Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga

Hilariously bad plot (which can easily be skipped) but excellent strategic gameplay makes up for it. Fire Emblem gameplay but with honestly much better strategy elements.

Niche Army Mangement Autobattler. You put different units in an army and have them autobattle the enemy. Looks like fire emblem but needs some micromanagement for squad building with different combinations. Graphics look dated but the gameplay is 10/10 if you like the genre.

First impression was:"Good game. Some flaws, but fun." Then the credits rolled and I was very much impressed. For how few people worked on this game, the adjective "good" no longer suffices. It's excellent. Let's get the flaws out of the way first: Squad management feels a bit cumbersome. For example using items: First, you have to go into the squad menu and then into Squad Operations, because the Use Items option in the squad menu can only be used on units in reserve, then you pick a squad, where you hit Use Items, then you pick a unit. At this point, the inventory is not yet unlocked and the mousewheel will cycle through units instead, so you need to do yet another click to actually be able to browse your items. And that is a process you'll do a lot if you try to engage with the games mechanics, since every unit has an affinity and two traits for you to customize via items and you can have over 200 units. Gold promotions go extra. Reducing the number of clicks required by even just one here would have a big ripple effect in the long run. Now, that was the big one that actually negatively impacted my experience. There were a few other things, but they were so minor I forgot what they were after ranting my heart out about this one, so let's just move on to the good things instead. Where to start? Well, I personally immediately see the inspirations from Fire Emblem and Breath of Fire. There's a lot of depth you can use to your advantage with squad building, morale, terrain and commands, but you generally don't need to care about all of it, it's enough to make use of only some of it. The deeper you dive, the more you'll likely want to compensate with difficulty options. The sprites and animations are pleasing to look at, the character art for the cutscene dialogues is gorgeous, yet still tries to provide at least facial expressions. I bet the developers would have liked unique gestures as well, but it likely wasn't in the budget. I enjoyed the story and characters as well. The tropes are mostly well-treaded ground, but they are played straight, with passion and foreshadowing, making the payoffs satisfying despite often being predictable. Notably, what twists there are enhance the payoffs and don't detract from them, and I'm always glad when I see that because so many stories try to be quirky with their twists and then end up ruining the payoff they've been setting up for. You can find a bit nuance here and there as well, but it's clearly not the focus. Overall, I had a good time, therefore recommended.