Game News Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire Released

Interested to hear opinions on this game.

 

She is hot? any art?

 

I must admit that characters looks better than most cartoonish garbage artstyle in last decade.
And it's turn based, that's something?
Review when?

just give it time, they need to warm up tablet's pens first
then jump into abyss of tumblr

 

Bought it! Because why not?

 

Yeah, good old Andre Norton feeling/association.

I would prefer to see this guy http://www.mezzaninestairs.net/worlds-end/ made this game...

 

Fixed that for you.

 

Bought it. I just completed the first major battle, playing on the second highest difficulty setting. Took me a a few restarts before getting the strategy down. So far so good. It's mainly a "Banner Saga" clone in the sense that it has similar art and animation style and it's a turn-based tactical game with dialogue and "moral choices". Does *not* have any of the TBS elements I disliked (like alternating turns regardless of how many units you have). There doesn't appear to be any currency / resource management; Units level up automatically. Placement of your units matters a lot. The 2nd non-tutorial battle introduces the "ambush" mechanic, which is unique AFAIK.

They have an alpha demo you can DL on Indiedb, although things are a bit more polished in the actual game.

 

Damn, this was on my wish list too. I thought it was a real rpg, not a non-rpg with rpg-lite elements like Banner Saga. I'm sure people like whatever genre this is but it just isn't for me.

 

Reddit AMA from the devs: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/50hbs5/weve_just_released_tahira_a_tactics_game_about_a/

 

Does it also forcefully kill of characters like Banner Saga? Then I'm out.

 

No. Pretty sure I read something by the developers saying they're not doing that sort of thing. The choices you make may influence how battle scenarios play out in interesting ways but not by killing off major characters.

Also, I haven't played far but so far one of the win conditions for the battles has been Tahira and other "heroes", (stronger warriors) like the leader of the knights must survive or it's game over. The rest of the units are nameless expendable soldiers. However, if they do well enough to gain a promotion you'll carry them on to the next battle with you... So that's the main incentive to keep them alive.

 

Here's an LP without verbal diarrhea if anyone's interested:



I like the tasteful 2D art style and rotoscoped animation. It looks like the devs put a lot of TLC into it.

 

Great activity in this topic. Anyone tried it?

 

Visually reminds me of:




Will buy and give it a go

 

Dialogue and characterisation is pretty bad but the first battle on second hardest difficulty was about just right and the fights are quite nicely large and juicy. As heroes cannot level up also seems to have a little bit of Fire Emblem syndrome of you trying to save the killing blow for your units who actually can gain experience.

Two hours in and tl;dr somewhat better overall combat than Banner Saga but with a more juvenile story (it weirdly jumps between cutesy PG jrpg-esque banter then dips into subjects like genocide and rape) and very boring protagonist. Will see how this goes.

 

I can give a little bit of feedback for the game. I didn't get too far because they are currently addressing some bugs that are slightly ruinous at the moment (all upgraded units might drop back to their base stats after saving the game), so even for people who really want this I'd suggest waiting a few weeks for patches.


As Oscar mentioned, the characters are pretty disappointing. The dialogue feels a little juvenile any time they're addressing anything serious and the worst is when the writers are trying to be funny (they are not). It's hard to get attached to the people or the world and from what I've read from those who have finished the game, it never gets much better. Valiant effort. Need a better writer. Don't expect too much.

I found the gameplay engaging. There's a few Hero units who have to survive and your army is otherwise made up of generic units from a few classes that have unique skills. After enough kills, the generics can level up and start to resemble the Heroes more. It's similar to the Banner Saga in that characters have both an armor and health stat but damage is not dictated by health and you can move your whole army on your turn. Armor can sometimes be replenished but health can't. Each class has a set amount of damage they can do that will slightly vary based on a few things (if your units are flanking the enemy, if the enemy is backed by their own units, if your armor is totally gone, one unit can get a temporary buff, etc.). There's no losing your Heroes, though if your upgraded generics die then they're gone. The maps are huge and the armies are huge.

Your units are almost always better than the enemy units. On easier difficulties this generally leads to steamrolling opposing armies. But if you want a challenge, they've given you the option. I started the game on the hardest difficulty (because I like when games kick my teeth in), and man, they are not fucking around. I started the very first real battle with about 8 units going up against the enemy's 30. With a timed objective. Then the enemy got reinforcements (but by then I'd picked up a whole 4 extra reinforcements). And from then on it just got harder, with multi-stage levels and no chance to heal (I loved it. My teeth are fucking gone). Since your units are still usually stronger and the maps are huge, the way to deal with armies that are sometimes 5 times bigger than yours is to ambush, set up chokepoints, flank like crazy, keep the enemy from flanking, rotate units in and out, and make smart use of your Hero skills (which are pretty incredible), to name a few strategies. There's a lot of options. I did a little on the second hardest and it feels like a good challenge too, it isn't until Easy and Normal that it really becomes a pushover.

So yeah. Basically, story isn't great, though it is imaginative. Gameplay is solid. Once they patch it up I'm gonna head back into it.

 

Ok, whole back-story "ancient space civilization" and etc. is not explored at all. There are 0 signs of any ancient technology unless we count Tahira magic.

Also, almost nothing is explained at all.

 

That seemed to be the one interesting part of the plot too. Instead we get boring and unfunny dialogues with your horse.

 

That's too bad. I really like Dying Earth-type settings.

 

Seems an odd case of cool setting but trash writing.

 

http://www.mezzaninestairs.net/worlds-end/
How about this?

 

That may be the case and I hope you're right. But I do think episodic games need some kind of story hook to make a player look forward to the next release. The player can't be looking forward to finding out "what the hell was all that?"

As much as we admire and encourage independent developers, they probably face a unique challenge. At some point, someone needs the courage to say to the other handful of people in the room, "Hey... we need to hire a writer. We don't have experience as storytellers and we don't know how to tell the story we want."

But good writers aren't free. This may be a problem for Kickstarted games. Potential backers might be scared off by a sales pitch that includes "some of your money will be going to hire professional writers. Because we're coders - we don't know how to relay a story well!" So even when we see games with great gameplay, the presentation of the story feels like something your neighbor could have done. I don't mean to say all independent games are like this, and hey some coders have a talent for storytelling, but I'm seeing a trend in the direction of crude storytelling from smaller games.

Not that it really matters that much. I'm an unsophisticated barbarian.