
While the Daughters and the enemies take turn to take actions, the game features a dynamic timeline system, allowing players to use various skills to delay an opponent's turn or speed up another Daughter's turn.

I really hit my stride when I realized the power this knowledge could give me.Othercide is a tactical role-playing video game that the player controls a group of Daughters, who are female warriors who fight against the nightmarish Suffering in a dimension known as the Dark Corner. So understanding that a specific boss or enemy will always go after the closest Daughter, or the one with the least health, can allow you to manipulate them and lead them into traps. All of the enemies in Othercide behave deterministically there’s no randomness involved, except in the dice rolls for things like attacking and dodging. I wasn’t able to best any of the ones I came up against on a first try, but any enemy you’ve faced previously will be added to the codex where you can read up on its behavior.

I can’t wrap up without mentioning the bosses, which are each expertly-designed puzzles that often have multiple viable solutions, but will absolutely kick your ass back to the beginning if you go at them guns blazing. The splashes of red the highly stylish Daughters bring enhances the feeling that they stand as emblems of hope in this doomed nightmare. Othercide is bleak as hell, and its mostly black-and-white, gothic horror aesthetic does a great job creating an atmosphere of oppression and danger. Well, “nice” might not be exactly the right word. I saw the same layouts often enough for it to become a little repetitive, even if the horde of baddies was different every time. The one area where these missions felt a bit lacking was in the map selection. And with three mission types – the tense Rescue, desperate Survival, and ass-kicking Hunt – I had to learn what works best in a variety of situations. Daughters who use more than half of their action points will have to wait a lot longer to act again, so it’s often smarter to end your turn with at least half remaining so you can better react to the changing battlefield.
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New foes are introduced gradually across the five chapters, and even seeing familiar ones in new combinations often forced me to stop and think about how to handle the situation.Ī time-based initiative system throws further excitement and consideration into the mix. The enemy diversity is great, from quick and deadly Scavengers to hulking, insectoid abominations that can lock you in pace with a gooey discharge. Each of the four classes has a distinct role to play, from the tanky Shieldbearer to the heavy-hitting Blademaster to the ranged support specialist, the Soulslinger. When the turn-based action kicks in, Othercide proves itself a satisfying, challenging, sometimes frantic tactical dreamscape. As a consolation, the beneficiary will carry a part of the sacrificed daughter with them always in the form of a small mechanical bonus based on her stats at the time of death. But the emotional weight I felt destroying one of my children so that another may live could be potent. Having a supply of sacrifices is rarely an issue, as the Vitae needed to summon new daughters is handed out in abundance.

The only way to heal a daughter is to sacrifice another one of equal or higher level. On top of taking damage, most of the more powerful special attacks cost health to use.

Notably, Daughters do not heal between missions, and you won’t find any healing abilities or items. Luckily, the other resources at my command did require me to make those difficult calls. I could activate all of the bonuses I’d unlocked at once. While there is a satisfying sense of progression, I usually earned so many shards per run that I didn’t have to make interesting decisions about how to spend them. Shards are used to activate unlocked bonuses on a per-run basis like increased health and damage, and even the ability to skip bosses you’ve already defeated. Once I realized that death was never really the end, it could sometimes feel a bit too forgiving, though.
