Moonbreaker (2024)

I liked it in early access, quite a lot of actually. But major changes and lacks of improvements in aspects that were lacking, make it just not good enough to recommend.

The good parts are that it is still rather unique, figurine based tactics game, and the figures aspect is cute and well done. They look great and the painting system is really easy to pick up, even to people like me, with zero painting skills etc. Gameplay took a major hit with units being able to act immediately upon deploy (no summoning sickness). Most of them cannot move, but can use abilities and attack. This marked a huge shift from strategy more into tactics. You can't see your opponent roster, so you can't really include that into planning your strategy. It has its good sides too, since you can work to make this into your advantage, but you can now also deploy around your crew, not just the hero. This change has taken away a huge amount of strategy for me and that is not too cool.

Two next biggest flaws are that the AoE are often a mystery. I though that units that has an AoE ability (like a spin attack), only hits a different unit when the AoE marker, catched the base of the figurine. Saw multiple cases where it did not work that way. Overall the game highlights the units that would be hit by the ability, but you can't always see that (for example when deploying). So when you deploy an unit with AoE that cannot move, you just have to guess what will it hit.

The last flaw is the story and "lore" stuff. Never liked Sanderson books and he did not improve here. There is still this prevalent Marvel style quippy humor everywhere, things are as cliche and boring as they can be, character lines are like taken out of the worst IronMan movie or whatever in this Josh Whedon overused nonsense. Had to mute the game for the most part cause it just gets so annoying, especially if you try to listen to the stories included.