It feels like the genre that everyone wants to get into these days is Roguelite games and that isn’t a bad thing. Roguelike games can be some of the more fun games around because they’re different every time you play it. I was able to get some hands-on time at Ocean Drive Studios with Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch. Long story short, the main character appears to have been involved in an accident and suffers from amnesia. What’s a guy to do when he can’t remember a thing? If you said gain some allies, you were right so go ahead and pat yourself on the back. The game is an RPG but it also has tactical elements.
Now, I’m not the biggest fan of tactical RPGs but Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch feels like one I could get into, when I finally got a hang of the battle controls. Believe me that it took me quite a long time to feel comfortable with battling enemies with our party; so much so that one of my party members died in the first battle. The battles are held on grid-like battlefields and each character plays differently with their own strengths and weaknesses. That being said, monsters have their own strengths and weaknesses too so be aware of that. You’ll be able to equip different weapons to your party and you might get lucky and have the weapon a certain monster is weak to. During the demo it felt like some of the enemies were weak to bow and arrow damage and we had a few fighters who could master a bow! You’ll be able to recruit party members but you start out with a small number and have to find others to join your cause.
It wouldn’t be a Roguelite if you didn’t have variables like party members changing. You’ll also be able to find new skills and upgrade your characters during playthroughs with the help of stores, random travelers and more. We found a random guy who needed help and he had nothing on him AND he spit on us. I believe that interaction messed with our party for the next battle so be on guard. The game has a learning curve but once you understand battle mechanics, it gets really good. Like I mentioned before, it took me midway through my second battle to fully understand what each character could do, who could move where, and so on. But once I did, I was grouping my archer with Marco, who happen to have an axe, and knew how to use it. An interesting battle mechanic is when you fight larger enemies. These enemies take up multiple tiles and are pretty big. You can attack them with their weakness and you can turn it into a chain combo by using said weakness multiple times. You’ll be able to upgrade equipment with stones you find strewn throughout the playthroughs. That could be the thing you need to gain the advantage on battle.
You can rewind turns in battle and there is not permadeath which is great for players who want to try the game but could struggle in tactical Role playing games. You’ll have the option to turn permadeath on during the playthrough when you get far enough into it. The character designs are really well done and I found myself getting attached to them during the demo. If I can get attached to them in about 30-40 minutes, then you know the game has good writing and knows how to create characters. I think my favorite was Evie as she was tough and not afraid to be a badass at the start. Let me be clear that the game has a slight learning curve at the start but that shouldn’t scare you off. Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch has great writing and is trying to tell a cool story. It also has awesome characters and tactical RPG fans will want to check this out. Even if you aren’t a tactical RPG fan, you should give this one a look!