty common, then they don't all get bad luck together whereas if you do, it is likely curtains. And when you die, it is back to the beginning for basically the same battle, enemies and flavour texts all over again, alas. That 'same stuff' is where it falls down as it gets less exciting every time you see it. There is a little variation, but not enough. You do get points to improve your next character with each death ala modern roguelike tradition, so if you are persistent you will eventually be able to build a true demigod out of the gate and win, but you need thousands of points to build a godly character so it could take a while. I got stuff all points on my first 5 or so characters but on my 6th I had a very good rng roll on my starting character - he was pretty godly in stats without any points to buff him, albeit his sword skill was locked at total noob levels as he had just started out and that starts very low to low noi matter what. Said character then nearly died due to RNG in the first battle (got hit for massive damage twice through full guard and had like 2% health left for the rest of the fight, but luck swung other way and my enemy got no more hits in while I slooowly chopped them up and thankfully that was the last fight of the battle, lol). After barely surviving that that he made it through to the third campaign with no major frights (except for nearly losing a bttle to a master swordsman, and I was totally pushing luck there). Then he died when I got a bit over-confident and again a very bad run of luck (almost every thing you do fails, har har) saw him die to two pretty elite enemies who, conversely, seemed to get very lucky (almost every thing they do works, har har). Partly my mistake, I took a risk that was worse than I thought and it cost me, but that RNG, yeesh... I should have won that fight, albeit not easily. Them's the breaks though. That one successful character gave me 1500 points I estimate I'd need maybe 5000 to reliably reproduce that very character. If I had to play a lot of pissant characters who died fairly early to get those points, I'd be seeing even more repetition than I did! Anyway, the combat system is chef's kiss. Most of the game is about fighting personal battles against a large backdrop and the combat system lets you choose and mix whether to strike at head, arms, leg, neck, or groin and do that striking straightforwardly, or attacking a weak point in their armour. If they have massive armour great skills you win via clever feints, using your shield to open up the enemies defense, wearing them down, killing them by a death of a thousand cuts, or go for low percentage hits that can do trmendous damage (e.g chop their head off quick). You can also sometimes stick a javelin through them before you even get into it up close and personal. This is all conveyed by choosing what to do by a bunch of abstract pie graphs! Yet you kind of feel like you are really in a fencing match (I used to fence). Neat! I don't think I have seen a slow turn based simulation of a fight that is this detailed and involved before. In practice, most of the time I found keeping it simple worked - use the simplest attack with the least energy cost, best chance to hi, and doing the most damage - but in the trickier fights I did need to get creative because there was no option that was 'simple'. The enemy was too good and well armored to have a real weakness. In those fights I needed to explot what little vulnerability they had, and play very much to any marginal advantage I had. I had one very memorable duel with a master swordsman that I just barely won by using every trick I could come up with. The game did warn me that would be a very hard fight and it was. So yeah, kind of impressed but I think it needs to lean more into roguelike procgen 'every game is different' thing, and/or be much longer with some checkpoints so you don't need to restart the same and see the same thing over and over. That or tone down the RNG a bit. Protip - I reckon most important stat is co-ordination. You really need to keep your guard up - I'd suggest keep it fully max or no more than a quarter down for any length of time - and without this stat being high you won't be able to do so. If your guard is high the enemy has a much harder time hitting you and you can exploit it when THEY are off balance or tired.

Fun story though it is let down by RNG. Not saying the RNG is unfair, it just gets to a point where it is very unfun and makes grinding points over multiple runs pointless in the end when you miss 4 or 5 in a row 80+% attacks, feints or recovers. Too many times watching my uber-stated new legionary or veteran officer floundering in simple combats despite the roll predictions being crazily in my favour and then dying made me check out of the events, the story and progression.

Really love this game, what a beautiful, fantastic game. The writing is amazing, the historical accuracy is immersive and appreciated and the menu music is beautiful, so beautiful it reminds me of Assassin's Creed 2's Menu Music. The best way to have fun with this game is to read and understand the stats and then keep on going over and over again until you have a character strong enough to make it to the end and win... The game dev has earned himself a new follower and as soon as it is possible for me, I will be purchasing Never Second In Rome.

A Legionary's Life is not only one of the most fun games that scratches that "Daydreaming of the SPQR" itch that I've played, while also simultaneously being one of the most frustrating RNG experiences I've ever had. It took me forever to get that first character to survive my first few months of war with Carthage, with many a ragequits and when I finally retired after just hunkering down and surviving it felt like a glorious triumph. It however felt very real. As a former infantryman myself, this game does not turn you into the center of the story. You are just a guy. Not THE guy, A guy. Taking on a battle because it's honorable may be the death of your character and right back to the main screen while shirking away may mean you live to retirement. However, the game has a very fun meta progression where the longer you live, the higher your score, the more you can start with better gear and stats for your next unfortunate Legionary. Soon, my early days of barely surviving to retirement turned into a glorious career as a Centurion that took on duels, saved Roman citizens, and was the first on many a city wall. That is the appeal of this game. Do you want to just feel like a regular guy? Do you want to sometimes want to throw your keyboard out of the window because of a string of bad rolls that got your favorite guy killed? Do you also want to feel ecstatic the first time you win a crown or defeat an opponent in a duel? This is the game for you. It's quite possibly one of the most fun historical RPGs I've played despite being one of the most simple. It sucked me right in and even when I got frustrated I booted the game right back up to give it another go. Buy the game and earn your Legionary's place as one of Rome's finest.

No tutorial, just a massive wall of texts explaining things (varies from vague to well defined). Can never tell if I am playing this game as intended and the rng is just cruel or if there is some point I am missing, and the game has either no inclination or way of telling me which it is. Love the idea and story, seems interesting, a right confusing mess to play.

I was expecting a role playing game with an emphasis on survivor. But what I got was a linear game whose progress until you have enough meta progress to up your points. Choices matter very little compared with your meta progress.

TL;DR: An absolute gem of a game, I highly recommend this Roman RPG. There are seldom few games that I have that I have 100% completed. Typically, I find that 100% completion is a grind that slowly erodes the joy that the game once provided. Not so for this game: it still had the same magical spark it did the first day that I played as when I unlocked every achievement. If you like fighting/turn based RPGs, and if you are a fan of ancient history - then you will love this adventure of a single legionary fighting his way through the second Punic war. The writing in this game is great 9/10 [you will genuinely feel a part of the world you are in]. The music is also great - very well fitting for the game. The gameplay itself can be a bit frustrating at times - but that's just how the electronic dice roll. Critiques: (1) I wish this game had an auto-save. It can be quite frustrating when you die due to a particularly unlucky outcome - so I would have wanted an auto-save for casual playthroughs and a iron-man mode with no auto-save for the achievements. (2) The trading system can also be a bit frustrating - I often find that trading in camp is unhelpful and that its just more efficient to get gear you want at the character creation menu or through loot. (3) While I do like randomly generating stats, I found it tedious when I was trying to generate a specific high skill. Would I still buy knowing these critiques: Yes. Overall, its a great game that I thoroughly enjoyed.