Alvora Tactics

can't talk about alvora without talking about voidspire. of the two, it's the less grand adventure - the scope is more restrained as this game is a much smaller dungeon crawl over an actual adventure. it compensates with a bit more mechanical depth - more races, more classes, more equipment possibilities.
i think it's a decent trade-off but it fills a completely different niche than its predecessor. had to adjust how i play because the game also presents different combat challenges. overall though? a pretty decent time. had some fun with it! would recommend at least a look at it.

If you're like me and every other TRPG cannot stand up to Final Fantasy Tactic's combat and class systems, Rad Codex's tactics games are for you. They all have a hybrid class system just like FFT, with some changes that I like and there aren't any useless meta classes like the mediator or thief (instead you just get loot off of enemies when combat is over). Each game has a different type of campaign, but they all share the same class and combat. Also, you gain XP at end of combat instead of per action so you are not incentivized to drag out fights to maximize XP gain.
Particular to Alvora, there is almost no story and endless combat. If you ever wanted to grind in FFT in fights that were fun and not meaningless like the random battles in FFT, but don't care if it has a great story, this is a fun game for you. You go on dungeon runs and fight enemies and solve a handful of puzzles, then you can exit when it gets too hard. Its not a roguelike/lite. If you wipe then its game over and you go to a load screen. also if your characters faint then their max HP is lowered which incentivizes you to have more than the maximum team amount, and also you can permanently unlock a class for all present and future team members which makes it easier for new hires to catch up. I had a ton of fun grinding the shit out of this game and I recommend it to any TRP fans who are looking for something heavy in combat and light in story.

Same RadCodex universe I've come to love. Familiar yet fresh. This time we get a dungeon crawler! A short game, as I beat it at around 13h playtime, and I'm a gaming slowpoke. Looking forward to the next title :)

A short dungeon crawler with a bit of procedural generation.

Doesn't have the exploration or story or Voidspire Tactics, but it's also cheaper, so I think the price is right if you just want more of the same gameplay with some nice quality of life improvements.

Surprisingly enjoyable tactical game, a lot of classes, skills, items, synergies and accessible, but deep combat

Another certified hood classic from Rad Codex. Like voidspire, played this years ago, came back this month after horizon's gate to revisit the series.
It feels like Alvora gets slept on compared to other games in the setting/series, but it does plenty well enough to be worth a playthrough. This is basically an expansion on Voidspire's tactical combat and job systems set in a semi-procedural dungeon where the map shuffles to some degree each time you enter. It's a bit lighter in story than Voidspire (which itself was already kinda light), but like with voidspire, what little is there is perfectly fine in terms of handwaving a reason for the gameplay to happen. The decent amounts of lore are largely carried over, though it feels like there are less elements to inspect and get snippets on compared to both voidspire and horizon's gate.
One interesting bit is the difficulty ramp: whereas Voidspire maintained a decent incline throughout, here I notice that the first few hours of a new game here are easily the hardest, with everything becoming significantly more manageable once you start unlocking classes and looting/buying good gear. At the start of my latest playthrough every battle against anything stronger than pillbugs felt like a struggle (admittedly leading to some damn cool moments when my captain was the last man standing and singlehandedly carried the team's survival with dual guns and rogue skills), but after getting the party cap up, finding the masks for more advanced classes, and getting everyone even basic gear so they weren't naked, well... the momentum from there kinda broke the rest of the game on veteran difficulty. Midgame onwards some encounters still forced me to think a bit more carefully about my approach, but most of them my crew just walked right up, shot first, and then proceeded to dismantle whatever poor sods were in front of us. Even late game in the final few battles I went through with no KOs.
I don't say this to brag, only to note that it is probably the easiest and most forgiving game between Voidspire, itself, and Horizon's gate. Voidspire and Horizon gate both force you to work a lot harder for a lot more finite amounts of xp and thus to unlock classes. Meanwhile Alvora allows for basically unlimited grinding and practice runs for builds right out the gate, not to mention permanently unlocking classes for all units just from exploration (and surviving an occasional boss fight).
Overall, good game, if a bit shorter feeling depending on how quickly you grasp the system and get your momentum going. 8.5 giant world eating serpents whose children have already spread to Eral and thus all the realms are potentially already doomed despite our best efforts out of 10

Great tactical srpg with much customization. Works well enough on Steamdeck.