Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos

boring as hell.
quality is like school project.

It must be stated that little gratification can be derived from this substandard, insulting product. With an unattractive user interface, flavorless story, and unpredictable fluctuations in difficulty, the player consensus would certainly declare that this video game is unfit for general consumption.

4/10

The original game had some rough, unpolished charm to it, with a generous price tag.
This sequel keeps the same cheap production values from the first game, copy-pasting many of its assets (and bugs) but adds nothing substantial to the gameplay.

Even worse, the campaign progression pacing is much more grindy with enemies becoming damage sponge much earlier than in the first game, waaay before you get to have enough money to build a couple of overpowered characters to carry your team through waves of overtuned yet stupid enemies.

This is pretty much perfect mix of RPG and TBS game. It's just about the only thing that's come out recently that is perfectly optimised with just enough graphics to keep you interested

If you like good turn-based rpg games then you like this

I was expecting a 40+ hour game based upon the description. I completed every battle in 10 hours. The last 11 quick battles remain locked until the campaign is done. I completed those in less than 30 minutes. For the first 7 hours I only used 1 character per turn as counter attacks were killing most enemies. I did grind quick battle 3 for a few hours to get gear in the 10K+ range and that made everything utterly trivial for campaign battles 13+ and the second half of the quick battles.

I do not recommend for the following.
1. The game is not even close to 40 hours unless you run all 30 character classes, which is 5 runs.
2. Weak story. Is there even 10K words between character class descriptions, battle descriptions, and world map entries?
3. Just a series of battles and no map to move around on with places to visit.

I initially supported the game as it has a decent story plus, how many tactical games are out there that lets you play as a whole crew of "bad guys"..

But since its been left in an unfinished state, yeah......youre better off avoiding it if you want anything like logical progression, fairness or a useable UI.

As strategy game that's basically unplayable. After a couple battles every time I try to use an ability on an enemy it says the Tile is "Null"..... I can use any of my character special abilities. Between that an everytime I click on an enemy to attack it... the info pane for that enemy comes up right ontop of that enemy making it very hard to directly melee units to attack, as it blocks out the tiltes around that unit.

So far played about 50 different battles with three different saves, and I have to say. It's not bad. I love turn based tactics games, from XCom, to Final Fantasy Tactics, and even Gladius and Jagged Alliance. This is just one of my favorite genres of games and something I can sink in to with little effort. This isn't to say that the is a perfect game, there are issues I have with it, no ability to customize your own character/squad .. I would have loved a talent tree and creating a main character that I had to keep alive from battle to battle., but the sheer variety of units is enough to make me forgive this. The resource system is still slightly ... mysterious to me, I have a vague understanding that action points/action point regeneration plays a part in this... but if you build for base stats like you would in most other games of this genre, you are going to be just fine (+hit chance, +damage, +damage reduction, +health, etc.) Special moves while handy aren't necessarily needed .. at least not as far as Ive played around... though simple ranged combat is ... pitifully underwhleming .. i'm guessing in the name of balance and to forestall my urge to build a 6 huntress squad and just huddle in the back ... (P.S. yes, you can repeat select the same unit for your squad ... I'm currently running 3 toadmen and 3 huntresses and am using the standard move as a block strategy) Another problem that I want to have but can forgive.. equipment upgrades and leveling dont affect the appearance of your unit ... your demon knight will always look like a stock standard demon knight. And another one .. you have no access to spears .. but the AI does ... which ... is frustrating since they line up 2 blocks out and poke your guys with no reprocussions. As far as Ive investigated, none of your units have this ability.

The enemy is diverse enough and the models are done well enough to differentiate them and you can automatically know on sight whether they are a caster, melee, or ranged .. which is very nice, since you can react accordingly .. no use in sending your slow units to chase after that archer who will happily skip away with his far superior movement ability before you can reach him. Which leads me to one of my big issues with this title, the inability to deploy your troops in any particular way, They are randomly placed in a cluster on the map. Would have been nice to add this feature, at least give us this option in the near useless Manage Team tab of the camp.

All in all, it scratched the itch for the time being. I'm pleased with it, especially for the price. Think of it much like Blackguards, with more troops, more variety and no main character and you pretty much have this title.

This is an amazing, very strategic and thematic game and I highly recommend! You play a band of demon-worshiping humans and monsters fighting humans, dwarves and more. You have many creative characters to choose from to build you squad of six. I tried to build a balanced squad (toadman, werebear, vocrite, succubus, void walker and tentaclid) and it seems to have worked well. There is a very intuitive store interface in your camp and you will want to buy items to boost you team's power before too long. There is also the option to grind by completing early missions again if you get stuck. Overall the strategy in the scenarios is great. They vary in objective so sometimes you have to charge right in and sometimes fall back and regroup. The range of abilities for your team and the enemy also keep things interesting.
Pros:
-Very creative monster and human squad
-Well balanced strategic encounters and abilities
-Nice graphics with zoom and rotate
-Store with plenty of useful items to choose from
-Plenty of options for different teams within a single save or across saves
Cons:
-Tentaclid stun glitches (about half the time it says it work, but seems to do nothing)
-Some high hp enemies hp bar glitches

Conclusion:
This is an exceptional game, I would rank it as one of my top ten best on steam. And it was worth many times over the $3.50 or so I paid for it.

Tactical combat RPG meaning:
* turn based combat
* no story, questing, or running around
* character progression and loot

Good for those times you need to turn off your brain and kill stuff.

I almost didnt get this from the negative reviews but glad didnt listen. This is pretty much perfect mix of RPG and TBS game. It's just about the only thing that's come out recently that is perfectly optimiized with just enough graphics to keep you interested but not kill you on loading times. I played for hours and never had 1 slow loading screen going from 1 thing to next. I can overlook simplistic graphics for that alone! I was never bored and there's nice balance between side missions and main quests. Which you can replay any of them once completed to go back for more gold.

For those saying the game is too hard it's a strategy game. You have to manage team to achieve a goal. You're going to be swarmed by smaller baddies but more of them. On the flip side you're going to get some bosses that better than any 1 guy you have. Build a typical RPG team (tank, missle / magic support, healer, etc). Then you use AOE's, ranged attacks, buffs for your guys, de-buffs for bad guys and environment for cover. I originally started this on Easy due to reviews but soon shifted it to Normal as was too easy.

Recommendation is to start off on the Side Quests This will help skill up your team. Dont sweat any mission as you can start over again if you fail. Once side missions get to where you find them difficult. Then go buy some Faith points from the Temple. Faith points are how you Buff / Debuff in game. You will get to missions that will be extremely difficult if you don't figure out the Buff / Debuff Faith point system. These are only thing really permenantly spent during missions

Then ride the Campaign missions until you find them getting hard. Will also skill up your team. Now start using your Faith Points to help buff your team to get thru campaign missions ya find harder. When you get to point you find you're getting your butt stomped...then switch back to campaign missions again. This will allow you to keep building up teams so strong enough for next mission rotation.

After I figured out enough random loot drops from most missions, you dont really need to spend gold on anything but faith points. I really enjoyed the Faith system plus loot drops. I can see this having lots of re-playability as you see if you can try out differnt types of teams to get thru the missions. Based off this game I've already made purchases for other games by same developer.

Just beat everything there is to do in this game on hardest difficulty and I have to say I'm pretty happy with it.

If you're not interested in turn based combat, there's nothing for you here.
If you've played Divinity or Divinity II this game is basically just the combat from those but less strategic, diverse, dynamic, and challenging but still a good time filler if after beating those games a couple times you still find yourself wanting more.

The combat as a whole is fairly satisfying and for the earlier parts of the game can require considerable strategy.
By the second half of this game combat was pretty much a joke but I had set up a pretty cheesy team and spent a reasonable amount of time in the store getting good gear.

I imagine with a little less effort put into gearing and using a more diverse team this game could be a nice challenge from start to finish.

If anyone is actually interested, the team I used was 3x Blade Dancers, 2x Vampire Knights, and 1x Soul Eater.

Demon's Rise - Lords of Chaos is probably one of the best turn based games I have ever played. The fact that you play the "Bad Guys" makes the game original and more entertaining then other games simular to this one. You could probably play this game over and over again as there is many diferent "classes" and it looks like the developer of this game is brining out a lot of new content. (More characters to play). I can't wait to play Demon's Rise- War for The Deep. If it is half as good as this game I'd be extremely happy.

I have put little time into this game but I feel that it is more than enough to understand at least the combat. Firstly I'll keep this short. Touting this game as a true strategy game is a little misleading. It plays similar in combat to games like Expeditions Vikings complete with hex movement, every unit having skills, and a semi tactical map. On the surface it seems to be a solid strategy game, but the lack of attack of opportunities and zones of control that are standard in games like this means that to block off a 3 wide area you must have 3 units, rather than 1. This severely hampers strategic play forcing you to bunch up your infantry so as to protect any missile units. At the same time it forces you to focus heavily on infantry, as the HP gap between archers and mages to infantry is massive and an enemy can easily slip through a single slot in the frontlines to decimate your archers. On top of that most ranged unit, from my experience thus far, are underpowered compared to the infantry meaning that they feel underpowered and useless.
I personally think the game is pretty good the inventory system is interesting and compelling, the fact that you can switch your troops out to try different strategies at no cost is quite nice, and the varitey of troops, as well as the fact that you play as the evil side rather than the good guys is always refreshing.
As stated above I believe the combat itself could be improved as of now it feels that you just beat the enemies till they fall, as blocking enemies off is tedious and ill rewarded. That being said the game is 7 bucks so I feel that for the time i plan on putting into it it is worth it, just don't expect the combat to feel incredibly rewarding

I picked this up a few weeks ago on a whim. There weren't many reviews, but it was cheap, so I gave it a punt. I'm very glad I did.

The game is played out as a series of small tactical battles. There are a large number of classes, each with various skills, and tactical positioning of your units is key to winning the battles. During battles your characters gain experience, and with enough XP, they level up. Initially I was disappointed that you don't get to allocate any points when leveling up; the character just gets a number of attribute increases and that's it.

But it turns out that build customisation in DR - LoC is all about the equipment. Each character has a large number of inventory slots, which you can use to customise your builds instead. Equipment is either given as a reward for completing a battle, or can be bought from a trader. Equipping the right characters with the right equipment makes a huge difference to how easy/hard the battles are.

The battles themselves are either one-off battles where your team face off against a bunch of enemies, or part of the campaign, which is really not much different, truth be told. There's a minor bit of story and the battles get progressively harder and more epic, but that's about it really. What is fun is that there are a number of battles that feature 3 teams, all of whom are hostile to one another. The game also has mechanics in play that discourage turtling for too long, as more and more enemies join the fray every few turns in a lot of battles.

The graphics are pretty decent for this sort of thing, and some of the monsters look pretty epic. The odd sound FX is a bit weird IMO, but not so as to detract from the game. The music is pretty good. For the price of entry you get a lot of hours of gameplay, provided you like the genre. It is however extremely one-dimensional (battles and inventory management is all there is), so if tactical turn-based games aren't your thing, steer well clear.

To my mind, there is enough potential in the combat system and characters for more than just a simple mobile game. A proper story (a la Baldur's Gate etc.) or a proper strategic world layer (a la classic X-COM or Jagged Alliance) would suit the game very well. That's not to detract from what is a fun game in its current incarnation, just an observation that there is enough depth here for it to become something more.

+ price
+ turnbased combat
+ nice character lineup variety to keep things fresh if you want to play thru the whole thing again
+ easy to get 20+ hours out of this
+ delivers a good challenge

- ugly menus and many loadscreens (it loads quick enough tho)
- combat could be more complex

This is a turn based, point and click crpg that was ported from mobile. This team of like 20 people did a better job with the port than any of the major studio's have done with their mobile or console to PC ports, except maybe Plague Inc.
The UX is what you would expect from a game like this, WASD to move around the map, QE to rotate, or take the cursor to the edge to scroll the map. Click to select a character, click to move, click to basic attack, use the home row or click to activate an action, and then click to target. Right click anywhere on the battle ground and you'll get a pop up about the effects of the land, sight bonus/penalty, bonuses from monuments, cover, and more; the number of buffs/debuffs available from the terrain make me think this was originally going to be a far more complex game. Right click on a mob and your get the name, class, HP, AP, actions, and all the stats. When you finish a battle you click the big square button that says "Loot Gold and Continue," you'll auto loot everything you can take on the ground and then get some extra for completing the encounter. Clicking the thing wasn't obvious to me at first. All fairly simple, much like the crpg's that introduced me to D&D.

Chracter creation can be a bit overwhelming, as there are a ton of toons to chose from. It isn't abundently obvious, but then you choose a toon on the left will be a box with a portrait and a circular thing that says "story", much like the loot and leave box, that is a button. Clicking it takes you to the "stats" screen and gives you all the stats and actions for that toon.

I got almost 12 hours out of the game on filthy casual mode, 2-3 of those hours were either grinding or doing the "Quick Battles," think side quests that are exactly a single encounter. When I opened the world map I thought the game was going to be huge...it wasn't, this game is 3 acts long. I hope they do a sequal, I would like to continue the story.

The graphics are meh, it was ported from mobile and currently costs $4.19, so temper your expectations appropriately.

Some odd things about the game:
-At any point you can return to your war camp, even in the middle of battle. It just feels odd to be able to go nah, I'm under geared, esc, return to camp, and visit the store. You do have to restart the partially completed section, so it's not that much different than reloading a save mid-battle.

-Whil there is a full array of armor, weapons, and trinkets, there are no purchasable items or items you can use in combat. Scrolls and potions spawn on the ground, and stopping on that tile will cause the PC's to pick up and use that item immediately.

-No buff/debuff indicators, I have no idea how long that skill potion or attack/defense scroll I just picked up actually last.

-No explanation of the ruleset, probably because it mimicks whatever tabletop game they play.

-No dedicated healer class. Have to hope you have enough AP for one of the few healing abilities or you can get to a pot on the ground in time. Not that you need a healer, it's just a bit odd there isn't one.

Like another reviewer said, you can only choose the evil path. But there are no choices in this game, if you feel like you must be good or neutral aligned, this isn't for you. But the game description starts with "You are no hero … no prancing knight or scholarly wizard but a champion of the dark gods." What did you expect?

This game is plays like a labor of love, the story line and writing are on par with some of the better DM's I've had. It's simple to grasp and fun to play. I have no idea where they getting 80 hours of campaign and side quest, But the game is fun and hits the length / cost threshold.

It's a port from smartphons.
Usually, I don't really like turn-based games, but some of them are fun enough like this one.
Although really NOT polished in various ways (e.g., weird text mistypes, multiple bugs but not game-breaking [I guess beta-testers are expensive these days..], etc.), this game is very enjoyable.

However, IMO it is overpriced for what you get so I'd wait for a sale of 50% or higher!

It has A LOT of potential, I wish it could have been like HoMM, in terms of story and length as well.

Nice little game.

Pro:
-You play evil characters.
-The variety of anti heroes to play is quite nice: Warbears, Trolls, Black Orcs, Vampire Knightress, Shaman, Corsair
-There are many maps and challenges.
-Campaign with story.
-You can collect loot and equip your party
-6 party members
-Nice variety of enemy models.
-You have to use strategy to win some maps.
-You can grind to win some battles. Or just use the right a heroes.
-Great money value.
-different tile sets for maps
-no microtransaction (phone game)
-

Con:
-Grafics are functional but not too great.
-Small loading screens between all menu option. 0,5 sec load time.
-its a phone game port

A great small game for the price. You can defenitely have fun with it, if you are into turn based squad tactic games.

Thank you for reading, have a nice day

This is a really great game that needs attention.
If you're a fan of Turn Based Tactics and/or Fantasy, get this.
I'm urging you to try this out and give it back if you don't like it.
The stupid name is misleading, should be called "DnD but only fights".
Don't let the ugly aesthetics and bad controls fool you, there's a lot to the game.


+ Complex Fighting System
+ Character diversity, interesting Designs
+ Good level design
+ Addictive Fight-Loot-Equip Loop
+ Quick Pacing
+ Lots of Content

The Game still needs:
- Better controls
- Better interface
- Debugging

Seriously this game fits players like me, who like hard Turn Based Fantasy Battles with a lot of tactics, perfectly.
Absolutely get it if it's on sale.

So far so good!
Game is responsive and optimized (i'm running it on a laptop under min requirements).
Full keyboard and mouse support.

You basicaly create a party of six characters from 20 units (melee/range/support.Ogre, snakeman, blood shaman...) and then start the Hub>turn-based tactical battle>Hub festivities. The story is light but serves its purpose without getting in the way.
Once in your hub, you can:
- replay every level you've already finished.
- pick a quick battle from a list that expand as you progress (think replayable side quests/adventures).
- change your units (switching heroes doesn't cost anything and the new unit gets the same level as the one you removed and gear is kept if usable or sent to your inventory).
- gear them up with post battle rewards and trips to the shop.
- spend some gold to get the gods' favor (also obtainable through combat and allows you to use special powers during battles).
- recruit a demon for a few battles (play with seven units instead of 6).
During battles use cover, morale and special hexes to your advantage.
Each unit has its movement, action points and skills that evolve as units level up.
The option to speed up battles is also there and adds to the already fast paced overall flow.

For the price, i expected a lot less polish and depth, so hat down to Wave Light Games Inc!