Talented

The amount of content you can get out of Talented for 6$ is criminal. Dev deserves the most.

The game has fairly simple controls, and a lot of gameplay. There's a lot of different characters to choose from and abilities to unlock to help you on your journey to become overpowered. There's different game modes like the standard 20 nights and an endless waves mode, along with a bunch of different challenges you can unlock and complete to get even more abilities.

I wanted to like Talented, but it just didn't click for me. I can see why some people might like it: different classes, figuring out a talent tree, waves of bad guys, rewards for winning. Unfortunately it all seemed a bit same-y. I won the first run I attempted, there wasn't any kind of challenge, and I imagine that playing other classes wouldn't meaningfully impact the gameplay. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems like whether you're a druid or a wizard or a knight or an archer or a pirate or a kebab salesman... you're managing four lanes of repetitive enemies, you're working up a talent tree that is obscured, and you are activating abilities with cooldowns and limited uses. For me, it just wasn't enough.

A fun game with simple controls. There are times when it seems too random, until you have a breakthrough thought and a slightly different approach to the talent tree makes everything flow smoothly. It's very run based so it appeals to short play sessions and long "one more round" sessions. Each character is the same in the sense that they each use basic attacks and a selection of abilities, but each can have different special stats and systems that change the approach to the game. I think that they're all distinct enough to each bring something special and interesting to the game. The dlcs are interesting. Besides adding new classes and talents, the modes are well thought out. The base game has a series of enemies traveling at you from the four cardinal directions. You fight them off with your basic attack (a simple button in that direction on the keyboard) and use abilities. The enemy variety and strength increases each round (night) while you visit your talent tree to pick up stats, passives, and abilities. The dlcs modify this by introducing waves, curated combinations of enemies instead of random, and gauntlet, where the talent tree between rounds has you choosing how to strengthen the enemies instead of yourself. Talented is what you see is what you get game. There is no story but the gameplay is fun and addictive while remaining simple to understand but with some depth to the approach with challenges, different modes, and different characters.

I really enjoy the game so far! Each character has their own way of defending itself and there are various hostile mobs that have their own way of attacking. If you like a tower defense + survival sort of games, I'd suggest it.

Its interesting but the strategy is too low, mouse controlls in finicky and bugged sometimes. Won my first run with minimal effort, feels like I'm already done here

The randomised talent tree just kills it for me. I thought the nonsensical layout ones were bad, but truly random is asinine.