Massive Chalice (2015)

Story completed with most achievements on Xbox One (Games with Gold).

Gamertag: Rafael D Arroyo

As most of Double Fine's games, this was pretty fun, I love turned based games and this was no exception, but I ended up not going for all achivements, since they're heavy on RnG and one playthrough was enough, maybe I'll come back to it in the future.

Beat 2 runs during free trial of xbox game pass. On my first run I did not really know what I was doing and ended up having only archer and alchemist types. My typical squad was 4 archers of some kind with 1 potion thrower of some kind. This worked out quite well for most of the game because archers dominate the regular enemies. It did not work so well for the final battle as my archers were unable to cope with the vast number of enemies that beelined straight for the chalice. It took a few restarts of the entire battle and excessive save scumming for the entire battle to just barely scrape a win with the chalice only having a single hit worth of hp left.

I did a 2nd run after and read some guides to see what I missed. This time I used all 3 base classes and was quite impressed with the performance of the caberjack types. The final battle was a breeze this time; not just because the caberjacks were badasses but because the random nature of the battle meant I faced an entirely different distribution of enemies this time.

It was a fun game but I think playing it through twice fully was being a bit generous. My biggest problem with the game is that it makes no sense conceptually for only the lord and lady of a castle to be able to breed new heroes; what are the rest of them doing?

6.0/10

Massive Chalice has a lot of elements that I've always wanted in a tactical RPG. The ability to create a dynasty bloodline of archers, warriors, mages... The opportunity to capitalize on the strength of a character's lineage. Keeping a kingdom intact during an onslaught of attacks throughout time. It's all really good fun.

But the game falls short in content. After you play it and finish it, there really isn't much more to be experienced. There is no reason to come back to the game, which is sad. It could have gotten updates and been a real contender. I feel like it had enough genuine charm to be very popular, or about as popular as games in its genre like XCOM.

The game's mechanics are pretty simple. You have different states in your nation, you can install different families in those states to oversee the keep, you can marry particular women and men together to create special kinds of fighters. It's all very fun to plan out and experience.

I do wish the skill trees for the classes were a little bit more branched out. Every level gives you an option of choosing 1 of 2 abilities, except for the last level, which provides an ultimate ability based on the class. Some classes also share many of these abilities. There are 3 base classes and a few varient mixes of those classes.

All in all, there are a lot of great ideas in this game and I hope those ideas spread out and influence future game development. It's a very short game. I feel, it's like an inspiring short story that could one day be a strong film or series of books, but as with any start, it's a little rough around the edges.