Othercide is a crazy good Tactics RPG that not enough people have heard of

Othercide combines a roguelite structure (If all of your units, called Daughters, die, you get a game over and have to restart but get new boni that increase with every run)
with TRPG combat that is hard as nails for one reason: healing and reviving units is so expensive as to be impossible, and the amount of daughters you can recruit and level up realistically is very limited.
What that leads to is that every point of health counts, every move has to be optimized, every trash mob is a potential disaster, and every small mistake stacks up. Because health, and daughters, are a finite resource you will run out off. Which translates to constant engagement, constant strategizing, in a way that no TRPG before has achieved.

That gets supported by a really cool timecost system - hundred "time points" per daughter's turn you get hundred "time points", different abilities have different costs, if you use more than 50 points in one turn, your next turn is delayed, leaving you stationary and at risk, but firing from all cylinders and taking that risk can let you unleash huge combos. The risk and reward of that, especially in such a tense game where getting it wrong could spell disaster for the whole run., is addicting.
Monochrome + Red asthetics are unique and enjoyable, narrative wrapper seems a bit edgy at first, but is actually quite harmless and forgettable in a good way? It does not get in the way of the exceptional turn based combat. Othercide is really just a few more classes or character building options away from being an all time classic

Reviewed on Jan 20, 2024


Comments