Wander Hero

This is kind of a weird game which is a fusion of a few genres. There’s deckbuilding in it, but you run a mercenary company like Battle Brothers. You have mercenaries and heroes, in addition to skill cards and they all go into one deck. Mercs and heroes and even your main character can have permadeath enabled, which you set at the start along with the difficulty options.
The battle system is interesting, as it resembles a pinball machine. See some gameplay videos for examples. Mercs stay on battlefield when summon but they die easily. Heroes stay for only a round, and thus harder to kill but they do have more powerful abilities. Thus, your deckbuilding is an interrsting juggle of the these three types of cards. There are many ways to upgrade your deck by upgrading and getting cards, equips and relics.
The world is sandbox, and procedurally generated at start. You can be a trader or just do generated missions. There are also minigames related to mining, collecting, lockpicking and the like. You can skip them too and get average loot if you don’t want to do them. There’s also hundreds of cards to collect, and an economy to invest in with gold, which can be used for upgrades and paying wages.
All in all, I do like it so far though translation is rough now, and cards need some balance passes. Hopefully they flesh out the story more too.

"How is this game so good?!" - me, multiple times during my nearing 200 hours
Look, the gameplay is actually incredible. A perfect fusion of deckbuilding and billiards/pinball, with a reasonable open world and stuff to do between quests to upgrade your character and companions. The gameplay itself is super addicting and incredibly fun; each turn is a puzzle between your card draw from your highly customizable deck, mercenaries who persist turn over turn, companions are much stronger but who don't persist for multiple turns, and your own pinball attacks to see if you can defeat all the enemies, with plenty of different challenges - counterstrike makes melee attackers take damage, shields and terrain can block projectiles (but not all projectiles - some spells and mage companions can shoot through). In the mid/late game, you try to finish most fights in the first turn, though bosses usually really do feel like bosses; the final demon king had me sweating! The balance feels pretty solid to me, even if some cards are way better than others of the same rarity.
Also, the custom image editor is built in and the cleanest implementation of custom images I've seen; no external editing or resizing necessary - just large source images.
The one concern that might turn people away is honestly the isekai harem thing going on; some people might find it a bit skeezy. The most scandalous images are already here on the store page, and the rest of the theme is barely present in game at all - you get the same static images on the companion character sheet and loading screen and that's about it. The "slaves" in game are identical to other companions except for fewer abilities and reduced stats at higher cost. The store page definitely leans into the theme a LOT harder than the game itself.
Anyway, I went in expecting the usual shallow anime girl game, was surprised by the incredibly synergistic card/billiard mechanics, and honestly if you didn't immediately close the store page in disgust on reading the initial blurb or seeing the first couple of screens, you'll probably really enjoy the game.

Great game. Lots of strategic depth and tactical pinball style battles.
Pros:
- Nice Artwork, decent sound quality
- Infinite replayability with procedureally generated worlds and randomized skills
- LOTS of strategic choices to make; where will you invest your valuable time?
Cons:
- Some translation issues (but you can still follow the story).
- Some QoL improvements needed (tabbed categorized items, scrollable item lists instead of tabs, sort-able tables, etc.)
- Lots of stuff is undefined and unexplained in the game; it could use an in-game encyclopedia.
The last Con would be the biggest issue, except there is a very good indepth guide from eharper256 on Steam which fills this purpose. Overall, the Cons boil down to minor gripes, while the Pros result in a very fun experience. I would also recommend eharper256's mod and picture pack to improve the variety of characters you meet in the game.

Well, I picked this up at a whim because I saw Waifu pinball Battle Brothers. Now, I'm 100 hours later having written the English steam guide (lol).
Its absolutely one of those "just one more quest" types of games, even if the weird fusion of Battle Brothers, Peggle, Slay the Spire and various anime (especially Konasuba and other Isekai) references shouldn't work, it really does.
The English translation is still dodgy at this point, but its more weird and funny than unplayable, and obviously machine translated- I offered some suggestions for some of the weirder terms, as I'm an English Graduate, but the dev said they would be hiring a professional before it comes out of early access.
Keep in mind its a bit like Etrian Odyssey as well; in so much as it expects you to abuse it's mechanics as much as you can and optimise as much as possible. If you can break it, you probably should, because the late-game does not pull any punches if you've made poor deck, heroine and mercenary choices. Starting a character involves a perk re-rolling process akin to the old Wizardry games, which can take you a while.
Cards, as I review in my guide, range from "absolutely mental" to "why does this exist?", but actually, I don't think that's necessarily bad, because you have a lot of opportunities to gain and remove cards in the game, (way more than a given Slay the Spire run) and you actually WANT to reject them in many cases, since not only do you want a slender deck, but rejecting also gives you Souls, the currency used in lots of things from events to levelling up.
I've had absolutely no trouble running the game, and I'm very curious about the other reviews that mention that. I am still on Windows 10 with a 1080p monitor and an old Radeon RX580 custom build, which is ageing but still relevant, so part of me wonders if they're trying to run it on potatoes, since it is still a Unity game with lots of shaders and effects.
In any case; if you like games with a nice mix of strategic and tactical decisions, deck-building, optional rogue-like elements (you can enable perma-death), and plenty of waifu's, this could be the game for you. My Steam guide has a lot of information including a video of high level play, if you want more info as well, so check it out.

Absolutely brilliant. I bought it out of curiosity and have in no way regretted my choice to do so.
Challenging at the middle difficulty ("Adventurer" I think it was called) without feeling unfair. A pleasant mix of rougelike deck-builder and strategic pin-ball (sounds weird but its great). The English translation is severely lacking in polish and some things are difficult to determine at the offset (such as what some gear bonuses actually do), but the game is well laid-out and intuitive enough that you will figure out all the important bits shortly.
I am loving the more active "skill-based" role I am taking (compared to most deck-builder rougelikes) in aiming my units attacks or for strategic placement. It makes the whole combat experience more engaging. Throw in the uniquely deployed mercenary management/party building system and you have a recipe for success. I am looking forward to see how this game continues to expand and I am currently thoroughly enjoying my time with it now.

surprised to see an innovative game of this degree in our times. But stats with their abbreviations sure do need better explanations. It'd be great if hovering over a stat showed exactly what stuff like CTP meant, what its use is and how it is calculated. I like to play my games on highest difficulty which this game does deliver yet also frustrates when you don't even know what stats you have and what how things work... imagine fire emblem without knowing what speed is. Also changing system language to chinese just to run a steam game is extremely annoying.

I hate/love this game, you can do so so much and your campaigns can be very different depending on what you level up.
It takes so much of my time, and you can add images from your pc.

Now, they have MODS, so that is something that just adds way too much value to the game.

I love it because it's fun and it's changing, also the translations are funny af
I hate it because I don't have enough time to get all the achievements, this is actually a good thing but hey, have to place a con there somewhere