Highlands

This is a pretty neat game with a board game feel with the turn based gameplay, the simple mechanics and the heavy emphasis on resource management. It starts out simple but as you'll soon get more characters and abilities that you'll have to manage to defend multiple fronts at the same time. Doing that may not be hard, but doing it the best you can is a very fun challenge.

There are two big downside to this game. First, the UI which is very poorly designed and often buggy. Some mechanics are not well explained, and some are even harder to understand because the UI doesn't convey really clearly what's going on. Second, you will not feel like you have any real choices in strategy until like 3 or 4 missions in when your characters start unlocking interesting abilities. Until then it's just micro-managing characters and trying to optimise resources. And if you're not playing on hard, you can probably just walk forward until you find your objective.

(Also, the fights are pretty much just outnumber your opponents and roll dices. It's not a real downside since the game is more about the resource management than this but it can really be a bummer depending on what you're expecting going into it.)

7/10. Pretty fun for what it is.

If you enjoy strategic thinking then you'll love Highlands. It doesn't have astonishing graphics or an epic narrative, but the game is really fun and addictive. Most importantly it is well paced with an ending that comes before you tire of the game's mechanics. It is well thought out and well made, definitely worth a play.

There is no reason this simple of a game should be this much fun and very challenging. I have gone back to this game a few times. I hope the developer makes more. The visuals are appealing, the game is relaxing, but the difficultly comes in the late game. You will think you can master it in the beginning but you will be surprised. Enjoy.

It's a quite simple tactical rpg game with pleasant gameplay but not much going on plot wise. You take control of one of the rich families of the fantasy world of Highlands which is under attack from a mysterious threat and make your way through the area beating everything standing in your way, liberating everyone, till you reach the end of the road and confront the Big Bad. So yeah, really mediocre. There's quite a lot of RNG involved in this as well.
Something I liked about it was how some maps forced you to adjust your playstyle as you didn't have access to some stuff like Taverns(recruit heroes) or Farms/Markets(produce Food to heal). It was a fun challenge.
The strongest point of this game is it's artwork, it's a very pretty game in general. However there's only like 10-15 unique characters, everything else is just generic NPCs/mobs which is a shame.

Highlands is a well-presented and moderately-challenging strategy/tactics game with RPG elements.

There are 7 chapters + a prologue (tutorial), each played on a risk-like game board of interconnected tiles. The player's units fight for control of these tiles with the aim of each chapter (usually) being to occupy a certain tile. Combat, like in risk, is a game of numbers - total strength of player's units vs that of enemy units and a dice roll for damage dealt. There are abilities to use and items to equip, units gain levels and stats and additional units can be recruited periodically.

Good for a few hours on the lower difficulty levels if you're only after the story, plenty more challenge on the higher difficulties for many more hours of gameplay. Unfortunately, beyond the difficulty settings there is no replayability as the story is linear.

This is a hidden gem in Steam's library.

Highlands is a turn based strategy game of resource management. Each turn you allocate your forces around a node-based map, setting them to various tasks and utilizing various special abilities. When you're satisfied, you execute, time rolls forward, and you see the results of your actions. These results are often very predictable, if you're doing things right. Your enemy isn't chance, its your own planning skills. If you fail its probably no one's fault but your own.

At standard difficulty I've found it challenging enough that, were I to make an actual, serious mistake, I would probably lose. But the game is comprehensible enough that I've been able to reason my way through logically. This isn't XCOM where no matter what you do, sometimes you fail a 99% chance. This is more like a logic puzzle, where, if you fail, its on the merits.

If I had to criticize, I suppose I would note that there is a bit of a mismatch in art direction. The characters in game are very happy and cartoonish- plucky lady engineers, gentle and wise academics, can-do soldiers with a positive attitude- but the story and between level artwork is often grim. I won't spoil any of the story, but it really can be a jolting difference if you're reading along.

That said, I didn't find that it ruined the experience in any way, and at $5 this is really worth it if you've got any sort of interest in strict but fair strategy games.

Turn based, dice roll strategy game. I liked it, to bad it is a bit short but the price accounts for that. Took me about 8 hours to finish. Not a perfect game but all by all i enjoyed it 7/10.

Recommended if you are into turn based strategy games and you have a weekend of nothing to do :o)

I'm unsure what made my experience with this game so miserable, while reading the other comments. It's likely I'm just bad at strategy. If that is not the case for you, disregard what I am saying here.
For me, the difficulty - or maybe RNG - was just too much. Playing on normal and being in the 7th chapter (I don't know how many there are, as that is when I threw in the towel), I find it unfair that the damage is calculated in such a wide range. If I have to "save scum" to beat the game, because some people dying equals an instant game over and because the damage is wildly random between 1 and 70 (with an average hp of 25-30) then the fun is gone for me.

I have to agree with the other reviews about the story and the art style though, which drew me in in the first place. If the mechanics would be at the same level, I'd change this commendation around immediately.

When I bought "Highlands" over a year ago, the beautiful art style had me sold on the idea, but I only started playing it this week for the first time. The description made me expect a roguelike style game with the prospect of a gruesome campaign with corpses behind me to save a country. Many corpses...

It wasn't that bad, but on the highest difficulty it was damn well trying, forcing me to consider the meat grind more than once during the build up of an initial base or to survive the resource gauntlet in mission 5. All points considered I am guilty of killing 3 allies on brutal, including the Hero unit Sophia of Bridgetown in the gauntlet of mission 5 to win against the final doomstack. No one died on normal and all achievements were earned in the first run to get familiar with the mechanics.
The game is only hard if you want it to and then it wants to eat you alive. For those wanting to experience the story, you can do so with all 'challenges' on easy - the current normal - or with some problems on challenging - the old normal. The story isn't anything to write home about though. It is an acceptable story for the scenario, but suffers from several instances of bad-writing. You will quickly notice them when they appear and break character or overshadow the actual scenario with illogical considerations. The many minor events during sector captures will also quickly reappear, falling short of telling a self-made war story. Your decisions also only have an immediate effect, none for the long run. This painfully shows a huge lack of diversity. There is no 'two runs, five versions' system in here, it is the same group of events and items in different sectors all over again. The game therefore has little replayability story-wise.
Where the game shines ultimately is foremost the challenge of brutal difficulty, but be prepared, the difficulty isn't joking! It will turn from a light-hearted strategy game to a complex puzzle with RNGesus as your worst enemy and best friend. But no matter what RNGesus does, knowledge of the mechanics and the right priorities of resources at the right time will carry you through brutal if you so dare. This games mechanics are able to counter RNGesus, most of the time.
(Tips: Militia is the one most broken ability in the game. Use it for area control + DMG. Pulling enemies in to secure the surroundigs of a sector to properly defend it is important. Never open too many new frontlines on higher difficulty! Stalling a mission at the end to equip for the next is also important.)

But aside of its beautiful soundtrack and visual style, as well as challenging gameplay if one should chose - with those being well balanced by the available mechanics - this wouldn't be a review without mentioning the bad sides of the game. And aside of the lackluster events and story which are okay for an indie title - but would get punished in a AA or AAA title -, this mostly concerns the performance, UI and controls.
So what did Burrito Studios mess up most of the three? The controls! A mouse has at least three buttons and that goes double even for over ten year old mouses. Yet, the game wants you to click and drag the left mouse button until it is dead. And for older mice like mine, the button is already weary. So colour me intrigued that they didn't allow the player to right click the target tile to move the selected heroes to the chosen field. You have to drag and drop them at all cost. If your mouse isn't weary before, this game wants to kill it. It is the click, hold and drag simulator. This costed me dozens and dozens of minutes each mission, especially in micro-management situations in brutal. Sure I can blame my old mouse, but dragging troops over the entire battlefield instead of right-clicking the target is not my short-coming. It is the game and the developers oversight to incorporate proper controls.
The second major problem of the game is the performance. Highlands isn't a graphic whore of the modern age and no number cruncher for mass scripts like Paradox games. Nonetheless it manages to need medium load times and tremendous times to calculate the previously mentioned drag and drop movements for each character. The time it takes the game to move your troops to the next tile if you move more than three at a time would be more than double the time it took to pick them... if it wasn't for the terrible controls. Most things in the game are quick and optimized, but the one thing you will do on higher difficulties often - moving your own doomstacks to counter the enemies - takes ages. The Q&A process clearly failed here. Be prepared to get unnerved by it if you accept the challenge of brutal.
The last major concern is the UI. As beautiful as the graphics are, even on the highest resolution, an army stack will quickly overcrowd your lower UI and can even go as far as to hide the end turn button. Leaving the selected characters out of the UI would have been the easiest solution to this problem. A player should always know who is selected. Afterall we have to drag and drop them by bad controls so we see them all the time. The round will also not end on a mistake, you can always take actions back. There was no need for it. Another mistake of the graphics department are the story pictures between missions. Just one word: Contrast. They fail to make the text readable against the background. They could have chosen the upper or lower black area to write or use a picture appropiate color. They did neither. So expect to do some close-up reading to decipher them. Further some of the speech text in the game dialogue scenes are shifted to the lower right border of the character and are misaligned. I am also pretty sure there were two or three sentences at the game start which lacked one or two words at the end altogether due to bad cut offs.

To be honest, the last part sounds more drastic than it is. The clunky UI, shifted text and bad contrast are disappointing, even for an indie game. The performance shows the code for troop movement could use some optimization and the controls just need a proper right mousebutton support. All of it could be easily fixed, but it will most likely never see a fix in this final release. Nonetheless the game itself is definetly worth the 10 bucks it demands and any sale is a just cause to buy and support Burrito Studios.

I can fully support this game in the name of all puzzle fans and armchair generals for a brutal battle of attrition with a relentless enemy on the highest difficulty. Or propose it for those loving a good music theme with some art to enjoy during a casual ride on normal difficulty (previously easy).
Six out of ten indie points for Burrito Studios for this kickstarter result. It would have been at least a seven without its problems and proper controls and for a better story and more event diversity maybe an eight. But as it stands it still is one of the good indie project examples in the sea of mishaps currently flooding the market... one I enjoyed.

Got this game on sale and I would reccomend doing that. The artwork and gameplay is interesting, but not enough to make me want to pay more then a few dollars for the game.

Pros
-Interesting game system that is actually pretty strategic.
-Unique story in a cool setting
-I wouldn't say the gameplay is that repetative since different maps require different strategy

Cons
-Very short, didn't take very long to beat the game.
-A little easy to manipulate that AI, but that's part of strategy I suppose
-Story is a bit simple. It's not a bad story, but there isn't a lot of depth to it

Overall, would have liked to see more depth to the story and characters

Mechanics are shallow. AI is meh. Only strategy is...lets keep loading more units!

Artistically, it's nice. But that's where the fun ends.

Thought this was a fantastic game overall and looking forward to more from the devs.

PROS:
- Really interesting combat mechanics which, once fully understood, are satisfying to use.
- The resource management aspect of the game is fairly basic to master as well. Overlook the importance of Leader characters at your peril!
- Very effective use of the gameplay so that you are forced into either digging in or going hell for leather in certain campaigns. It's the sign of a good game when you need to employ multiple strategies in order to beat a level.

MEH:
- Combat is no-frills: Don't expect epic battles and fancy graphics; think tabletop D&D.
- Perhaps a more diverse soundtrack would have been welcome, being that the music is rather prominent due to the lack of action.

CONS:
- Ending perhaps a little disappointing. The antagonist also had very little presence throughout the game until the very end

Picked it up during the sale and was only expecting it to be decent at best. Boy was I wrong; this game turned out to be amazing! It is pretty simple yet incredibly deep,

Other reviews complained about the difficulty but hailed its gorgeous scapes. The latter remark is became very evident as the sky-city steampunkish world came to life, an aesthetic that sort of reminds me of Bioshock Infinite. However, the complaints about the difficulty I have to strongly disagree (I should note that the developers did already address those complaints before I picked up a copy as they shifted the "normal" difficulty to "challenging" and have now created an easier "normal"). But after I beat it on the new normal I decided to give challenging a shot and that is where I discovered how the strategy of this game really starts to come out. Honestly, this game reminds me of the old Advanced Wars games for the GBA in the way that it is pretty straight forward and easy to follow yet requires a ton of strategy and maneuvering of forces.

I'm now going through the game for my third time on the "brutal" difficulty and I have to say that I'm still loving it! Only thing I can knitpick is that their is no skirmish mode or challenge missions outside of the story mode. But as is this game is well worth the money, so lacking those other things only gives me hope that the developers are still working!

The setting and style are fine. The story is not bad, but nothing special. The mechanics is all right, but shallow - there’s not much to explore in terms of developing your characters or your districts. It’s not a bad game, but it has little new to offer and it gets repeptitive too quickly.

It reminds me of Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville, with somewhat more stylish graphics and story.

This is probably one of the best hidden jewels all over steam...
If you like storytelling games with a strong tactical and role play element...search no more,This is it!
It plays a lot like a board game,but with a type of artistic quality and simple mechanics only possible in a computer game.
My main reason to make this review,is related to the fact of how little attention it was able to get...If you were looking in the first weeks,during and after release,you probably know"HIGHLANDS",if not...it can be noticed just by chance.In fact there is no real excuse for not to play(beautiful game with hy reviews and a very fair price)...if only pepole could actually see it...!?!

+ Beautiful graphic
+ Decent story line
+ Easy to learn

- Low replayability
- Combat can become repetitive

Does the game worth $14? problably not. So, wait until it go onsale before you grab it.

Wonderful little game. While short, it is worth your time to enjoy this title.
The art and vision of the game makes me wish I could watch this as an animated movie or series. The only 'downside' is its limited duration and replay. Its a great story, and it left me wanting to spend more time in the world this game paints, but not enough to replay the same missions over and over.

A surprising little strategy gem. This is a turn-based strategy game that owes more to abstract wargames than it does to the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics or King's Bounty, complete with somewhat esoteric game mechanics, abstraction of combat, and emphasis on supply lines and areas of control. But where I usually find the gameplay of grand war games to be inaccessible at best, Highlands' mechanics are clean and simple to understand, and within a couple of chapters I found myself adroitly maneuvering my units toward victory.

The good:

The art is gorgeous, hand-drawn cel-style, and while the character portraits and chapter interstitials aren't animated, they don't really need to be: the art stands well enough on its own.

The game mechanics are unique, but not obtuse. I found them easy to understand and manipulate, and I really enjoyed the feeling of mastering a new and unfamiliar system by the end of the game. If you enjoy learning systems, this will scratch that itch.

On the Challenging difficulty (second-hardest out of four), the game is--apropriately enough--challenging, but not frustrating. I rarely felt like I was being handed a victory, and the objectives and parameters of each of the game's seven chapters mix it up enough that I kept having to devise new strategies.

The game moves at a very fast clip. The only downtime you'll ever really experience is when you're contemplating your next turn. Menus are smooth and fast, though I did find that the item/equip menu was a little clunky. Animations are fast, clean, and descriptive, and the game tells you everything you need to know and doesn't dilly-dally about it.

The meh:

The music is okay, but nothing exceptional. It's mostly inoffensive, light, airy background music. It fit the theme and accompanied the game well, but I don't think I'll be humming it months from now.

There is a fair amount of RNG in this game, as the outcome of combat is determined by a dice roll modified by the combatants' relative combat strength. The game's tutorial does a good job of instructing you on how to gain the edge in combat, but you may well run into situations where you have to rely on an against-the-odds roll in your favor to proceed. The game is generous with autosaves, but you may end up save-scumming a few battles if you're particularly unlucky.

The writing is servicable at best. It gets the job done, but it's mostly exposition dumps and the characters never develop much personality. The copy editing is rather poor, too; time and again I saw missing punctuation and bad sentence structure. The developers would have been wise to hire a line editor to mark up their script beforehand. The pacing is also awkward. In short, don't play the game for its writing or story.

Conclusion:

Despite its flaws, I really enjoyed the time I spent with the game. I thought it was just the right length, it provided just the right challenge, and was engrossing enough that the hours flew by while I was playing. I would recommend this game to anyone with an eye for strategy games, especially anyone who is interested in learning new systems.

hi folks, to start with as i brought the game my expectations were going in the direction of the banner saga.

well, after playing this game for 70 min i can say a good voice over would have done wonders to the game.
you need to read a simple story thats quite boring as you start off and the combat is a simple back and forth mechanic.

so you got some fighting units you crowd them in one place attack, then run to the backlines let the enemy take back the territory while you heal up. after healing you attack same spot again. because the enemy gets only every 9 turns reenforcements, thats the way to go mainly.

theres some more gameplay happening, but in the end only to make you play more rounds than you really need to.

most epic boring. was in the 3rd lvl not so far thats true bro!

if you looking for a good game, like 90% dont pick this up. i would give the game something around 70%. and 70% means for me if i would have playtested it before i wouldnt have brought it :)

i will test it some more hours if i can take it and maybe change this post

so guys bb & gg

The 'thumbs down' isn't me saying it's a bad game, but rather that it hasn't impressed me enough to make me recommend it. I'll return to this view if what I see later changes my opinion.

As of this review, I've only completed the first few levels, and played only 3-4 hours. I'm posting this as a brief list of criticisms. But first, the good:

It's got a pleasant aesthetic, and information is generally clear and easy to parse. The basic mechanics of the game are simple, yet hint at a greater depth, and the random nature of the combat does help, even if it makes some choices become
choices between playing safe and slower, or slightly faster and possibly suicidal. I also absolutely love how snappy and quick the main menu is.

Now for the bad.

• The inventory UI is terribly clunky. It shouldn't take a dozen clicks just to take items from two characters, and switch them around.
  
• There are no hotkeys for the few menus the game has.
  
• The fights seem to be exercises of patience, rather than tactics. With how the early levels are set up, it's not a challenge to win, just really time consuming.
  
• I'm more than 3 hours in, and it's like the game doesn't know how to throw a good curveball. I've seen 3 different enemy "types", but each is just a bigger number with a new icon.
  
• Selecting character icons on the map is clunky at best. I get that they want a more compact look, but it just makes selecting them more difficult than it needs to be because you need to first hover over the bar of icons, watch it expand, then trace the cursor along the bar to the character you actually want to select. Maybe space them apart a bit more and have them stack vertically as well.
  
• The writing's mostly just a bunch of exposition dump. None of the characters show much personality through their dialogue beyond the bare minimum. It's got some nice moments, but not enough to make me look forward to reading it.
  
[*] The 'quit' button is very delayed, taking several seconds to finally close the game while leaving the rest of it completely interactable while it's closing, even letting you resume playing the game before being cut off by the window closing.

Alright, two hours into this bad boy, and I'm comfortable reviewing.

Highlands is a Risk-esque resource management/strategy game with RPG elements, to lay it out at its core. While the pics provided up there might make you think it's very simple, there's a lot more depth than I thought there would be.

Gameplay: You have armies that you shift around different areas, and the entirety of your army are heroes. There are four classes: combatants, leaders, academics and mechanics. Combatants' sole purpose is to fight, to add greater numbers to your army. Leaders develop the lands they're on, allowing those lands to generate resources for you. Academics heal your people, simply put. Mechanics fortify areas and also craft items that can be equipped by your heroes. As they level up, they get stronger, acquire different skills and increase in health. You can carry a few minor heroes over with you between games, usually the best leveled ones.

For those who've played Risk, the battling is very much like that. Force on force. Now, you need to get used to two things: you're going to lose heroes, and you're going to lose land. I've seen a couple reviews mention this game is hard, and while it is, it becomes easier once you realize both lands and minor heroes are disposable. Heroes become disposable (the non-important ones, anyways), so you usually shift the brunt of damage to them, while trying to win a battle of attrition and keep your strongest units and critical units intact. In fact, the entirety of this game is a battle of attrition. You fortify some places that serve as choke points, while leaving other lands open so you can lure armies in away from the big armies sitting next to them.

Sounds easy so far, right? Well, not so fast. Every...I think it's 9 turns, enemies populate every land the enemy owns on the map. Never enough to truly be of concern, but enough to reinforce the big armies and keep you on your toes with the smaller lands so that you don't lose something you didn't mean to lose. There are also warlords, who are generated every once in a while and move through the map just like you are. It keeps the pace up and ensures that unless you're sitting at the end of the map, you're gonna have to keep moving and keep attacking.

All in all, it turns into a much more complex strategy game than I was expecting, though I still think a little more flexibility needs to be in the actual combat itself.

Aesthetic: As you probably suspect, the aesthetic is very well done. While the music isn't quite Supergiant-esque, it's still adds a pleasant ambience to help keep you frothing at the mouth in frustration. The cartoonish graphics are great, even in the more grim moments I've seen across the game. There's really nothing to nitpick at here, though I do wish there more character designs for each class. I know that there are dozens of designs across the classes, but considering how many heroes you just throw away, I think there needs to be more variety. Especially in combatant.

Story: The story is quite simple, but enjoyable nonetheless. The characters aren't completely one dimensional, but aren't exactly complex either, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The game has its little random events here and there, and there are little scenes at the end of each map that are well written enough. I will say that I have spotted some errors here and there within the script. Nothing laughable, but another look-over by an editor wouldn't have hurt. In case you're curious, there's no voice acting that I've seen so far, outside of the opening.

All in all, I'd say this is a good game if you're looking for something not too complex, but challenging. If you're looking for something very in depth, you might want to watch some LPs to decide if this will be enough to scratch that itch.