Not even, like, a mage? How about you use the damage skills in a more interesting way and make a blood mage that sacrifices HP to heal the other units, but can't heal herself? THAT would be better. You get guns, a sword, and a spear and shield. Which leads me to the biggest downfall of the game. Oh, and there's no other way to regain HP other than sacrificing, and I can't fathom trying to raise more than three characters at a time over level 3, because that's how many you get to take with you on a mission. Like, they didn't want to copy the Xcom accuracy system, so here's something more annoying. Yeah, it's just pointlessly hindering for the sake of difficulty. Risk/reward has never felt so lame! Imagine playing Fire Emblem, or Xcom, and every time you shoot your gun you take damage. Skill that interrupt enemies cost HP, HP can only be regained by sacrificing a character of equal or higher level, therefore interrupt skills suck and you should avoid them, but they're also incredibly necessary for setting up big damage or saving other characters. In the first Era, the game's chapters are divided as such, the game tries to give you the impression there's a lot of depth, but I couldn't find it for all the confusion and tedium.

There's just a certain pause that it shares with Xcom that really grinds my gears and makes me want to skip my enemy's turns, especially the uneventful ones, which is many of them.

Often I'll move my three characters and then watch five enemies move up and do nothing, but their turns take twice as long as one of mine, as if the AI has to THINK about what it's doing, or the game's loading things needlessly. Not just the story and learning things, but the gameplay loop. My biggest gripe with the game is how slow it is. You're going to read a lot of stuff that explains nothing while playing a game that features a meager three classes against about twenty or so enemies from the length of the bestiary at the start, and everything takes far too long to be enjoyable. It sounds really neat, but the problem is in the presentation. There's an incomprehensible plot about the ravings of a lunatic and a pandemic and some supernatural otherworld stuff. There's creepy flesh monsters you kill in one swing that are only annoying because of how many the game throws at you for no reason. There's nothing scary in the first several hours, if anything at all. The game's problems start with this description going around. you get three classes that may as well negate the whole permadeath thing, dialogue that gets repeated over and over and over and says literally nothing ('When will their suffering end?' I dunno, lady, but you've said that at EVERY LOADING SCREEN FOR THE PAST FOUR HOURS.) and a difficulty curve that makes Xcom look like Skyrim. The art direction is top-notch, the story they drip to you sounds interesting, and I think this would all play out super well in an action game starring the 'Mother' character you get to mess with during the tutorial. A lot of the reviews here will say the same things, and that's because they're pretty much spot on. A lot of the reviews here will say the same things, and that's because they're I gotta hand it to this game, it looks really neat in trailers. I gotta hand it to this game, it looks really neat in trailers.

Othercide red mother