izigame.me

This review is in my self-interest that I'm hoping more positive reviews will bring more players and help the devs to further build better and more complete game. This is going to be very long post because I don't know how to write reviews and this is my first time posting something on Steam.
In summary, I recommend this game.
Pros:
1. Many build options.
There are six basic types (Sword, Mace, Polearm, Bow, Dagger, Axe).
And Sword, Mace, and Axe could split into 2-h and 1-h with a Shield.
So I would say there are 9 basic types.
Each basic types have five layers of 3 skills. (one of which is class, and I'm not counting level 12 skills since it's not unlocked yet).
That's 15 skills per type.
With 15 skills, you can have 243 permutaitons.
243 times 9 = 2,187 different characters you can build.
And that's not including two additional classes I unlocked with their additional skills.
And then there are 7 (it shows 8 but I haven't unlocked the 8th job) jobs.
Of course, not all permutaitons would be optimal and I see posts about certain builds being OP etc. etc. My point is that there are many options to build your character and your band of mercenaries. I would say that it's a good replayability.
2. Many crafting options.
Food, offhand weapons, primary weapons/armors (though weaker compared to your loots), oils, camping gears, etc. I'm still unlocking them and learning them after 190 hours of play.
3. Different options to resolve quests.
Though there are some quests that broke immersion by first asking me to kill everyone to reach the point where I get an option to save people. I still like the fact that I do get an option to pick a side (at least at the end, most of the times) for story quests and get an option to avoid violence using food, items, or influence points.
4. Wanted Level
So not everything is for you to pick up freely. You steal something and you are not skilled enough, Guard may chase you. Makes things more interesting and challenging.
You can't (or you could if you are strong enough) just walk around killing everyone either. (that stupid merchant...).
5. Different region with different challenges
I got pretty comfortable with Tiltren, Arthes, and Vertruse, then I got to Ludern.
Those mosquitos, crocswine, and poison puddles... I loved them!
I thought I figured it all out, and the game threw a new challenge at me.
6. Food/Wage System
I just like the consequences of having a bigger group. More things to manage, more things to think about, more challenge.

Cons:
1. I like the crafting system, but the crafted weapons and armors's usefulness become obsolete rather quickly. Not a huge con.
2. Lack of log screen with details. It's hard to know exactly how damages are calculated and how certain probabilities are playing out.
3. There are bugs. Well, this is an early-access game. One bug that got me good was Paused battle. If I hit pause while getting ambushed by an enemy, the battle screen starts with pause, but it cannot be unpaused. Only solution for this problem is to re-load. I had to re-load twice for this problem. Both cases were after a long battle.
Another bug is the Arthes region cannot be completed (I was able to "Finish" the story quest, but I couldn't get the region completion) if you take a certain action. Not a game-breaking, but I'm missing that region completion flag for Arthes. And the last bug I've seen is the tile-overlapping-preving-your-unit-from-moving-bug. If you have an animal unit next to a person unit in certain way, your person unit won't be able to move. I ran into this bug twice so far. Both times, all I had to was moving the animal unit out of the way.
4. Battle could get very long.
I selected "Free" Exploration mode, so the game's level-scaling. Level-scaling itself is not really a problem for me. I know there's Region-locked Exploration mode which doesn't level-scale. But some easy battles (like lower level Boars attacking you in forest) could get tedious sometimes. Especially, when you have 20-member band ;)
5. How do I get wheats consistently???
For me, it's not iron, wood, or any other components, but wheats I can't get enough.
Not a huge problem. I'm just ranting and wanted to write five cons.
I wish:
1. There's a toggled feature of turning the economic system more organic.
The trade routes are fixed that I can always expect to gain krowns between certain cities and the buying price of trade goods never change. The selling price does change based on the perks unlocked which is a good incentive to trade continuously.
Once you figure out the trade routes (either by reading something on the net or write up yourself with a google sheet), making money becomes really easy.
Not that I'm complaining, but maybe we can have a system where selling/buying a good could decrease/increase the price with increased the maximum number of trade goods (intead of 5). But agian, this may make the game too convoluted, thus a toggled feature.
2. There's a auto-battle option.
When a group of boars attack my band and I know I can beat them easily (well, I could out-run them, but I kinda want those porks, too). Instead of spending a tedious 20-min battle with them, I could just win the battle (or lose??) with a simulation. (maybe a secondary option to wipe them out vs win when the moral reaches high enough?)
3. Wolf's guarding skill(?) (forgot the exact name. there's a skill for a wolf that can prevent it from being surprised when ambushed during a rest) is applied to the whole group. The skill's benefit is only applied to the wolf unit, but it would make the skill whole lot more useful if the benefit for not being surprised applied to the entire band.
That would make taming a wolf (or an Alpha) a lot more sense.
4. Boars (and/or Crocswines) were immune to mud terrain. Or similar passive to animal units. For example, mole rats in the ruins get a benefit for being in the dark and negatively affect by being in the light. It would certainly make them more challenging. Maybe a toggled feature? i.e. Allow Animal Units' Terrain Passive
5. There was a log I can see in the game. There is a lot of things happening in the game with probability including crits, sussccful negotation, tackle at a ball game, capturing a person/animal, mining a precious stone, etc. And then there are things happneing with percentage including the amount of damage blocked by Guard, Protection, Deflection, etc.
The problem I'm having is that it's hard to know how effective certain buffs are without a log being printed out. For example (made up numbers and not actual numbers), my Cutthroat has 56% Crit chance with 40-50 dmg and 50% Guard-ignoring oil applied. Now he hits a Wrongdoer from behind (Ambush as it's called) and makes 40 dmg with yellow letter, meaning a Crit. Now, I do not know how much damage was blocked by the Guard, how much the original damage, how much increase was made by the Crit, and how much was actually blocked by Guard. I keep blindingly stacking things up and hoping he will deal more. If there was a log I can see in the game with some calculation details, it would make building and optimizing a lot easier.
6. There was a passive income. Maybe an option to buy a mine or a sawmil or a shop to generate a passive income of krown or ingredients?
My Play Summary:
I'm still on my first play through and have played about 190 hours so far.
Starting Region: Tiltren
Battle Difficulty: Normal
Simulation Difficulty: Normal
Save Mode: Normal
Exploration: Free
Regions Completed: Tiltren, Arthes, Vertruse
Regions In Progress: Grinmeer, Ludern
Current Party Size: 25 (mostly lvl 10 except some work ponies lvl 8-10)
* 17 battle members (14 human, 2 bears, 1 war pony)
* 8 work ponies