Othercide is a tactical role-playing game mixed with rogue-lite elements, developed by the Lightbulb Crew and brought to the world by it’s publisher Focus Home Interactive. The game focuses on the player controlling daughters to fight back the scourge of darkness and oppressing depression.
The most immediately noticeable comparisons are X-Com for the strategy elements of the game, and Hades for the rogue-lite. If players are familiar with either of those games, then Othercide will more than likely come very naturally to you in play-style and you will already have a general feel for the game-play when dropping in to Othercide.
These are the MGN Impressions for the tactical rogue-lite Othercide, brought to you by MGN and Heartbeat Moments. Our experience with the game is based on the PC, Steam version of the game, and if you play the game on any other platform, your experience may be different from ours.
As always our MGN Impressions are going to be broken down into four different but equal parts:
- Story
- Sound
- Game-play
- X-Factor
The X-Factor for our reviews will change from game to game, and for Othercide we’ve decided to go with Blending. Does the game blend it’s two genres well. Does the game benefit from having rogue-lite elements, on top of traditional turn based strategy game-play. Want to find out? Stick with us, and you will.
1:56 – Story 4/10
Othercide wants to tell an interesting story. It wants to be a horrific, fantasy, noir tale that will leave an impression. The issue is that it doesn’t. Beyond the initial heavy dump of exposition at the beginning of the game, there really isn’t’ a whole lot of depth once the game begins. You find yourself playing the missions simply because that is how you progress the game, not because the story links them well.
That is where the rot is most immediately noticeable – in that heavy lore dump at the start of the game. Some aspects are voice acted narration over text, and sometimes that text sticks around but there is no narration. I have no explanation as to why some parts are acted, and some aren’t, but it is very awkward and jarring.
If the same cut-scene that played at the beginning of the game were thematic for the remainder of your time with Othercide, and they were strewn expertly through the levels with consistently good voice acting, then I would have loved what the writers were trying to achieve with the theme and story. But it’s just missing.
So 4/10 for trying and laying the foundation for a great story, but missing the mark.
3:12 – Sound 8/10
It’s suburb. The soundtrack for Othercide is composed by Max Lilja, Pierre le Pape and Solitaris and each has done a brilliant job of bringing the game alive with music. It fits in with the thematic choices for the game: being set in a drab, noir version of France in 1897 and 1929 and as a result you feel really immersed in the game’s setting and general feel.
The soundtrack is worth a listen to in a single sitting, from one to fourteen, and some of the tracks have found their way into my regularly listened playlists for editing and writing reviews, and that is high praise.
The game sounds fantastic during game-play as well. One of the biggest eye-draws for the game is the gushing of brilliantly bright red blood as skills connect with enemies and daughters, and the sound effects for those moments hits the ear very well. It makes skills more satisfying, the sound effect of blood gushing, weapons firing and steel colliding with foes. I cannot fault the sound design in selection or execution, so kudos to the team for that.
My single gripe with the game’s sound, is how mind-numbingly repetitive the voice lines are. If your daughter takes four actions a turn, there’s a highly likely chance that you will need to listen to the same voice line over and over. There simply aren’t enough recordings to keep you from being annoying. That’s lazy, and disappointing considering how much love has gone into the other aspects of the game’s sound.
4:45 – Gameplay 3/10
There just isn’t a whole lot here to be honest. I kept waiting for the game to get deeper, and it just never happened. Then I was waiting, and waiting to unlock more classes for my daughters. I was waiting and waiting for skills trees to become more complex or diverse, to make each daughter feel interesting or unique in some way. You will have to keep waiting, because it doesn’t come.
You’re given the three initial classes for your daughters at the beginning of the game, and are explained with the tutorial. That’s about as deep as it gets without the Scythe. This is so disappointing, as the classes were done well, and I was exciting to get some more strategy in combining different variants – but it never happens.
Okay, moving on from what we’re given to work with in maps, to the maps themselves. You throw a few of your daughters into a small street in France. Then, you move them near enemies if they’re melee, and away if they’re ranged. That’s it. There’s no depth, at all.
No building entrance, hiding, positioning through to be had. There’s no levels, there’s no variance, there’s just nothing. Small map, move to the bad guys, kill them, the end. Where is the strategy in my strategy game?
Well, maybe it is improved with the rogue-lite elements that the game boasts, right? No. Remembrances give buffs to your next run, but you don’t feel punished for failing to plan well in a strategy game – that’s a horrid idea. In fact, you’re rewarded by giving your next run a leg up. This doesn’t bode well for the Blending X-Factor.
6:59 – X-Factor: Blending 1/10
X factor for Othercide is how well does it blend the two genres the game boasts?
I’m giving that 1/10. In other words, a complete and utter fail.
The enjoyment relating to your squad in other great strategy games like this, is to be found in really creating and attaching yourself to the soldiers. You usually can customize everything. Their origin, their story, every minute detail of their appearance, and therefore you form an interest and a connection to their how they progress both skill and story wise throughout the game. You can make them an individual, and their success or failure in missions crafts each solider their own personalized story.
That is missing almost in totality in Othercide. One daughter feels much like the next, the customization is almost non existent and you never get the opportunity, or the want, to get invested in them.
You can’t take this feature from games like Xcom, and expect to still be left with a good game.
Okay, so what about the other side of the coin, the rogue-lite. If I’ve likened Othercide to the successful Xcom, and I’m going to hold Othercide to a high standard in the other genre also, something like Hades.
Rogue-lite elements are where Othercide also falls short. If I’m sitting down to play Hades or any other game in the genre, I can get a few – very varied – runs in, and then on top of that fun I can also make progress towards my overall goals and progression as well.
In Othercide, your campaigns aren’t short runs, so you rarely feel like you are collecting the shards that move your next run up notch. Nor do those abilities you spend shards on feel impactful enough. So, the rogue-lite elements suffer for having a strategy game core, and the strategy game core suffers for trying to cram in rogue lite elements.
I don’t think the genres can be mixed. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know how to achieve the mix well, and it appears neither do the developers of Othercide.
Next:
Dark Deity: Class Overview Part 1 – Warrior
Credits
| Program | Founding Writers |
| Author | Luke Cowling |
| YouTuber | Luke Cowling |
| Publisher | MGN |
| Game | Othercide |