Age of Fear: Total

Love having all the games in one launch and the bonus Open campaigns are a fun addition

I've been enjoying this series since I gave it at try in AOF 3, and it's even more fun when you can play everything it has to offer. If you enjoy tactical combat like in Age of Wonders or Eador, you will like this game. The campaigns add plenty of structure if you prefer narratives with goals, and the wealth of open world content will let you try out all the factions and unit combinations to your heart's content. On top of that, the devs are responsive and genuinely care about their game being fun. Buy it!

Top-down token based RPG with excellent turn-based tactical combat on a gridless field where your team is given the turn and execute commands with your troops be it melee humanoid or magical creatures or animal soldier or varying shades in-between; you then watch the AI take their turn in similar fashion.
This is the entire package of games and has 24 individual campaigns of varying length, it even has multiplayer but you need another grognard for this as it is direct connect. It will last you many hours and many years if you play games similar to this. If you watch the gameplay trailer, you will know exactly what you're getting if you've played a TBT game.
I have seen some in forums balk at the price, but I agree with the developer and say that by the time you are finished with the game, you should get at least a cost of $0.50USD an hour out of it and then some. There are to my understanding (editing will occur if corrected by the dev) going to be even more campaigns added to this base module as well.
Lastly, I bought this and was having a grand old time until I encountered a bug in a few battles, so I reached out to the developer and told him what was occurring and over the course of ten private emails, my logs shared with him helped him figure out what was happening with my wonky system and within days a new patch appeared and the problem was resolved. You cannot get anything remotely similar to customer service from AAA game makers. I'm gonna be a fan of this guys work until he quits.

I really like the variety of ways to put together an army, and multiple ways to tailor the difficulty and game experience--most things that could annoy you can be toggled on/off, so you can really customize the game to your liking more than I'm really ever used to seeing.

Not the most aesthetically pleasing game out there, but it does a good job at immersing you in a life of a cold hearted necromancer obsessed with taking over the world.

Voice acting is like a decent audio book quality.

Music needs work - it plays joyful tavern music as the narration is going on where I'm piling up bodies and doing undead experiments. A bit dissonant.

But, the actual gameplay is great. Very fun strategy / tactical party-based rpg.

I like Age of Fear. I like it a lot and I'm gonna talk about why.
First off, I really respect tiny indie games made by one person. This is a clear passion project complete with programmer art and stock sound effects I've heard in other games, and yet he's also gone back and commissioned better artwork for units over the years, as well as put in the effort of hiring voice actors to read the story cutscenes. We can discuss if the effort has been worth it, but - hey. I like seeing games made by people who care, especially after way too much time in the steam queue finding shovelware that was made for a quick buck.
Second, I adore small scale tactics. X-COM is one of my favorite games, along with Strain Tactics. I love leading little squads around and relying on positioning and skills more than worrying about strategy. This game is full of that: you have about 9~ units in your squad and that's the limit.
Third, oddly enough, the price structure? These games have been around for over a decade now and been in bundles and you can get them really cheap - or straight up free, in the case of this standalone demo thing. And then on top of that, the TOTAL edition I linked above? That's the entire dang series slammed into one launcher alongside a promise of all future content for free. That's a lot of games with full story campaigns!
So - Strix you've been typing a lot but you haven't explained what this IS.
Age of Fear is a small squad tactical turn based game with rpg mechanics and metaprogression. It has top-down graphics (which are odd but work) and some of the feel of a tabletop wargame. Movement is Phantom Brave / Makai Kingdom style - every unit has a circle around them that's how far they can move, and they can go anywhere in it once per turn. Your entire army moves in one turn, and then the enemy army moves in their turn. Units attack in standard fantasy rpg fashion - melee attack (for a percentage chance to hit), or use a skill (magic costs MP, etc) and that's the basics. Units standing next to each other can physically block the path - which is vital for protecting squishy casters. (Especially as casters cannot cast while next to an enemy unit!)
What takes this simple setup (fun in and of itself) into really interesting is the sheer variety of units and synergies. I mean, the dev has had a decade to add units and balance them, but there's over five factions and plenty of weird units. So it's fun seeing what kind of weird matchups you can get!
Additionally, the game structure itself is neat. In story campaigns, you can follow the main quest or get distracted by the oodles of procedurally generated battles ("this area is the swamp, so it's full of goblins! fight!") - I'm still playing around with this, but the dev tells me that most players spend about a third of their games doing this - but it's possible to ignore it entirely and beat the story - or go wild and grind forever and steamroll everything. Story quests (and procgen quests) scale to your level somewhat, so it's flexible.
Your other option is - yes - full sandbox mode. The open campaigns are just that, where you can do whatever you want forever. (There's also multiplayer? Wild!)
Okay I'm getting too long winded. Last bit! RPG mechanics. Units can level up, get promoted, equip gear, evolve into other units, etc. It's flexible and neat! This also means that you're incentivized to keep units alive and not just replace them as you go. Unless, of course, you're a necromancer (like I am, in the first story campaign...) and skeletons are free. So is raising the bones of your enemies. >:D
So far I'd say the writing is passable to okay, not great. The voice acting is neat. While I'm curious about these stories, and I do love that there are neat branching paths - I died in one level and it wasn't game over, my hero unit actually became a whole new class and the story altered itself - I never lose track of how this is a game you're playing for the mechanics first. Which are solid and fun, imo!
That's Age of Fear and I'm enjoying it and want to put more hours into it!

Yeah, this game is pretty awesome and funny. I recommend it giving it a go.
Although some stuff may need tweaking, but the devs seem to be responsive to players.