Tales & Tactics might get you hooked on the genre | Hands-on preview
As genres of video game come and go, there are always going to be types of game you’re less familiar with. I like to think my gaming diet is pretty darn varied, but there are still plenty of blind spots in my pixelated vision. One of these blindspots houses the auto battler. I love the idea of setting up a team of units with perfect synergy to beat up my opponent, but other than the auto battle mode in Hearthstone I’ve just never found the time to jump into this competitive genre. The perfect way for me to change that though is by transforming this typically multiplayer style of game into a Roguelike, and that’s exactly what Tales & Tactics has done.
If you aren’t familiar with autobattling, here’s the jist of it. The aim of the game is to buy units that work well together, place them on a grid and have them beat your opponent who’s doing the same thing as you. There’s some fairly straightforward strategy to consider when placing your Tales & Tactics monsters on the hexagon tiles of the board that you’ll need to think about too, like putting your archers at the back and your tanks at the front, but really the main way you’ll succeed is by collecting units of the same type so that they’re boosted with powerful effects.
For my first run I noticed that the shop started with a few orc type monsters available to purchase, and once I had three different orcs on my team they all gained the ability to Rage and deal extra damage once their health dropped below half. One of my Orcs was also a Dweller type, and once I’d gathered a couple more of these cave based creatures they grouped together to summon an additional muscly brute at the start of battle who decimated the enemy. Making sure you have the right lineup of units will help turn the tide of battle in your favour, so make sure you keep refreshing that shop.
Each round you can spend your hard earned currency on new units, or on refreshing the shop to look for the ones you need. You get one refresh for free between battles, but often that isn’t enough to find the perfect orc or skeleton for your crew. This is even more true when you factor in how important getting three identical units is. If you can manage to grab a full set of three creatures they’ll fuse together to create one super powerful unit, and because you can only have a limited number of them on the battlefield at a time it’s worth making them as tough as possible.
You can make your army more powerful in a few other ways too. One of these is by leveling up your overall level, and the other is by finding gear and equipping it to individual units. There are even more layers of complexity to this too, because you can also fuse items together to combine their effects. Figuring out what effects would help a specific unit the most isn’t always easy, but with a bit of thought and practice you’ll have the ultimate team in no time.
One aspect of Tales & Tactics I was really impressed by is the variety of unit types. Every single creature you buy has its own unique skill, from healing your weakest unit to stunning enemies so you can overwhelm them. Even the different ranged creatures all function differently, my prized orc threw its axe like a boomerang hitting multiple hexagons on its route, but I also had a more standard single target skeleton archer and a dragon that burned a cone of flame in front of it. Figuring out the best way to arrange all these very different units and which synergise well is really engaging, and is just another layer of strategy you’ll need to keep in mind if you want a run to last.
I haven’t really mentioned the Roguelike elements of Tales & Tactics yet, which are really important in ensuring the game isn’t just made up of back to back battles. In each run of Tales & Tactics you’ll start with a couple of hearts, and winning a fight will give you an extra heart up to a maximum of four. Losing a fight causes you to lose two hearts, and when they’re all gone that’s game over. The Roguelike randomness means the battles you face will be different each time too, and you also have branching paths to choose from with different shops, events and battles down each Slay the Spire esque fork in the road. You’ll only gain access to the best units, equipment and shop upgrades by choosing your route carefully, and with only a couple of losses standing between you and failure you’ll need all the advantages you can get.
In this demo version of the game I was limited to a single character to play as with no unlockable perks or progression available between runs. It’s clear that there’s plenty to unlock based on the menus (which I’m really looking forward to checking out) but at the time of writing I don’t know how this will work or how much each character and perk option will shake up the game.
Even in this very limited demo, Tales & Tactics has me really excited about getting stuck in to the world of auto battling. The Roguelike elements work really well with the strategic automatic battles, and the variety of units and unit types is really impressive. If you’ve always been a little intimidated by auto chess and its peers, then this might be the gateway drug you need to get hooked on the genre.
Tales & Tactics is coming to PC (via Steam) via early access on August 3rd.
