An SRPG that I had supported on Kickstarter.

Solid mechanics with some interesting strategy and character class elements, a few cool features and enemies that unfortunately don't always amount to much throughout the full game, and a nice plot change where the often used terrible SRPG end goal of "let's fight our evil rulers who overthrew the monarchy and restore the power of the old monarchy in the process" doesn't go so well.

You begin the game as the leader of a mercenary company with four of your friends. The current rule is in decline and a corrupt figure oversees the town that you are the local heroes of for your helpful actions and monster hunting work. Soon you end up being drawn into an assassination attempt, pushed to join an open rebellion with the support of a former inquisitor, paired with allies that seem like they might be just as bloodthirsty as the current imperial faction, and awakening to a destructive magical power that can be used in battle but that begins to corrupt its wielder.

The game plays as a typical SRPG where you control up to 10 characters on the battlefield. Characters get the usual movement and attack options and will unlock skills and spells over time, unique legendary weapons might come with their own skills that can be used, and characters equipped with a shield can also take a defensive action that increases their guard chance. When a character is attacked a unit can counterattack them if they are within range but unlike a game like Fire Emblem your counterattack damage is greatly reduced from a normal attack. All attacks will hit but depending on character skills in accuracy and guard and on their equipment they might block which will greatly reduce damage, critical hits are also possible and it is possible for the attacker to crit while also having the defender block the attack. Magic using characters set spells in a grimoire before battle, the number of spells available to equip depending on their class, their know spells depending on their familiarity with the type of magic they are using, and the number of uses they get with each spell being unique to the spells themselves.

Class wise, at lower levels each person starts as a commoner or noble. These two do the same things and allow for any type of weapon (two sets that can hold either a sword and shield, spear and shield, two handed axe, or bow), a single spellbook (elemental, dark, or light) to be equipped, and any armor type with each being stronger against certain weapon types or more defensive against physical or magic attacks (plate, leather, cloth). As you continue to use skills, attack, or take damage your skill rank in weapon, spell, and armor type increases as does your character's level. Eventually each characters skills will push them towards a promotion as a more damage focused fighter, magic using mage, or a more defensive and taunt focused squire. As you level up to the next tier you have the more advanced fighter and squire type but also gain access to class focused on archery and one for each type of magic. The final tier gets you access to 11 final classes that either favor certain weapon types, give you two types of archers, or allow for more unique combos like a duel sword wielding assassin, axe and elemental magic users, or a spear and light magic focused character. Each class has its own experience tree that will unlock skills as you level them up that will either be bonuses you always have as that class or as skills that you can equip to a character (you can equip five skills, up to seven in a new game plus run). Every character can become any class but some are heavily pushed in a certain direction by their set stat gains, each also has two master classes that will allow them to unlock an ability that they will always have equipped once you max out one of the two listed classes, they also each have a minor passive ability that is unique to them. As the game goes on you will eventually unlock up to four horses. Any character can use a horse with the horses sometimes adding to certain stats, adding two to a character's movement limit, and eventually unlocking an equipable skill that can increase your damage while mounted and allow you to continue moving after attack, though some terrain penalizes mounted characters more making the dismount option a helpful inclusion.

For some of the more tactical features of the game. Your formation can be important as every allied character near you raises damage by 1 and character will block enemy movement as any unit moving next to an enemy is not able to pass them until the next turn if they are able to move on the side and then away from the enemy character (like an attack of opportunity system but one that only prevents movement). As you grow your army to much more than the 10 character limit you have on the battlefield, you will be allowed to assign aides to each deployed character for minor bonuses. The aide character gives their assigned character their unique passive ability and a bonus based on the class that they currently are. This feature also allows you to continue leveling up 10 other characters in case someone dies during the story, temporarily leaves for the story, or dies when you have permanent death options on. Elemental magic and some bow attacks pairs with terrain environmental effects and enemy status, for example, making enemies wet to slow them down, hitting wet enemies or terrain with lightning or ice to create AoE damage or to freeze enemies in place, hitting poison with fire to cause an explosion, setting trees on fire to do damage to units on the space that would otherwise have gotten bonus defense, using water attacks to douse fires, etc. Each weapon using character (or the two battle mage classes) also have two weapon sets they can swap between, though this is a bit less useful than it can first appear outside of giving everyone a bow for ranged attack in the early game.

Enemy character basically play in the same way that your units do. They make use of most of the same classes and you will see them using the abilities that your characters get with those classes. They will take advantage of terrain and magic effects to freeze or set you on fire, they will use skills with their archers to keep them out of counterattack range, they will use knights to taunt, and their if you heavily wound one of their later game berserker characters they will punish you with very powerful attack skills that can almost one hit full health characters. Enemy commanders that take the form of unique characters don't have much difference than a normal unit except for being slightly stronger, their main difference comes from them taking about 90% less damage from attacks if they are within six spaces of any normal enemy unit, typically forcing you to take out their soldiers before going after them.

Some battles change things up by having you attack or defend areas that are under siege. These missions will have gates that you or your enemy have to destroy by moving units next to them and using the action that orders your troops to hit them with a battering ram. Ramparts near the gates give archer units a bonus to their attack range when they climb stairs to take the high ground. This is an interesting thing at first but as the game goes on nothing gets added to it, and near the end of the game you start being the one on the defense and by that time the variety of AoE and terrain poisoning spells that you have access to allows you to wipe out enemy troops gathered around the same area so quick and easily that it tends to confuse the game's AI. Battles against monsters are an interesting though oddly minor change of pace from normal combat. Monsters only appear alongside normal enemies one time and are more often used in side optional battles between chapters. Monsters have their own unique abilities and depending on their size have two or three weak spots on different areas of their body that allows certain types of weapons to do more damage while avoiding counterattacks. This could have been an interesting part of the game but the number of monsters you fight are either so small, have such weak main attacks, or are only attack you one or two at a time that it prevents them from ever being an actual threat when they appear. The game, thankfully, never makes the often seen terrible strategy game decisions like forcing you into missions where you have to protect suicidal allied NPC units.

Visually the battles look pretty good for being a lower budget strategy title, though mounted sword and spear attacks don't look very good. When animations are playing on the battlefield you will often see character surrounded by or fighting near enemy or allied soldiers, mostly this just adds some nice visuals to the battlefield but there are also a few unlockable skills that perform maneuvers with the soldiers with you though the game never goes as far as something like Fire Emblem Three Houses does where you can equip soldiers types with their own tactics or stat bonuses and they are visually just for show. Between chapters you can explore your armies camp and talk to characters, complete minor side quests, and find notes that reveals more information on characters or the world and this section looks fine too. There is some good looking artwork in some of the story cutscenes and the scenes where it shows characters moving around can look a bit awkward if actual combat is going on but it is doing more than you tend to see in most games like this. The only real negatives for the visuals come from some strange camera placement in certain scenes when you are talking to people and there are story moments that have the character models place against static background scenes where the game will actually momentarily freeze as characters enter or exit the scene by just popping into place or vanishing.

With the elemental magic having so many interactions with other spells or the environment, having access to wider AoE and further ranged skills, and allowing you to cast on tiles without enemy units to set up attacks in the future (and as a way to level up your characters when they otherwise would be doing nothing and with characters gaining them even more XP by hitting the ground or healing than hitting under leveled enemies) the dark magic doesn't really compare to how powerful elemental magic can be and is never as interesting. Though it does have it's share of useful spells with some being very powerful on certain stages.

The five number limit to your number of equipped skills when each melee weapon has both a weapon skill and weapon power skill, shields having a skill, armor having a skill, everyone having an extremely useful +6 health skill earned from the commoner/noble class, mounted combat skill if you are on a horse, and the odd choice of having to equip a new offhand for your second set (so if you have one magical shield you can only use it with one weapon then have to equip a common shield that could otherwise have been sold to the other slot) makes the act of switching between weapon sets fairly pointless the majority of the time unless switching to a bow for added range, pulling out a shield for slightly more defense, or during monster fights to exploit shifting weaknesses. The skill limit also makes mix and matching skills from a variety of classes something that isn't that useful (outside of giving everyone the +6 health ability and the potential use of the priests unlockable skill that just makes enemies ignore you if they have another target). Playing on New Game+ mode does give you an option for two more skill slots though which can allow for some new options. It also would have been nice to get 11 useable characters a chapter instead of 10 just to have the ability to deploy one of every unique end game class.

It's an all around solid title with a plot the isn't as generic as most games of the genre (or as idiotic as series like Fire Emblem's plots have gotten since the 3DS era) that focuses on war crimes and tactics, battles have some unique and fun elements with the biggest problems really just being that some eras weren't expanded on enough, visually it tries to do more than most games in the genre and ends up usually pulling it off fairly well, and the camp activities between battles gives you time to get to know the main cast and the side characters that you can recruit.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1662651394208440320

Lost Eidolons takes us on a journey into a fantastic world. The continent of Artemesia, once divided between sovereign kingdoms, now belongs to a feudal empire ruled by the aging Emperor Ludivictus. One day, a mercenary or mercenary woman aristocrat named Eden from the village of Lonetta falls victim to a conspiracy and is disgraced. With no other choice, she must join the rebels whose goal is to overthrow the tyrant conqueror and restore the old order throughout Artemesia. Unlike many other games in this genre, the story in Lost Eidolons has a predetermined course. For this reason, the game's lack of moral choices is a minus in my opinion.

In Lost Eidolons the game starts with creating a character. The game allows us to decide the gender and appearance of the protagonist and choose his or her profession. Then there is nothing left for us but to start the actual game. It is based on two main pillars. The first pillar is turn-based battles, which we observe from a top-down view. Victory can be achieved not only by sending well-developed soldiers into battle, but also by placing them in such a way that they can use the advantage that the terrain guarantees, for example, troops fighting from afar should be placed on the hills. As we progress, we unlock new troops and equipment for them. We also improve our character over time and get better equipment for him.

The second pillar of the game is visits to the camp, where we directly control the protagonist, watching the action from behind his back. Here we deal with the recruitment and training of soldiers representing various specialties, from warriors to archers to mages, establishing relationships with new characters and developing friendships with those already known, as well as other activities related to alliances and their execution. In the broadest sense, the camp is where we control in-game politics, but it's also where we have access to various interactions that advance the map and side quests. Lost Eidolons graphics are of a high quality for the release period of 2022, but with a rather bleak dark style. Gameplay is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by artist Clark Aboud, whose portfolio includes the Slay the Spire soundtrack.