Tenebris: Terra Incognita

It's Darkest Dungeon in space. And the game doesn't hate the player, which is very good.

someone else wrote a good review on my opinion and the devs answered all below my text, and to the devs I have to say, it's 1.0. and the game feels exactly like this person is describing it, nothing "smoother" or anything like that. You still get stomped with low level units and almost every encounter is an ambush with 1 heavy, 2 medium and 1 light armor. IDK if that is the way your smooth 1.0 should have been but, it's still the same as this person describes it so I refunded. Read below: [quote=Stranger] So if you stick with one squad on higher difficulties the game is fine. The problem is that, ostensibly, you will need more than one squad at some point as there is a fatigue rating which means that you will have to take them out of rotation whilst they recuperate. The fact we have more than a minimum squad also suggests they are expendable. I like impactful failures resulting in catastrophic conditions like death but only providing they are earned due my own lack of forethought, attention to detail, mistakes, or ignorance and not a result of RNG, scripted narrative, or conditions beyond my control. It is also nice when there is the ability to recover, regardless of difficulty, from such outcomes. XCOM, as an example, was excellent in this regard even if it was prone to, shall we say, some intermittent and unlikely occurrences. If, however, you try to prepare for the anticipated need for future personnel by using your higher level squad for away missions while using the new recruits for the training missions you will either lose some in the process or you will have to save scum the levels to get them through it. Maintaining parity of your units isn't merely difficult, it seems to be discouragingly prohibitive. The instructor isn't a tank and has no way to control aggro, meaning your entire squad is vulnerable all the time. Not that it matters since he spends an inordinate amount of combat being stunned because he seems to have absolutely no resistance beyond dodge to being staggered. The enemies prioritize weak armor and low hit points, which is the very definition of low level recruits. Additionally, and I am not exaggerating, more than half of the encounters are ambushes as a result of using new recruits with low initiative. Enemies invariably stun the high level mentor unit depriving him of his first turn (and more depending upon what random recruits you get, what gear you have for them, and how long combat lasts) then proceed to concentrate on one recruit at a time and kill them. On two fights, out of maybe ten, I lost one recruit each before they got a turn. By lost I mean he was downed for the encounter, but you can only being a unit back from being downed once per mission on which there seems be a half dozen to somewhere south of ten encounters in all. So it looks like these missions were balanced with the assumption players would bring their best and most experienced units. I would happily do so, except away missions seem to give no discernable experience whatsoever. On my first run I tasked my level one units on three missions and they were still level one at the end of them, while my advanced units were graining a minimum of a level and sometimes more than two on active missions. I had five units at level five and three at level one. That is a huge gap. Hence why I began again with the idea of fielding my low level units only to find out that while you can eke through the first training mission you get absolutely wrecked right out of the gate on the second one. By wrecked, I mean all three (level 2) recruits were downed in the very first fight while the mentor's armor hadn't even been broken yet because he was ignored except for stun attacks. I didn't bother to finish the missions since I felt confident the moment any of the recruits died I would simply be entering a death spiral which would eventually see the whole team wiped. It was obvious enough at that point I didn't really need to see it play out. I want a challenge, but units dying before they get turns, or only after a single turn, is mostly just disappointing since no combat on higher difficulties is determined in a single round with fresh recruits although if you know you are doing and with a little luck you can end most of them in two. Maybe I am being impatient. Maybe after the training missions there are multiple options to choose from which allow for grinding assets/experience/whatever at a comfortable pace. Maybe thinking ahead and trying to approach things strategically is actually working against me. Don't know, but since there are no hard saves, I am not able to experiment and discover these things for myself without starting everything all over again on a fresh run. . .And you know what, at this point I have put in too much time to want to start over, but not nearly enough to fall in love with this title. Especially since, at this point, I haven't even come within line of sight of a plot to all this yet. Shelving it for now, will return to it in a year or so. These are good devs, I am sure they will sort it out, but for now it is just not for me. [quote=devs] Developer response: TenebrisGame [developer] Posted: 13 Jun @ 3:12pm Hello. We hear you! We did rework the whole QT system, it is far easier now (in dev build). More tries, specific classes add more tries instead of being needed to even start the specific QT. Perks that add tries, passives that level for more tries and other bonuses. It will be much smother on the release. Hope you will like it then and change your negative review!!! Also a reminder: Quick time events are not mandatory. You can skip them. The ones in the story have unlimited tries.[/quote}

"The only good bug is a dead bug!" Stumbled upon this game by pure chance 3 days ago. Darkest Dungeon meets Starship Troopers -ish game? Well sign me up and let's take a look. Fast forward and I have to force myself to stop playing it because 1.0 is around the corner. Absolut gem. Haven't been this hyped in a long time <3

So if you stick with one squad on higher difficulties the game is fine. The problem is that, ostensibly, you will need more than one squad at some point as there is a fatigue rating which means that you will have to take them out of rotation whilst they recuperate. The fact we have more than a minimum squad also suggests they are expendable. I like impactful failures resulting in catastrophic conditions like death but only providing they are earned due my own lack of forethought, attention to detail, mistakes, or ignorance and not a result of RNG, scripted narrative, or conditions beyond my control. It is also nice when there is the ability to recover, regardless of difficulty, from such outcomes. XCOM, as an example, was excellent in this regard even if it was prone to, shall we say, some intermittent and unlikely occurrences. If, however, you try to prepare for the anticipated need for future personnel by using your higher level squad for away missions while using the new recruits for the training missions you will either lose some in the process or you will have to save scum the levels to get them through it. Maintaining parity of your units isn't merely difficult, it seems to be discouragingly prohibitive. The instructor isn't a tank and has no way to control aggro, meaning your entire squad is vulnerable all the time. Not that it matters since he spends an inordinate amount of combat being stunned because he seems to have absolutely no resistance beyond dodge to being staggered. The enemies prioritize weak armor and low hit points, which is the very definition of low level recruits. Additionally, and I am not exaggerating, more than half of the encounters are ambushes as a result of using new recruits with low initiative. Enemies invariably stun the high level mentor unit depriving him of his first turn (and more depending upon what random recruits you get, what gear you have for them, and how long combat lasts) then proceed to concentrate on one recruit at a time and kill them. On two fights, out of maybe ten, I lost one recruit each before they got a turn. By lost I mean he was downed for the encounter, but you can only being a unit back from being downed once per mission on which there seems be a half dozen to somewhere south of ten encounters in all. So it looks like these missions were balanced with the assumption players would bring their best and most experienced units. I would happily do so, except away missions seem to give no discernable experience whatsoever. On my first run I tasked my level one units on three missions and they were still level one at the end of them, while my advanced units were graining a minimum of a level and sometimes more than two on active missions. I had five units at level five and three at level one. That is a huge gap. Hence why I began again with the idea of fielding my low level units only to find out that while you can eke through the first training mission you get absolutely wrecked right out of the gate on the second one. By wrecked, I mean all three (level 2) recruits were downed in the very first fight while the mentor's armor hadn't even been broken yet because he was ignored except for stun attacks. I didn't bother to finish the missions since I felt confident the moment any of the recruits died I would simply be entering a death spiral which would eventually see the whole team wiped. It was obvious enough at that point I didn't really need to see it play out. I want a challenge, but units dying before they get turns, or only after a single turn, is mostly just disappointing since no combat on higher difficulties is determined in a single round with fresh recruits although if you know you are doing and with a little luck you can end most of them in two. Maybe I am being impatient. Maybe after the training missions there are multiple options to choose from which allow for grinding assets/experience/whatever at a comfortable pace. Maybe thinking ahead and trying to approach things strategically is actually working against me. Don't know, but since there are no hard saves, I am not able to experiment and discover these things for myself without starting everything all over again on a fresh run. . .And you know what, at this point I have put in too much time to want to start over, but not nearly enough to fall in love with this title. Especially since, at this point, I haven't even come within line of sight of a plot to all this yet. Shelving it for now, will return to it in a year or so. These are good devs, I am sure they will sort it out, but for now it is just not for me.

I was really excited to check this game out. I like the premise. It’s a mashup of games I already love, and I have hundreds of hours in XCOM and Darkest Dungeon. The bug designs are cool, the music is great, and the setting is cool. That’s where the positives ended for me. On my first mission I already saw what a slog this game is on hard mode. Enemies being decently beefy is fine. The problem is the ones in the back heal and spam evasion constantly. Every encounter turns into a slog because if you don’t dump enough DPS in a single turn, they just heal the damage back off. If you use a support skill on your turn, then you’ve cut your DPS in half. If your damage dealers miss some of their multi-hit attacks because the enemy just used a heal/evade, you wasted the turn. You spent it healing instead of doing enough damage, so they just heal it all back off and then attack. It’s also unclear how panacea actually works. I still took bleed damage with it on. Player healing output sucks. Armor regen and health regen exist, which is fine on paper, but enemies heal better than you do and they hit with good accuracy. Healing even has cooldowns on the medic class. You essentially have worse healing tools than the enemy, especially when they’re already putting out solid damage. You have to anticipate who’s going to get hit and who needs the regen in advance. Early game it’s hard to even hit the 10 cap on regeneration for that burst of healing or armor. I slogged through mission one and beat it. Mission two’s first encounter was another slog. I don’t think I played it badly. My marksman just ate horrible RNG and died. When the whole enemy pack attacks in one turn, it’s hard to keep anyone up. I finally slogged to the boss. What the hell was that thing?!? Over ~400 health plus support units. Because I lost my marksman I couldn’t reliably reach slots 3 and 4, so I was stuck doing chip to the backline every now and then. The mission only lets you bring three allies. I recruited a sniper mid-mission after the marksman died, so I was running tank / healer / sniper. The sniper can’t even use the sniper shot multiple turns in a row. You’re stuck on the pistol until the big hit is off cooldown, and even then that attack doesn’t do much. As useful as a medic without a heal. I cleared the adds and got the boss to about 200 before it started wiping the party. I didn’t lose because I was down a character. The boss is just overloaded. Two attacks at 17 a hit, 100% accuracy, they never miss. Nothing is surviving 34 damage a turn when your HoT and armor regen are on cooldown and not enough to keep up. As soon as the tank and sniper went down I closed the game and requested a refund. I already knew how the rest of it was going to go. Apparently early game on hard is brutal and unbalanced. I’m not interested in trying it on an easier difficulty after that. The slog left a bad taste in my mouth. Not a Reccomend

Это просто потрясающая тактическая RPG, которая тебя увлекает с первой миссии. Первое, что бросается в глаза - это то, что анимация твоих бойцов и твоих врагов в бою соответствует умениям, нет никаких взмахов в воздухе чисто для обозначения - это воодушевляет проходить миссии бой за боем и прокачивать своих бойцов. А система прокачки в игре просто шикарная - у каждого класса бойцов своё дерево развития классов, а у каждого класса целые деревья умений. На каком-то этапе я осознал, что некоторые умения с предыдущих классов прокачиваются дальше и меняют тактику полностью для твоего бойца. Насчёт миссий - они здесь очень разнообразные, хотя и построены на простой механики прохождения лабиринта. Прохождение миссий - это не только бои, но и мини игры и поиск скрытых ресурсов. Конечно, пришлось немного наловчиться, чтобы потом без проблем выигрывать в мини играх. В общем, если вам нравятся игры по типу XCOM, Darkest Dungeon и Disciples и не пугает простенькая рисовка, то Tenebris точно вас заинтересует.

Good game, like darkest dungeon in space but easier, or at least less tilting. ♥♥♥♥ the warrens, anyways. The macro is shallow but it may deepen with development. Gene therapy is overtuned though. If this is supposed to be a strategic game, nerf some of the fatigue and status management techs.

It's fine, a 6/10 I guess. Squad based, very slow and limited scope turn-based but not tactical RPG. The game needs dozens of tweaks and fixes, but here are a few: 1. Level curve is unbelievably boring and grindy. Expect a 20-30 hour investment minimum before you get to the "fun" part. Classic "fun last" design; not well thought through or balanced. 2. Skills feel light and impactless, upgrades change features by incremental amounts until late game where they completely change the nature of play. 3. Combat is SLOW for no reason. "x3 speed" doesn't seem to work; you get the privilege of watching the exact. same. animations. over and over again at molasses speed. Unless the devs believe watching a unit take a shot, or waiting 30 seconds for the enemy to take their turn, this is an unforgivable choice. Speed up should be 10-20x as fast. If the game is about decisions, then don't punish me by making each decision take. ten. seconds. to. happen. Another fundamental error in design. 4. Status effects are the dominant way you affect gameplay, and they take place AFTER enemies get a full turn. Absolutely not. Status effect timing should trigger the moment they're applied and at the TOP of initiative. The most common experience of status effects is that they're eclipsed by just shooting the mob. Boring, unfun decision. 5. Status effects part 2: enemies spamming fight-prolonging status effects across their entire team isn't interesting. Remove it, or put the "steal all status effects" abilities into the first skill tree to give it some counterplay, or force them to apply status effects onto single allies at a time. God this is such a brainlessly boring choice when there's nothing tactical about it; enemies WILL always get a turn so why put "priority behavior" in...? Eyeroll. The art is fun, the game design sensibilities are dumb. You'll find yourself wishing you'd just gone to work or taken a nap instead of investing in this thing. Will help you forget that time passes and we're all finite for a few hours though. Edit: before he deletes it for being such a fumble, here is a genuine hand-to-god quote from the dev (trying his best to win the "most tone deaf" award): "3. Speed boost works in the game—you just haven’t figured it out yet. To use it, you first need to select one of the three speed boost types (found a bit higher up in the settings), and then set the speed to 2x or 3x."