Dwarves: Glory, Death and Loot

Addictive gameplay loop had me happily spending hours trying out new party combinations. I quite enjoy the game and would have happily left a positive review if it wasn't for those ANNOYING ADS FOR SUPPORTER PACK AND ANOTHER GAME ON MENU SCREEN. Ads are huge (at least on steam deck screen, idk how it's shown on pc), ugly and cover way too much of otherwise decent looking menu. Yes, you can click them off, but the eyesore returns next time you decide to open the game. It's pissing me off enough that I'm leaving what is my second review in 11 years on steam. If ads ever get removed I'll change it to a positive review, but for now it stays what it is.

I gave this a good try, I really wanted to like it, I just can't. I like the base idea of it, and the gameplay loop did appeal to me for a bit. The goal is to play a run over a long period of time and slowly build up team through strategic decision making and longform planning. A "good" run will take you far past 50 or 100 victories and requires a lot of micromanagement and thought to reach. But the mechanics always get in the way of it and cause frustration that doesn't need to exist. There's numerous mechanics that are broken, buggy, or underdeveloped, and going into detail about every one of them would take too long for both of us. Some of these features may get fixed in the upcoming patches, and if some of them are I might take down this review or turn it to a rec. But to keep it short, a summary: - Lightning Orcs have effectively infinite range as long as they can see your frontline, leading to your backline unfairly being disintegrated in any fight with Lightning Orcs. This is the easiest problem to patch out, but also the problem that annoys me the most because it makes it nearly impossible to make a consistent strategy reliant on backline damage. - Knockback stalls out games enormously and makes them a bit of a chore, the game needs it to be easier to clean up enemies. - Speed mechanics are similarly broken, it's very hard to actually control how fast your dwarves are and there's barely anything you can do to avoid your backline getting left behind. - The game lets you pick "Formations" that let you change the behavior of your dwarves, but they aren't nearly varied enough to actually help. You can order your dwarves to stick together, but they don't really stop to wait on each other, so your backline still gets left behind and your enemy just gets more time to heal/spam backline disintegrating lightning. - The Metaprogression aspects are annoying, they don't really enhance the game and mean your first runs are kinda just doomed until you get enough gems to fill out the tree and unlock the sets that actually enable you to get past Victory 100. I'm of the opinion that very few games benefit from metaprogression trees at all, and this one is no exception, all it does is pad out the time it takes to play the game. - The game features two different systems, Equipment Sets that give a unique buff when put together, and bonuses given if you have multiple dwarves of the same (or of a really specific) class. Both of these get in the way of the game's customizability and build diversity because it means that some equipment and team layouts just aren't viable because they don't gain a set bonus (or the set bonus exists but just doesn't give you much.) - The 'Growth' system is a bit complicated, and frankly it's really unique, but because of how it interfaces with the Artifact system, it means that your first dwarves each run are doomed to retirement once you get new ones you can more manually control the statspread of. You should just get to assign the points of your dwarves manually, it'd be more time consuming but it's better than having to constantly swap your artifacts around so your Strongest Dwarves don't gain levels without holding an artifact that improves their stats. The current system still requires micromanagement, it's just clunkier and harder to learn with no benefit. Having said all this, the game does have some stuff I like. The way different items and sets are spread between regions makes part of the playstyle learning where the stuff you need is so you can get the exact items you need for success. There's some items and bonuses you can get that are hugely rewarding and makes you very excited to continue runs. While the battles can end up confusing and building your dwarves can be tedious, there's not a lot of games that give me this many units to micromanage and chart out the build of, so it's pretty fun to build your team. The issues I have with the game are the issues you have if you spend 15 hours on it and wanted to spend 100 more but couldn't bring yourself to. If you're looking for a lil autobattler to occasionally throw some time at... you might as well grab this, it IS still in development and I expect it to improve. But I just can't recommend it to the average person right now. (EDIT: fixed some grammar)