I really wish Steam had a third, mid "meh" option for recommendations. I don't exactly think this is a bad game, but I only recommend with some caveats. Let's start with the good.
Pros:
- Art style is great. Graphics are obviously not terrific, but the art style hides some of that.
- It mimics the Darkest Dungeon formula...good enough. Doesn't quite scratch the itch, but does okay.
- Has some really ambitious gameplay choices, some work, some don't.
- The Circus set-up makes your homebase seem more than just a place to upgrade and heal your characters.
- I played on normal, for the most part, the game difficulty is reasonable. I don't think I'm going to ever play again on hard though.
Cons:
- RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. This is absolutely the part that makes the game drag on the most, so I'm going to spend some time on it. The game is a constant problem of "I don't have enough x to do that". Early on it is tools, you need tools to upgrade buildings. You need to upgrade buildings to get more characters, get more ability in battle. Later on it is food. You want to have a full roster, but once you do, you're on the hook for 70-80 food a day. This isn't a problem early on and you end up with way more food than you need, but in the later districts, I routinely have no food.
This wouldn't be so bad, but there's no consistent way to get resources other than exchanging money for it. This isn't like DD where you can exchange EVERYTHING for EVERYTHING, nope, just money. So I have 2000 of one resource I don't need and I can ONLY exchange tools/food for money. The exchange rate isn't great either. Thankfully, later on you don't NEED money that much, as you're waiting for your circus to level up to be able to upgrade anything else, so you can spend all your money on food. Its still annoying to have to do it EVERY DAY. Tools aren't that big of a deal, especially once you've upgraded all you can. You can't use the XP boosting tent without tools, but that's not a huge deal. Food is the issue. Without food, you will lose devotion and eventually people will leave. The ONLY other way to get food is from battles. The problem? You don't always get food and you can't tell what resources you'll get from a battle until after its over, so you can't even try to go for the food heavy fights. I have no idea how these rewards are given, but I've just gone through 5 battles and all I got was 20 food. Not even enough for one day.
- The devs have apparently deserted the game. No updates, no bug fixes, nothing. The game isn't super popular either, so there aren't a lot of guides online. The Steam community is pretty barren and the Reddit page is private for some reason. I've been able to figure out most things on my own, but I keep reading how the training grounds is a good source of food, tools, etc, but it never gives me ANYTHING. It just recently started giving me ONE item...sometimes. But nothing like everyone else says is there. Why is that? No idea. Can't find the answer or anyone else who has this problem.
- There's a lot of characters, but at least 75% of the cast is useless in battle. That's okay I guess, because they can be used in the circus but look at DD, ALL characters are viable in some way. I once had to restart a battle 6 times because I took the wrong 2 character and only one of my guys could actually do ANY damage, and he could ONLY damage the front row, meaning the healer in the back just kept healing everyone up to full.
There are two healers, but only one of them is actually useful as a healer. He heals from 60-120 and the other one heals under 40. He's fine early on, but later there's no way he can keep up.
- Difficulty spike. All of a sudden, enemies are attacking 2-4 times and doing 60+ damage a turn. You NEED the good healer for EVERY FIGHT. There are healing items, but they aren't terrific, can only be used once a turn, and the better items require upgrades (tools). TONS of enemy heals and if you don't have a way of hitting backrow you might as well re-load. On the opposite end, bosses are an absolute joke. One I had to re-start a few times because it kept getting lucky crits, but overall easy.
- More on characters. Like I said, most are useless. Eventually you get two characters that can attack ALL enemies for pretty good damage. Those two+strongman+good healer, I never change my party anymore. Nothing is as good as that. Just feels strange to have like 15 classes and only use 4.
- Upgrading the train is a trap. You need to upgrade it to a point to unlock new classes, but it also starts giving you higher level characters. This sounds good, but in reality its not. Why? Because of circus values, the stats you need to put on a good circus. You get 10 points per level to put into these. A level 1 might come with 5-15 in each stat and you have NINE more levels or NINETY more points to put into them. A level 4? Comes with 10-20 in a stat and you only have SIXTY points left. A level 4 you get from the train will never be as good as a level 1 you started with. You're basically stuck with your team at a point.
Overall? Get it on sale. Its not worth full price.
