Recent reviews by DT Kenneth

After this initial comment I will briefly illustrate one of the three full missions I have played over the course of 12 hours of playtime. Similar to a lot of comments on here, as a massive fan of the XCOM-style genre, I really wanted to like this game, and frankly there are some great components to it. However, many mechanics and designs to the game that appear to be very deliberate in their implementation lead to the game falling to a very flat experience. Aspects of this game that genuinely are quite fun and interesting are torn apart by one major overarching concept of its design.

This game is tedious beyond even a shallow margin of reason.

Were it possible to attach a screenshot, I would attach a perfect illustration of this wherein, from one turn of game-play I had to wait three minutes for the enemy turn to finish processing. In those three minutes, the area of the space where my character's started went from empty to being covered with, from a quick count, 50 - 60 enemies or just shy. These enemies were not weak enemies either, about a third of them were elite enemies and half of the remainder were tougher enemies that take multiple characters' whole turns to kill. Seven or so enemies were already in melee and attacking the front-line from being previously in the fog of war and out of the range of a bioscanner. A handful of ranged enemies also had volleyed several AoE attacks on my characters as well.

Despite all of that? At worst one soldier was two-thirds of their hp, and now I have to spend at least 30 minutes killing all of these enemies to have the slightest opportunity to progress forwards to the other end of the map, while enemies spawn endlessly from the edges of the map as well. Then, on top of all that, that is only part one of three to the mission even when I do succeed after maybe an hour of gameplay in the same map, fighting the same enemies, using the same equipment, making no progress to the game's overarching experience.

Simply put, despite the developer's vision, this is not what constitutes a fun game and is overall not an intuitive game design.

So instead, I closed the game and played something else, and in that same amount of time I'd have spent tediously shooting spongy enemies that would continuously spawn, I had a lot more fun elsewhere unfortunately.

I don't really write reviews but this game absolutely stole my heart the moment I started playing it. It had been on my radar when it was first announced but I completely forgot about it until it showed up in the 2024 Summer Sale.

As soon I started the game up I fell in love with the absolutely gorgeous art style and design. The game-play at standard difficulty was challenging in a few places but felt consistently fair and balanced across the entire experience, which is no small feat with game design.

The story has this underlying sensation to it... something of a colourful simplicity that I think I've been missing with a lot of games I've played these days. I say simple with no degrading intent; the story has twists, emotional weight, and depth, but doesn't try hard to be some complex narrative that to be honest, I just get tired of. It tells a story straight, lets you enjoy the moments, and immerses you in an experience that feels like you're playing through a picture book brought to life.

Quality is NOT anti-theoretical to simplicity, far from it. The story and experience of Tails of Iron thoroughly proves as much, and the past couple days have been made better for it.

Thank you, Odd Bug Studio.
I eagerly look forward to Tails of Iron II :)