This year has been absolutely killer for indie titles, and Dream Tactics is no exception.
You play as Neru, a human who has been summoned to the dream world to protect it from the Dream Eater. You explore 4 regions of the dream world, fighting pillows and collecting dream fragments to become strong enough to face the dream eater. It's a simple set up, but the light-hearted writing and characters make it a lot of fun.
Combat plays out on a tactical grid, with you controlling 4 characters against much greater numbers of armed pillows. Each character has a deck of card that determines which moves are available each turn. All of the mechanics you would expect are present -- action point costs for each action, discard and redraw, etc. There's a lot of flexibility in how you build the decks, and a huge amount of equipment options to make some really cool builds. I used 5/7 characters over the course of my playthrough, and each one had multiple viable ways I could build them, and played quite differently from the others. I played on hard difficulty, but it was only challenging until I'd recruited a 4th party member to fill out a full team. After that, as long as I kept my builds up to date, I didn't particularly struggle in any of the battles, though a careless move could easily lead to losing a character. My only real complaint is that some of the battles lasted too long for my tastes -- there could be multiple waves of reinforcements to deal with in battles that probably should have just been left quick and easy.
The other pillar of gameplay is exploration. There are chests hidden throughout each of the worlds with items and cards to obtain. These chests can be guarded by little obstacle courses that felt reminiscent of trap rooms in the 2D Zelda games. Dying in the trap room just sends you back to the beginning, so it's low stakes. I enjoyed the change of pace the exploration elements offer, but it may not be for everyone.
The last thing to mention is the ending of the game. Without spoiling anything, the final fight was one of my favorite across any tactical RPG I've played. Very cool. Unfortunately, the game just cuts to credits as soon as the fight plays out -- no final dialogue or wrapping up what happens. Most of the emotional pay off happened just before the final fight, but there needed to be at least one scene there for finality. EDIT: The devs added an epilogue scene a couple days after writing this and the ending feels much better now!
All that said, I think the game is an easy recommendation for fans of tactical RPGs, so long as the light-heartedness and style isn't too unappealing.
You play as Neru, a human who has been summoned to the dream world to protect it from the Dream Eater. You explore 4 regions of the dream world, fighting pillows and collecting dream fragments to become strong enough to face the dream eater. It's a simple set up, but the light-hearted writing and characters make it a lot of fun.
Combat plays out on a tactical grid, with you controlling 4 characters against much greater numbers of armed pillows. Each character has a deck of card that determines which moves are available each turn. All of the mechanics you would expect are present -- action point costs for each action, discard and redraw, etc. There's a lot of flexibility in how you build the decks, and a huge amount of equipment options to make some really cool builds. I used 5/7 characters over the course of my playthrough, and each one had multiple viable ways I could build them, and played quite differently from the others. I played on hard difficulty, but it was only challenging until I'd recruited a 4th party member to fill out a full team. After that, as long as I kept my builds up to date, I didn't particularly struggle in any of the battles, though a careless move could easily lead to losing a character. My only real complaint is that some of the battles lasted too long for my tastes -- there could be multiple waves of reinforcements to deal with in battles that probably should have just been left quick and easy.
The other pillar of gameplay is exploration. There are chests hidden throughout each of the worlds with items and cards to obtain. These chests can be guarded by little obstacle courses that felt reminiscent of trap rooms in the 2D Zelda games. Dying in the trap room just sends you back to the beginning, so it's low stakes. I enjoyed the change of pace the exploration elements offer, but it may not be for everyone.
The last thing to mention is the ending of the game. Without spoiling anything, the final fight was one of my favorite across any tactical RPG I've played. Very cool. Unfortunately, the game just cuts to credits as soon as the fight plays out -- no final dialogue or wrapping up what happens. Most of the emotional pay off happened just before the final fight, but there needed to be at least one scene there for finality. EDIT: The devs added an epilogue scene a couple days after writing this and the ending feels much better now!
All that said, I think the game is an easy recommendation for fans of tactical RPGs, so long as the light-heartedness and style isn't too unappealing.