Evertried is a by-the-books turn-based tactics roguelite with one distinguishing conceit: a "focus" timer that goes down in real time if you don't land hits on enemies long enough. And I'll give it credit for elegance: it uses the tension between planning out moves and building focus cleverly, with one upgrade track that gives passive bonuses when you have high focus and another that provides tools which require time and planning to activate. It's a very designerly construction, careful interconnections of mechanics all laid out just so.

Unfortunately, it's just not that fun. The focus timer adds stress and disincentivizes experimenting with activated effects. Choosing to ignore focus puts you at a clear disadvantage with half your upgrade options being useless. The de facto strategy ends up being "die to enemies enough that you mostly have muscle memory for how to navigate their attacks quickly" when what I really want a tactics game to test is my planning and problem-solving skills.