At first, Massive Chalice seems like a competent, post-XCOM, fantasy turn-based strategy game. That, on its own, wouldn't get me excited (especially since I always prefer lasers to swords), but Massive Chalice innovates on the parts of XCOM that got me hooked: my emotional and strategic investment in the characters I trained, equipped, and sent on missions. It raises the stakes with an intergenerational scope, where the heroes I take into battle age over time, mate with other heroes, and produce children who will fight on for the cause. When one of them dies, I'm not just losing a soldier, but a family member—or worse, an entire bloodline.
On the tactical layer it plays exactly like XCOM. The Cadence, an army of monsters, trade turns moving and attacking on a tile-grid with your forces, The Nation. Chalice even mixes some of XCOM's elite, special forces motifs into the fantasy setting. The Caberjack unit, a heavy melee character, carries a big battering ram like a medieval SWAT member. The Archers' crossbows are so big that they have to hoist them up on their shoulders and fire them like rocket launchers. The Alchemist unit serves as the explosives expert, tossing potent flasks that deal damage across an area.
