Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Trials of Fire

[Parabalus]

I just don't know what he means by "the quality of a piece of gear gives you more redraws". Which gear? I thought it's only dependent on your morale level.

I would have to boot the game back up to confirm, but I think high level gear can bestow extra redraws.

It's a stat right next to Armour, each gear may or may not have it.

It's not woke nor controversial so codexers dont speak about it.
Nice review, probably will buy it.

It depends on your definition of woke and controversial. The two heavily-armored (mostly) front-line classes are women.

You aren't wrong, that alone would trigger some of the more insecure specimen here.

You can also change the gender of each party member.

 

[Naraya]

You can also change the gender of each party member.

How many options are there to choose from?

 

[True Ukrainian]

There's also furry party members too!

 

[MicoSelva]

Thanks for the review, Lacrymas . I had this game on my broadly defined radar, but was reluctant to try it because I bounced off Slay the Spire. Good to know this is rather similar to Gloomhaven, that is more my cup of tea.

 

[Lacrymas]

You can also change the gender of each party member.

You can, but that doesn't change their appearance, only how they are referred to in the text portions.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Hmmm... can't say I like card games. Aren't there MTG games that also do this?

 

[Lacrymas]

Do what?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around
That's what it's all about!
I'll do the Hokey Pokey
I'll do the Hokey Pokey
That's what it's all about!

Put your

Spoiler

Or....


but that has nothing to do with the topic.

 

[LibertyRansom]

I have about ten hours in and finished the water gem quest and one other short quest. It's pretty good. I'm playing on Normal, and it took me three attempts to beat the water gem quest. The dragon end boss is a tough son of a bitch. Decent challenge on normal.

 

[Iskramor]

It's not woke nor controversial so codexers dont speak about it.
Nice review, probably will buy it.

It depends on your definition of woke and controversial. The two heavily-armored (mostly) front-line classes are women.

You aren't wrong, that alone would trigger some of the more insecure specimen here.

Or maybe devs dont know what sexual dimorphism is?

 

[Grunker]

Though the game has an interesting premise and a lot of cool concepts going for it (especially the way it does gear), ultimately I found that it had the exact same problem as many TCG roguelikes: there's only one, valid playstyle, and it's combo.

That makes for an incredible one-note, repetitive experience, because in every single run you start your goal is to assemble these broken combinations to essentially go over the top of your opponents.

Compare this to the much more complex experience of a TCG draft, where you might be going for an aggro or control deck, or assembling a specific build-around deck that eeks out value, or tries to attack something other than the enemy life total or whatever. You flow with the experience of the draft, changing your route multiple times based on your pick-ups. In these games you only do this in so far as you get cards that push you down a different combo. The point is always to combine two or more cards that produce over-the-top results. As such, things like value, control and aggressive cards only matter in-so-far as they get you through the early game or protect your combo.

For me at least, that's where StS-likes fall flat, every time. And unlike StS, Trials doesn't have enough depth or variance in its combo-centric gameplay.

I played it for something like 5 hours before I was dead sure it wasn't for me.

 

[Lacrymas]

It depends on the difficulty. I managed to complete the Water Shard quest on Hard with only the Hunter being decent and the other two just there to stall for time. On higher difficulties, yes, you need to combo with all party members. But that's good?

 

[Parabalus]

There seems to be an abundance of infinite combos in the game, even without trying particularly hard. I'm sure there are videos of people killing 20 boss encounters on the infinite quest etc. with 100% reproducibility.
I got bored with alchemist-sin-warrior at 5x or something.
Game was very fun up until that point though.

 

[Grunker]

I think it's very limiting. The Limited formats of most card games offer a much bigger variance in the strategic approaches you can take. For some reason StS-likes don't offer anything but combos. I personally don't find combos to be a very appealing strategy because it feels more like I'm playing solitaire and hoping for all the pieces to come together. As opposed to other strategies that seem to have more dynamic interactions with the game's systems. I'm not against combo-strategies in TCGs, but I find it odd that they're often all there is to these StS-likes.

Yes, this game's combat systems are very reminiscent of Gloomhaven's

I guess I can see the inspiration, but from someone who's been playing Gloomhaven non-stop since the game's full release, the actual end experience of playing them are nothing alike.

 

[Lacrymas]

Of all the things you can complain about, this seems extremely bizarre. In which RPG would you not want to work together with your party members? Unless I don't understand what you mean by "combos".

 

[Grunker]

Of all the things you can complain about, this seems extremely bizarre. In which RPG would you not want to work together with your party members? Unless I don't understand what you mean by "combos".

Work together with your party members? Wat. Are you seriously not understanding what "combo" means in the context of a TCG?

 

[Lacrymas]

Of all the things you can complain about, this seems extremely bizarre. In which RPG would you not want to work together with your party members? Unless I don't understand what you mean by "combos".

Work together with your party members? Wat. Are you seriously not understanding what "combo" means in the context of a TCG?

I guess not?

 

[Grunker]

Dude have you played a TCG before? I'm not using hyperbole here - it's like if someone didn't know what "crafting" meant in the context of an RPG. Or what 'micro' was if they were playing StarCraft. An utterly basic principle so fundamental it's kind of difficult to even talk about the genre without mentioning the concept.

"Combo deck" is a term for one of the basic, primary strategies in a trading card game. Combo decks aim to win the game using a relatively small number of cards that often win instantly, very quickly or produce very powerful results when combined (hence the name "combo"). As such, a common motif of such decks are that they are build around a small subset of the cards in the deck and their interactions, whereas the remaining cards are mainly utilized to find the important cards or protect the player until the "combo" has been "assembled" - that is, until the cards that matter for the combo have been drawn and can be played together.

 

[Lacrymas]

I've honestly never heard of that term before in the context of TCGs, but I also haven't played any extensively, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Yeah, that does happen in ToF.

 

[rashiakas]

Not sure how you could compare this to GH.

 

[Lacrymas]

Not sure how you could compare this to GH.

It's not a 1-to-1 comparison obviously, but like I said it's more akin to Gloomhaven than stuff like Slay the Spire for example. That was the question anyway, whether it's like Slay the Spire, and it isn't.