Conclave

[h1]A good idea, plagued with gameplay issues[/h1] What started as an easy to learn, and simple online co-op RPG, quickly showed how little thought was put into the gameplay mechanics, balance, and debugging. I could easily look past the fact that there is no character depth, very little customisation, and how small and bare bones the world felt, specially considering how tiny the development team was, unfortunately the game is plagued with frustrating issues, which are no doubt a result of the platform the game was developed one - sacrificing gameplay and a more powerful engine for the ability to play on a browser. [hr][/hr] To give you a small sample of how unbalance and unfair the game is I'll describe you one of the fight maps and enemies (spoilers ahead): [list] [*]The map starts with 6 enemies revealed, with two of them hiding themselves on the first turn. [*]There are walls through which the players can't attack, but the enemies can. [*]The enemies can lay arrow traps from far, directly underneath the players. [*]The arrow traps if stepped on are automatically triggered and deal damage in a circle (affecting 7 tiles maximum). [*]Damage dealt by these arrow traps breaks player stealth. [*]The enemies can step and trigger the arrow traps they placed, but they take NO damage (so they also remain in stealth). [*]The map can easily have 6 of these arrow traps setup in a cluster, together with Poison traps that reduce all stats if you are sitting on that tile. [*]You start the fight in a corner, behind a wall, giving you limited options of movement and attack opportunities when you are already outnumbered. [*]You are incentivised to group up to dispatched the enemies more quickly, but the trap placement counters this. The damage you take from the traps and the attacks of the enemies can easily destroy the party in two/three turns. [/list] This is supposed to be a 'Medium' difficulty mission at level 4... but looking past the difficulty, which I have no problems with, the most galling issue is the fact that mechanics don't apply globally giving the player a tremendous disadvantage. [hr][/hr] [b]PROS:[/b] [list] [*]Can play on a browser pretty much anywhere as long as you have internet [*]Asynchronous turn-based gameplay, allowing you to play at your rhythm with friends [*]Easy to learn, with some added complexity when you purchase new skills/items [*]Simple gameplay, pick a mission and go fight/make decisions until you finish [*]Soundtrack is great [/list] [b]CONS:[/b] [list] [*]Gameplay mechanics are not applied globally (things that affect you don't affect your enemies) [*]Limited customisation options [*]Limited class/skill options [/list] [hr][/hr] As the last update was done in 2017, I have zero hope for this game to ever get an update to address these issues, and so I [b]DON'T RECOMMEND[/b] anyone to purchase this game for the current full price (£7.19). Play the browser trial, enjoy that and move on to better things.