Othercide - Review @ Screenrant

Screenrant has reviewed the tactical RPG Othercide:

Othercide Review: One Mother of a Game

The newest tactical RPG from Lightbulb Crew breathes new life to the genre with the visually stunning and robustly challenging Othercide.

Othercide draws players in with its killer art direction and keeps them engaged with a robust combat system that breathes new life into the classic tactical RPG genre. Developed by indie studio Lightbulb Crew, Othercide promises players a challenging gameplay experience with elements borrowed from roguelike games, all set in a gorgeous post-apocalyptic horror-noir world.

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Despite the in-depth combat and stunning visual direction, Othercide isn't perfect. Most of the issues come down to the combat UI, which while sleek and modern, deprives players of features found in most TRPGs. The camera controls, for instance, while smooth when using a controller, can be clunky when using a mouse and keyboard. There's also no way to rotate the camera around obstacles that can obstruct a player's vision of the battlefield - a feature in the upcoming Baldur's Gate 3. There's also no mini-map or top-down view to help players keep track of their Daughters and their enemies more easily. The enemies also have distinct behaviors that players can read about in their codex entry between missions, but there doesn't seem to be any way to view the same information during combat when it matters most.

Regardless of its more technical flaws, Othercide promises a fresh and challenging TRPG experience for both new and veteran players of the genre. With captivating visuals and a unique take on turn-based initiative, Lightbulb Crew has given players a game more than worth its $34.99 price tag.

Score: 4.5/5

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More information.

Might be a good game but the visual style a bit of a turn-off for me.

How long is the game?

How does the bit about starting over with all your resources actually play out? Am I going to be fighting the first boss over and over until I managed to get through the entire game without a loss??

I picked this up after some consideration, an here's some insight.

Combat-wise, the game plays like a tactical combat RPG, not unlike Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Tactics and such. You play the role of a "mother" fighting off some kind of obscure corruption, germinating daughters to grow them strong enough to cleanse this "evil". It's never too clear what you are actually fighting, and for all I know, you might even be the "bad guy" in the game, seeing how you raise, bargain and sacrifice your daughters with little thought in the name of a holy crusade that appears to be of your own,

At first, you can create three archetypes, a Blademaster, a Guardian, and a Soulslinger. Blademaster is an offensive melee unit, Guardian is defensive melee unit, Soulslinger is ranged damage unit, with some support abilities. When they level up, you are given talent choices that are exclusive, and design your combat strategy depending on your playstyle, or the enemies you expect to fight. You can combo these abilities between daughters for great efficiency, a simple example would be using a Guardian daughter to Shield Bash an enemy, which will push them through the previously setup Overwatch area of the Soulslinger daughter, then crashing against a wall, landing in the "Riposte Stance" zone of a Blademaster daughter in a very high damage efficiency play that cost you very little AP.

Since it's a roguelike, a lot of it is learned through trial and error. You learn which talent choices favour more against certain enemies, or how to better use your turn initiative, which has a fair bit of complexity and a lot of room for manipulation through abilities, planning ahead and such.

The game is divided in chapters, each with a "final boss", and you won't move to next chapter til you've defeated the boss of the previous one. Now, when all your daughters for a single run die, you collect sine currency that you can use to boost your daughters in the next run, making each subsequent run easier than the last, not only because you learned new strategies and how to deal with some of the particular enemies that you will find, but also because you can activate substantial buffs.

Daughters die for good when they are killed in battle, but at some point you will begin gaining the ability to resurrect some of your daughters so they can be carried from one run to the next. This is what I found gives you the biggest edge, since it allows some real permanency of the progress you've made. You can "train" a particularly strong daughter that will keep dying every run (as every other one) but choose to always bring that one into next run, as she will become a one-man army and carry you through next run until you're finally strong enough to defeat the boss, and move on to next chapter.

That's it in a nutshell. The gameplay is engaging, the story is kind of abstract and grim, but I'm hoping there's some meaning or reveal behind it that blows my mind. As a tactical game alone, I'd say it's combat is well done, and has a lot of little nuances that keep it interesting. While the enemies do not outstand in their variety, they are varied enough for you to have to analyse each scenario and design a strategy on how to approach them, since recovering HP is costly, an generally not even something you can afford (ie, to heal any amount of hp from a wounded daughter, you need to fully sacrifice another of equal or higher level, as in, kill her) managing to get through fights with little to no hp damage becomes essential, so that you can reach the boss in as good condition as possible.

For the TL;DR crew I'd say the game is worth playing if:

- You love turn-based tactical combat games.
- You don't mind an eerie, kinda creepy, non-traditional atmosphere. Extra points if you actually enjoy it.
- Love roguelike gameplay where you'll inescapably fail, but keep some of your progress to eventually win.


If any of those points don't tick you, chances are this game is a pass for you.

And to add some info I missed - after you complete a chapter, you are given means to begin in the next chapter, so you don't always have to start from the beginning, though arguably it's beneficial to do so, to get your daughters levelled up before things get rougher. You also get means for your daughters to be created at a higher level, and several skip mechanisms that help you avoid some tedium, if you're not the grind mindset kind of player.

I can't tell how long the game is, I've only played so long, but longer than three hours I guess.