Children of Zodiarcs

Only positive is the gameplay.
You just get thrown in a couple of fights as a bunch of annoying kids without any explanation why

its pretty cool

Fun system. Wish party was more customisable

This is a story about a girl seeking freedom. It does not delve into the nature of the Zodiarc weaponry. The battle mechanics is innovative and I delight in having a new concept to consider. There are pretty strong boundaries to the kind of sandboxing I usually like, though. Having the choice to listen to the story as you progress is really nice, though.

yes with some caveats. The core game is very fun but after 20 missions the game gets very repetitive. You end up facing the same 3 factions over and over again and while the maps are fun, overall the enemies just move too damn fast for any real worry about positioning..

By the end all the enemies are moving faster then you, have a wide variety of melee and ranged attacks and are stacking so many bonuses I just stopped caring about what they were doing and sped through their turns.

The combos are good, the use of dice-building and deck-building was very fun and if you play through it fast you might not even notice the repetitive nature but I liked to grind for better dice and to level up before boss fights and that is where I started to really notice how ever fight felt "the same" even when given optional objectives likes "get to X" or "survive for Y turns".

Also while the general narrative of the story is fine the writers decided to go for a "Warriors" style where everything happens in 24 hours and the issue with that is that they try to squeeze too many twists and character arcs which by the end ended up breaking the narrative. The Warriors worked because the characters individually didn't go through a story arc, but the group dynamic did. As different members were killed or arrested the group dynamic would change but basically every character individually was the same start to finish.

Instead you have characters go from "we're all one family, i'd do anything for my family" to "i'm going to murder everyone" in the span of a few hours which is a tonal shift that would make GoT Season 6 blush.

In conclusion, it's a great mechanic and a solid game that hits a sharp decline right at the end but luckily by that point it's easy enough to just power through and finish the game.

good srpg with cards mechanic

Didn't find the game great, and would not recommend it.

The good:
- The art is good, characters look great, and thats a highlight for the game.
- There is also a system that levels enemies down to keep them closer to your level so you don't need to grind as much. For example, with it on my level 13-15 team was fighting level 15 enemies with it on, without it on the same stage I was fighting level 17 enemies. Its honestly a good system, and I would prefer this way of leveling enemies down to you to reduce the grind instead of keeping them close to you so you don't overpower every level. This can be turned off if you want to.

The bad:
-The combat system combines dice and card, and at the system seems nice at the start. But as the game goes on, and the enemies significantly outnumber you on each stage, you will start to dislike the double RNG. Gotta get the right card, then gotta get a good roll for everything to really work out. There is to many variables here to really have reliable strategies when the enemy healer leaves and fully heals themselves after your team beating on them. Some stages are no problem one shot, easy peasy. Some have the RNG render all your actions pointless as you are locked down and unable to move for a long while.
- The game is slow, very slow, and it feels like I am waiting more often to play than actually playing. This is due to two reasons. First, you only have 2 or 3 team members at a time, and you burn through turns in less than a minute. Second, the enemy has a huge amount of troops, 5-8 people taking a turn after you pretty often. And you just have to sit there and wait for them to take their turns as they all descend on you. There is a speed up button, but you have to hold it down, and it barely speeds things up. And the game has a tendency to stop whatever you are doing, zoom into the enemy leader for a quick line, and then return to the gameplay. This happens over and over again and really just drags things out. The final boss is the worst at this.
-None of the characters were particularly likeable, it kept me from really caring about the story at all. Except Xeno, he was alright.
-Customization isn't great here, a lot of the dice you would want to change and edit have pieces locked that you can't change and edit making it feel pointless. Really should have at least let me upgrade some of the pieces, but other than that I didn't want to grind out other dice to upgrade my dice. System feels to limited.
-The characters that you do control actually have a pretty boring attack patterns that never really feel great. The enemy has a huge variety of ranges, attacks, debuffs that made me wonder when I was gonna get something similar. Never really happens, cards only improve with better passives, but I never found any of the attacks particularly satisfying.

The only thing I felt once finishing the game wasn't satisfaction, but relief that it was finally over.

Tactical RPG with deck building.
+Well-written story and world
+Deckbuilding and dice customization offer a variety of ways to build your characters
-Animation is slow so you're constantly holding down the "speed up" button and that can often lead you to end a turn facing a character the wrong way, leaving them vulnerable to critical hits
-Grinding necessary in the back half of the game

Recommended on sale for fans of card/dice-based and tactics RPGs. It is a fun adventure even if it has some room for improvement.

+Art style, music
+Dice and card systems
+New cards and card abilities on level up
+Unique characters
+Variety of cards/abilities
+Customizable dice
+Optional battles for leveling/dice

-No voice
-Few enemy types
-A bit short, ~8-10 hours
-Linear, no meaningful choices
-Mediocre story
-Some balance issues, grinding needed
-Cannot replay story missions for achievements

Last things first: too much output randomness, insufficient UI for the tactical battles and too many different tactical customization features crammed in. Reasonably challenging, but the output randomness results in too much frustration rather than gameplay variance.

Longer version:
I will review this game as a tactics game with some strategy elements through bag building and dice crafting mechanisms. Even though the story was interesting enough, the RPG part of the game is much less interesting for me.

The opponents are controlled by a black-box AI, which can perform some rather unpredictable moves. This is problematic for the tactical gameplay. The UI presents the enemy range and damage stats via the numbers only, without visual aids on the board. Having to count the square spaces to see how much potential damage a character might receive in various positions is a chore: easy, not skill testing, boring but also necessary.

The output randomness adds frustration rather than tension to the tactical combat. I love dice and chance in tactics and strategy games, but only/mostly as input randomness designed to provide gameplay variance. Unpredictability of outcomes is at odds with a deep tactical gameplay.

The hard difficulty was reasonably challenging once the tutorial missions were over. But there's no other difficulty scaling. The game is not meant to be replayed anyways, so this is not a big issue here.

The strategic part of the game is rather playful, with various strategies possible in building different team comps. However, the tactical part seemed a bit too linear and limited. Like in many tactics games, the game design pushes you to "peel the onion" tactics, slowly and methodically eliminating the opponent one piece at a time. There are some cards designed to aid relatively more aggressive playstyles, but even they have to be played very cautiously. So the tactical part of the game is not very playful at all.

As an RPG game, this game doesn't do the common mistake of having game rules with a thematic priority as opposed to gameplay itself. The rules also don't feel abstract, so this is a happy medium of theme and gameplay in my opinion.

Resource units are a bit bloated: are 48 and 47 HP really different? It's not as criminal as in some other RPGs with units in thousands, but still not streamlined enough for me.

The game is full of meaningful decisions at every point, except the cutscenes which take a bit too much time IMO.

The levels are predesigned, so the game is meant to be played as a linear RPG game, rather than an evergreen strategy/tactics game.

The ruleset is unfortunately is too bloated for me. Do we really need deck building, dice set building and dice crafting in a single game. Especially since dice crafting such an under-explored mechanism in digital games, I wish the game would focus on that and really dig deep into its possibilities instead of cramming various mechanisms together. See another game which does this better: GodHood (I will update my review for that game soon!)

Otherwise, the rules themselves are easy to learn and communicated efficiently. I like that learning the rules is rather smooth and the player can quickly get into strategizing and tactical gameplay with a complete understanding of the gameplay.

Good music!

This game kind of breaks my "the correct strategy should be the fun one" rule, as turtling is incentivized. However, I have seen much worse versions of this problem in other strategy games...

It was fun for like a few hours, but the game isn't balanced enough and the enemy AI is predictable, so the dominant strategy is found quickly. Kept playing in hopes it gets better, but it never did.

Creative mechanics, but a bit grindy. Story is meh.
The difficulty of the hard is due to a combination of the RNG of the customizable dice and the fact that enemies are just higher levels. You technically can grind dice to mitigate the effect of over-leveling.

If there was a "Sideways Thumb" option or "Buy if on sale" I would choose that instead of recommended. Gameplay wise, the game has a really unique and intriguing combat system. However, if you're looking for a good story and characters to love, this might not be the RPG to look for. Honestly, I found the entire main cast (except someone who joins midway through) to be unlikeable. Thus, the side content and side stories actually ended up being more appealing when they were available.

Gameplay wise, the characters are good - it's just bad writing, dialog, and characterization that ruins the mood. It feels as if the main cast goes through no character development until the very end, and even then, kind-of, but not really? On the other hand, the side-story cast all seem to grow and move on in new directions which was interesting. There was a lot of potential with the story but it was just really hard to like the gang of child soldiers with a little too much bloodlust. The story also keeps hammering on these points - that they are kids, and that they are violent and constantly killing all these adults they hate. Well, the main character hates rich nobles specifically, yet she realllllly does not seem to discriminate who she kills.

The story also often gets in the way of the party customization as it will mandate what characters are available. Only 3 characters are ever in a party at a time, and the story will conveniently kick out members so only 3 are available. This lack of control over your own party is rather frustrating! There is also a huge lack of cast diversity for this reason. It would have been far more interesting to be able to select party members or rotate the cast based on the battle ahead.

Also the dialog is just so off-putting. I recognize it's all a bunch of children as the cast, but the writing should still be smart instead of also seeming as from children. For example, there was a long dialog of nothing but "..." until a character said they farted. Just stupid and a failed attempt at humor I suppose. The story also cannot seem to make up its mind if these should be innocent children or bloodthirsty maniacs.

Now, the actual lore of the world and the setting actually is pretty interesting as its not any of the usual save-the world business or typical fantasy setting. Instead, its a sort of clash between gangs in the streets and the noblemen and guards from higher up. It was actually kind of refreshing to fight over such petty things like turf wars and survival. However, it did not quite grab me as much as I hope it would because of all the aforementioned reasons where it just was not polished and written well enough to get me to care about the main cast. Instead, I just often found myself irritated at their behavior.

So up until now it seems like I should give this game a thumbs down. Well, if you're looking for a story and can't get past bad dialog and annoying characters, then yeah probably not recommended. But if you don't mind and want to try out some interesting gameplay I do recommend giving it a shot on sale. The battle system and gameplay is actually really fun. Although, even there I have some gripes.

Dialog during the battles has never been so annoying. You may have seen it handled more tastefully in Final Fantasy Tactics for example. This game will slowly rotate the camera, say one line of dialog, then slowly rotate back. I was getting so annoyed I just hit ESC and skipped the cutscene when that was happening every turn in some battles.

Also difficulty is weirdly paced. The best cards in the game are locked behind some side content where the enemy is level 45 and you will be way below this at the end game. So I completed the game then came back to do this... and it was still too hard as I was only level 40 and the last squad of enemies just combo my characters to death before I could respond (if I had a better hand then maybe would have been okay). So what's the point of leaving the best card in the post game if there is not much reason to keep playing after playing the hardest battle in the game anyways? And the final story mission was actually laughably easy. There was a different level in this side content (Arena) where I kept dying in the first turn due to snipers and mages on rooftops just bombarding the start position. This mission was unlocked like 3 missions before the final one yet is 10x harder than the final mission. I don't get it. This was all on Normal difficulty and I'm no stranger to tactical rpgs.

Anyways, when the game is well paced the gameplay is fun. Aside from 20 story missions there are 4 side ones, 6 arena challenges, and as many skirmishes as you want. It's a tactical RPG that is also a deckbuilder and dice roller. Every character has their own unique deck where they earn cards (and upgraded versions) as they level up. So you have some customization of choosing which cards to use, and which dice to set. The dice have their own faces with meaning relevant to the game. They are basically used to increase the power of attacks, block counter attacks, unlock special bonuses on the cards such as taking an extra turn, etc. It can be really fun building off a combo of playing 7+ cards in a turn in the late game due to rolling extra turns.

Each character has their own deck with specialties. The main character is a great damage dealer but also unlocks some support and healing cards. I built her to be a single-target combo DPS, where has a great chance to keep playing cards until the target is dead. In contrast, another character is generally a mage with a tons of options for different AOE spells and has no healing/buffing available. Yet a different character is a support-god and is similar to the dancer in fire emblem where can grant other characters a chance to move/act again while also healing them. Fun character to use, and one of the few like-able ones in the game personality-wise too.

I would recommend waiting for a sale, or at the very least check out additional reviews on this game before buying. It is fun for playing through at least once, and I hope if there is a sequel or similar game in the future, it will be better polished.

This game is broken on a technical level. I'm unable to continue the game, as a bug causes the game to get stuck on character level up. As this is an rpg that is very frequent. Which is very disappointing, I actually thought mechanically this game was good. But given that I am unable to play the game, I must recommend against buying this.

As a big fan of tactical games like FFT, Fire Emblem and Shining Force, as well as card games like Baten Kaitos and Lost Kingdoms. This game was a dream come true, unfortunately it has it's flaws.

+ Tactical battles with cards and dice
+ Decent amount of different cards
+ Dice crafting

- Very linear
- No character choice

Despite the flaws it was still a very enjoyable game.

This is one of those games I'd give a thumb sideways... on sale, it can be a 3/4 thumbs up. Not on sale, you can probably do better. In fact, you can probably do better anyways if you're new to this type of game. (look up final fantasy tactics or fire emblem)

It's about what you'd expect - the dice violently ricochet off of everything except where you roll them, and like to reroll to the same thing that it was way too frequently. For being one of the main oddities of this game, I like rolling dice in real life a lot more, even over the "customizable" dice.

The story itself is interesting, although I dislike switching to a max level alt character all of the time. Side stories also have new "temp" characters - you cannot customize them or level them. Some people probably like this, but to me it is like switching a chapter in a book and getting confused, and having that happen a lot. Eventually it leads to a more complete story, at the cost of throwing off the gameplay a bit.

The gameplay is decent, apart from my gripes about the dice rolling (which you'll be doing a lot of). The strategy and tactical layers are not bad. Being able to pick your skills, choosing dice to complement those skills, then setting up kill zones on the tactical map is kind of fun. It's also very challenging at times.

TLDR; get it for the story and tactical elements especially if on sale, but only if you can put up with the dice rolling.

I think most people find this to be just good enough to recommend. The honest truth is there are many things that could have honestly been done better in terms of story, leveling, and characters.

Maps look good.
Character abilities are fairly unique and decks and dice can be customized.
Music is good.
Story and characters were just bland.

Personally the thing that pissed me off the most was that the enemy levels for story and skirmishes is determined by your highest characters level. In other words, if you do skirmishes, by the time you get a character in the story, the enemies will probably just out level them by just too much for them to be useful.

2/5

The card & dice idea is fun but you never get to enjoy it. Choosing different cards and different dice is locked behind leveling up & beating missions. This makes the first half of the game extremely repetitive & boring wth no options. Still barely had any options by the time I beat the game. Carrot on a stick forever. The story & character dialogue gets extremely repetitive and unintelligent, with one guy's entire role to repeatedly state "I just met you guys today and I'm from another country, I don't know why I'm helping you kill so many of your enemies!"

My favorite game is Final Fantasy Tactics. I'll be using that game as a comparison here, as I've been chasing that dragon since 1997.

Children of Zodiarcs isn't another FFT. It does, however, scratch that itch as good or better than any other strategy RPG I've played since. It feels like an obvious inspiration here. Beyond the turn-based combat on a grid, some of the themes are present in both games (the social class divide, ancient relics playing a role).

The biggest obvious differences:

- Zodiarcs uses cards and dice where FFT does not. Whether this is a positive or negative comes down to personal preference. I thought the randomness of the dice would be off-putting, but it's not. An attack will do a range of dmaage, based on a roll of the dice (you can always re-roll 2 of those dice also). So you might roll poorly, but you'll never flat-out miss like in Tactics (95% chance to hit? 5% chance to whiff and fuck everything up).

- No class changing. My favorite aspect of FFT was the ability to change classes. You could borrow skills from class to use in another, and that gave the game a very "roll your own" feel. In Zodiarcs, you'll play 6 characters over the course of the game. Each has their own unique cards and play style, and they feel distinct from one another. You can't have a Samurai who wields time magic though.

The deck building element is pretty tame. As you gain levels, you get access to new cards and old cards get upgraded. This never got overwhelming. Likewise for the dice crafting. This took up only a small portion of my play time. It's enough to engage with, but not so much to feel like a hassle.

I'm very happy with Children of Zodiarcs, especially for the price tag. I wish it had been longer, but I can't really hold that against it. I can confidently recommend it to SRPG fans.

I want to start with saying I enjoyed my time with this game but I still feel it has many flaws. Children of Zodiarcs has many things going for it and to me fulfilled most of its goals. I played the entire game including the side story and the complete arena, along with probably 12 skirmishes and it lasted me around 25 hours. I was sold on a strategic deckbuilding game with dice, so if you don't care for deckbuilding or dice rolling, you may want to pass on this game.

Story

The story is centered around a band of children thieves and murderers. Even though when you kill someone, the body disappear, the game make sure that you know that you are killing people and that most of your actions are unjustified, as much as your characters themselves feel that they are. The story is about a heist for this group to get rich and explores how the environment of the main cast has shaped them into basically villains. It worked for me but for the most part lacked depth due to the amount of characters and length of the game. I enjoyed most of the characters, I feel most had interesting stories but would have enjoyed a lot more if the characters and world just got a little more fleshed out.

Gameplay

I played on hard and found it quite challenging in the beginning, although by the end I found I was struggling a lot less. The hardest part of the game was the arena which I finished before the end of the game. I did not really struggle on the last boss but I probably spent 3-4 hours on the last level of the arena. The challenge level of the game was quite good to me for the midgame to last quarter, but then my characters got to such a power level that everything felt easy. Although the game can be pretty punishing in that a weaker character could die if 3 enemies could hit it and the game tends to swarm you.

I quite enjoy deckbuilding games, I have 100s of hours in Gwent and 1000s of hours in Hearthstone, so I am usually in when a game has any deckbuilding elements. I enjoy the base implementation of the decks and dice, it works quite well where the dice can play off the cards and has some interesting synergies.

But I feel there's a lack of depth here too. There are really only three types of cards: attack, healing, buff (including draw a card) and debuff. Everyone of these cards can also be aoe and some debuffs/buff are also combined with attack cards, like you can get regeneration if you roll enough stars. The intital depth feels really good but as the game goes on I feel there doesn't feel like enough variety or counterplay. Your character get hit with debuffs and there's no way to get rid of it. I would like to see some shift character around, or a type of teleport or just sometime more to add to the positional strategy. It just felt that the AI had to walk into the aoe or there was nothing I could really do to set it up. All the attacks can do damage and apply a debuff or a buff on the character. I would just like to see a little more strategic depth here. With all that being said the system is quite servicable and the mechanics do well for the first bit of the game. Another thing that the decks have going for it is that each character does have a theme that cards reflect quite well.

I prefer a dice system over just a straight percentile base system, where card whold just have a chance of doing X. It also leads to a nice synergy between choosing your dice to suit the cards you put in your deck, none of your cards require stars, you can choose to focus on something else. Also being able to reroll dice also helps you play around with the randomness of the game. With that being said I think the playing around with the dice is another system they could have fleshed out more. The dice have different levels, i.e. you can get a level 1 die, but the faces that I wanted didn't level up, the stars, the draw cards and the take an extra turn all don't level up. A lot of the other sides of the dice, shards(extra dmg/healing), defense (makes counterattacks deal less damage) and healing all feel kind of pointless. The extra damage or healing don't feel like they add enough, especially when healing because I usually overheal everyone. The defense doesn't matter for a lot of the rolls because there is not counterattacks to probably 60-70% of the die rolls, and the healing die face feels rarely like enough compared to the other 3 sides. At the end of the day though, the system still works and is fun to play around with. The whole dice also kind of relects the characters just like the card system.

With all that being said I did have fun with the gameplay, I just wish it was expanded on a little bit more, it does have some unique gameplay mechanics.

Visuals and Music

I really like the visuals of this game, although one character for some reason, it's model looked weird (Reize). I don't really feel like I need to review this much, since you can just look at the screenshots and videos yourself.
I enjoyed the music but it wasn't spectacular just serviceable. I was happy with it.

Overall

I enjoyed this game, I just wish it was flesh out a little bit more than it was. I did get my value for the game, it was a $20 game that I got 25ish hours from the game and enjoyed most of my time with it. I would like to see the concept built upon a little bit more but as is, it is a good game. If you don't like the idea of a deckbuilding/dice strategy game, you probably won't like the game.

What is this game?

Children of Zodiarcs is a turn-based isometric strategy game reminiscent of the Final Fantasy Tactics series. This game distinguishes itself by incorporating unique deck-building and dice-crafting elements into its combat system. Essentially, each character has a deck of cards that serves as their "abilities", while their dice can modify these abilities and affect RNG (such as damage dealt). It sounds complicated, but the system is very easy to learn.

You Should Buy This Game If:

• You're looking to scratch that Tactics itch and want a game that is easy to pick-up
  
• You like Tactics gameplay more than story (Zodiarcs' story is very straightforward)
  
• You like deck-building and theorycrafting

You Should Skip This Game If:

• You are expecting the depth and content of Final Fantasy Tactics (this is a much simpler game)
  
• You like squad-building (squad growth in Zodiarcs is entirely linear and only customizable via deck-building)
  
[*]You want a long and engaging story (main story takes around 10 hours)

My Personal Opinion (Recommendation Reflects This)

As a quick disclaimer, I am a HUGE Final Fantasy Tactics fan and have sunk hundreds of hours into 100%ing Tactics Advance and Tactics A2. With the latter having come out a whopping ten years ago, I have been dying for another FFT experience. When Zodiacs released, I bought it instantly in hopes of filling this void.

As a result of this, I can't help but feel disappointed in Zodiarcs. It isn't a bad game; I played for a solid 12 hours at my own free will and completed its story. However, Zodiarcs seemed to lack the depth I was looking for. For starters, there are very few playable characters, and most of them are around for only one or two missions. The party size is strangely set to three, which really limits what you can accomplish during each turn. There is no job system, no equipment, and your character grows linearly when leveling up, leaving very little room for squad building/customizing.

I am well aware that complexity doesn't equal better. Zodiarcs doesn't need all of this extraneous stuff if the core game is satisfying without it. However, each character has an extremely limited ability set (something like 10 if you unlock them all, which I didn't even accomplish in my full playthrough), and character abilities seem redundant to each other. For example, the main character, Nahmi, has multiple skills that target a single adjacent enemy, with virtually no ranged or AOE whatsoever. This type of kit design really pigeonholes the role of each character in your party. No matter how you construct your deck, Nahmi will always be single-target physical damage, and many (though not all) of your other characters fall in the same boat. This really stifles player creativity and can make the core gameplay a bit stale.

I also wish the enemies were a little more inspired. Most of the time you're killing generic baddies, with an occasional random boss that has no backstory. The enemies have really bland attacks that either just do damage or debuff you, and these debuffs are often trivial and can be ignored (at least on Normal difficulty).

Simply put, if you like Tactics games in general and want to play something with unique, easy-to-learn mechanics, maybe give this one a try. But for those expecting the depth and content provided in Final Fantasy Tactics, Zodiarcs will likely leave you wanting more.

Pros:
+Great Soundtrack
+Insane Boss Fight
+deck building and unique play style.

Cons
-You need to grind skirmish to get passed certain boss fight.
-dice rolling will get old and is unessesary.
-Unbalance XP distribution.

Conclusion : Mixing these genres offers lots of interesting possibilities, but Children of Zodiarcs frustratingly constrains options to the point where you don't get to explore the system. the game isn't awful, the new concept is a bit hard to play by since the dice is what plays the main part of the game that decide the fate of your character. If This is not the type SRPG you are looking for , then wait for the sale and buy it.

This game has a lot of ideas with great potential, but disappoints in how it never explores the most interesting parts of its own mechanics.

Children of Zodiarcs is a mix of cards, dice, and strategy RPG. On each turn, you can move each unit and have them play a card from their hand, which corresponds to typical RPG actions like attacking and healing. Resolving each action involves rolling dice which add effects to the resolution of the card.

Mixing these genres offers lots of interesting possibilities, but Children of Zodiarcs frustratingly constrains options to the point where you don't get to explore the system. The player is allowed to customize two aspects: which cards are in their deck and what symbols are on their basic dice. The problem is that most of the player choices are too simple. For example: does your mage want an AOE spell that hits enemies for 30 damage each, or a spell that will reduce the enemy damage by 1 for three turns? Similarly, there are only 6 possible dice symbols you can craft, and some of them are clearly superior to others so the main limiting factor is grinding for dice materials rather than making clever choices that match your deck's goals.

The cards available to you is also decided entirely by your character level. You get access to new cards as you level, and your old cards will be upgraded in predetermined ways. Using something like booster packs or allowing players to customize the card upgrade process would give many more options, as well as offering replay value since your characters would be different each time. The fun of deck building games is discovering strong combinations of cards, but Children of Zodiarcs doesn't give you this feeling since all the meaningful choices have been made by the developers.

The actual combat is just okay. I'm disappointed in their choices with the AI: it's a game where the enemy always outnumbers you, but due to the poor AI you can win fights. Enemies are often scripted to pass their turns until you get sufficiently close to them, which means most fights are about figuring out how the enemy is scripted or when additional enemies are scripted to spawn rather than actual tactics against a competent opponent. This is a relatively common choice in grid-based RPGs (unfortunately), so I can't hold it against them too much.

All this said, the game isn't awful, but while playing it I can't help but see how the game could have been so much more. As is, Card Hunter explores the cross-over of CCG and SRPG much better.

Time to complete the game on normal is approximately 9 hours, if you do a few elite skirmishes and whatnot to build your characters up for the end. The final battle is tough, although I won't say why. The story of this game is okay, but not enough is told in cutscenes, so you have to listen to their stories often to fill the gaps.
What I like:
- A look and feel somewhat like Final Fantasy Tactics
-Enemies ragdoll after being killed to sometimes hilarious effect
-Music is not over the top like most games these days
What I do not like:
- Rolling dice, especially with the cursed dice that nearly every enemy puts on you non stop throughout the game
- Attacks via cards: I get it, trying to be different is expected, but I wasn't a fan of this setup
- While this game has the look and feel of FFT, it lacks classes, equipment, unique enemies, a large story with side quests, and much much more
- The music, while not over the top, is totally forgettable.

I bought this game after following it for some time, and was hoping for a Final Fantasy Tactics esque experience. I not only didn't find that experience in this game, I finished it feeling slightly disappointed, having completed all the side story and missions in the game in a short period of time. Nothing about this game makes me want to come back and continue playing, as there isn't anything to do that would extend the game for me. I really like the styling, and the ragdoll physics, but sadly thats where it all ends for me.

Conclusion: If you like dice rolling games, this might be for you, however, if you are looking for a Final Fantasy Tactics experience, look elsewhere.

Seems more like a mobile game than a PC or console game. The depth of games like FFT and Disgaea will not be found here. It is a simpler game, to say the least. Unfortunately that is a huge problem for a tactical turn based RPG, as that is a main attraction for players of those games.

The game has no classes/jobs, skill or attribute points, weapons and other equipment, items, etc. There are cards, and sets of dice. As you level, you unlock or upgrade them automatically, and your few base stats are auto-upgraded.

This is a first impression as of now, I just couldn't sit on it because I had to respond to the people claiming this is a successor of FFT and various things like that. Those comments convinced me to buy this, and I feel like I have to leave this for other people like me who are swayed by those reviews.

So far, I don't recommned this for anyone who finds the issues I mentioned to be valid. Otherwise, have at it.

Children of Zodiarcs is an SRPG where instead of just picking basic attacks or skills, you use cards and dice to change the outcome of your attacks. This mix of card game, dice game, and strategy game make for interesting dynamic battles. There is a bit of a luck factor with the dice and card draws, but I never felt like I had to roll the perfect thing to do well. Thus, I think RNG is handled well.

The probably greatest strength to this, however, is how much customization there is in the cards and the dice. This allows for many different play-styles, and there is so much to experiment with. I'm sure no 2 people will have the same idea or build.

The maps are difficult (in terms of hard mode), but not head bashing difficult. This is a nice balance that makes me think, but allows me to keep going forward.

The music of the game is beautiful and feels like it fits. The visuals are unique, but not quite the best I've seen. Still, they are pleasing to the eye and aren't jarring to look at.

I haven't payed too much to the story, but the characters seem to not have cliched personalities.

Overall, I would rate this game a 9/10, and I think is a must for those who love SRPG's and want a taste of something new and fresh.