A great narrative deck-builder set in a dark fantasy world. The heroes are thrown straight into political unrest, forced to navigate a dense web of connections between characters in order to make choices that actually feel meaningful.

The amount of branching in this game is incredible for a production of this size. Every playthrough can lead you to different characters, encounters, secrets, and endings. What’s especially impressive is how your playstyle and your approach to the risk-reward system in combat can influence dialogue choices as well.

The art style is gorgeous. The paladin designs, the color palette, the simplicity - everything works together beautifully and perfectly satisfies my craving for dark fantasy aesthetics. The overall atmosphere strongly resembles The Black Company by Glen Cook, one of my favorite series.

The deck-building and combat are mostly solid, and occasionally great. The balance is very good at the beginning, but the further you progress, the more one-sided the battles become. Some abilities become so overpowered that they completely outshine everything else. Eventually, I abandoned most other cards and never looked back, nor did I feel the need to unlock new ones. Many artifacts also felt laughably weak and stayed unused for almost the entire game.

That said, this mostly applies to Aliza’s and Hael’s decks cuz Rollo was by far the most diverse and well-balanced of the three. Despite its flaws, combat still provides a good break from the narrative. Only in the final chapters does a long sequence of fights start to feel drawn-out and tiring.

The developers have clearly put a lot of love and content into this game, though I did hope for a more expanded ending exploring [spoiler]the fate of the mother-houses[/spoiler]. There were also a few minor bugs, but nothing game-breaking.

Overall, this is one of the hidden gems of the year. I’m excited to see what Wild Wits is cooking next and might even check out their previous game.