Iron Tides

First Impressions
After about five hours of gameplay, I'm through the first four quests, I've been in maybe fifteen battles, and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself!
The mechanics are not quite like any game I've played before. Most of your time is spent in battles, which occur in turn-based fashion on a tile-based battlefield. Your characters belong to different classes (Vanguard, Valkyrie, etc), and each one has a unique set of abilities (including various different melee attacks, ranged attacks, heals, buffs, damage over time, area of effect spells, etc), new ones being unlocked as they level up. The battles demand quite a bit of tactical cleverness, and so far, each battle feels unique. It's like chess but, you know, cooler, and with vikings. The rest of the time you're voyaging the seas or in Norhaven trading in loot, recruiting new characters, and upgrading your ship.
Aesthetically, the game is polished and very charming. The sound is clean, the writing is clever, and the art style strikes a nice balance between cuteness and badassery. Many times I found myself grinning at the quotes in the loading screens and grunting along with my vikings as they struck down their enemies. The developers have clearly paid attention to detail.
I don't have much of anything negative to say about this game so far. It looks great, plays smooth, is light in its tone but surprisingly deep in its tactics, and is just a darn fun turn-based tactics game! A solid 5/5 from me. Nice work, Crashwave!
Response to JimDeadlock's review:
You're right, it doesn't take long for the game to stop being easy. Personally, I'm enjoying the difficulty level. I haven't had any comparable setbacks (having to backtrack to a previous quest, renew my roster of vikings entirely, etc), but I've had some close calls, and I have lost two level 2 vikings (which stung!). I'm liking the fact that I encountered tough battles and real consequences pretty quick.
Tips for new players
- Your vikings are valuable, especially those above level 1! Try not to get them killed
- Pay attention to healing spells! Pick up a second healer from the Great Hall as soon as you can
- You can run from battles! If you're getting overwhelmed, running away is a better idea than dying. Go level up and come back later
- Pay attention to the suggested crew for the quest you're embarking on. Don't bite off more than you can chew...
- Be careful about spreading your vikings out in battle... learn their abilities (so far I haven't found any that weren't useful) and have them stick together and support each other
Happy gaming :)

A light tactical game with enough interesting and varied elements to keep you engaged without straining your brain or making you resort to obsessive record keeping or number crunching.
Randomly generated side missions let you proceed at you own pace, giving you time to learn the game and improve your party before proceeding along the main quest line.
The character mechanics are interesting. Characters are generated with randomized skillsets that you unlock with experience. Each character gets four active combat skills ( randomized ) and then a larger list of passive skills ( also randomized ). The passive skills provide benefits like more health, increased accuracy, critical chance, etc.
Travel is by longboat which you can upgrade to improve character stats and also other game mechanics like food consumption and inventory size.
The system is surprisingly intuitive and the different character classes work well together. The randomized skills lead you to inventive tactical parings.
Battlefields vary as does team placement and allowed team size. Before the battle starts, you get to choose which members from your longboat to bring and where to place them. This adds another layer of strategy to the experience as you can see your opponents and their placement.
Character death is permanent, but the loss of a party member is not a catastrophic blow to proceeding along the quest line. You can recruit new heroes at your main camp after each mission.
Game difficulty is up to the player. Not only is there a difficulty setting in the options menu, but you can choose to tackle missions with a smaller size party than recommended, or use party members of a lower level. You can grind random missions for experience, or not.
The overall effect is a feeling of freedom to play the game as you want to play it without the constraints of an Orwellian master plan you will be punished for not following.
I'm really enjoying the experience and looking forward to the full game release. If you're searching for an engaging tactical game in a Viking setting, give Iron Tides a try.

Note: this review has been chopped in various places to make it fit. You can read the full review here.
Iron Tides is 80% turn-based combat involving cartoon vikings and pirates, and 20% navigating your ship around hidden mazes in search of battles and the ultimate objective of each quest.
Gameplay – Skirmishes
There are seven battle scenes you can play, featuring the various enemy factions and your own set of predetermined fighters. In stark contrast to Campaign mode, I’ve been able to easily beat every one of them on the first attempt. It took me about 20 minutes. Having done this once, the Skirmish mode is now completely redundant since these skirmishes are identical every time you play them – same enemies, same fighters in your crew, same starting positions.
Gameplay – Campaign
The object of the game as a whole is to complete a series of quests on the main map. You have the main quests which follow a meandering dotted line, and optional side quests which can be used to collect extra loot and cash to strengthen your crew in preparation for the main quests. The quest icons each have a popup dialog to advise you of the suggested number/levels of crew you will need to have a decent chance of victory eg. 3 x level 1, 4 x level 2 etc.
That’s the theory anyway…
Unbalanced Gameplay, Or My Incompetence?
An important point to make about Campaign mode is that if you lose one single crew member it is DEVASTATING! On my first play session I breezed through the first quest (somehow), got all my crew to level 2 and was doing well after a few battles of the second quest. Then I lost my Valkyrie. Never mind, I thought, it’s just one member, she’ll respawn or something… NOPE! This single, seemingly minor event put a permanent stop to my progress in the game. I was quickly defeated in the next battle with 33% of my army gone, losing the rest of it in the process. So it was back to Norhaven to recruit new fighters using the gold I’d collected. I had to go back to the first quest of course, since my fresh level 1 army wasn’t strong enough to continue where I’d left off.
… Except I’ve never again been able to get past Quest One (or the side-quest) despite numerous attempts. QUEST ONE! I’ve spent all my gold on new crews and now I have to accept charity from the guy in the Great Hall giving me free crew. I spent all my Hacksilver on items once I discovered the market, including barrels so at least my crew didn’t starve to death on the next quest, just died in battle. So then I started Quest One again for the umpteenth time only to discover that the shedload of barrels and food I’d spent all my Hacksilver on the last time had DISAPPEARED! That would be the Hacksilver I’d gradually built up over many (failed) previous quests. If I’d known that I’d lose everything then I wouldn’t have spent my entire bankroll in one shot, but no clue was given.
I’m not a complete idiot, I have played turn-based strategy before – XCOM/XCOM2, Pit People, Antihero, Loot Rascals to name a few – but never before have I had this much trouble so early in a game. A new player is supposed be ushered in gently to gain some confidence and experience a decent amount of content before it starts getting challenging. Despite the limited number of options you have in a battle here, the AI is overpowered and brutal. The game has no difficulty settings at all, so if you just want a casual experience to follow the storyline you’re out of luck. There isn’t much in the way of storyline here from what I’ve seen, but then again I wouldn’t know, would I?
It may well be the case that Quest One is in fact easy if you use the correct tactics. However, if so then I would mention the lack of guidance provided to reach that level of competence. Whichever way you look at it, there’s a bottleneck at the start of the game.
Glitches
I’ve come across two so far...
Sound & Vision
The cartoon graphics and animations are pleasant enough, nothing to write home about really. Background music consists of vikingy tunes featuring drumbeat, manly humming and plucking of strings. Not memorable but, more importantly, not annoying.
There are six video quality settings but I can’t tell the difference. The lowest looks identical to the highest as far as I can tell. It does display up to 1920×1200 though, which is nice.
Difficulty
I always include this section in my reviews but as I’ve already said, Skirmish mode is too easy (I would expect some easy ones but not all of them) and Campaign is ridiculously difficult for new players despite the apparently straightforward mechanics. It’s something that really needs to be sorted out. The lack of difficulty settings is also a concern, this is normally a standard feature of any game.
Value
I don’t know how many quests there are so I can’t comment on the amount of content included but as far as variety and unique features goes, I haven’t seen much. It’s all very vanilla flavour, following the basic turn-based combat formula. It’s in EA so they can iron out the bugs, do something about the difficulty progression and maybe even add more types of fighters, special powers and battle layouts, but when all is said and done I don’t think the underlying game is worth full price. I might be tempted by a 50-75% discount for a few hours of entertainment, but it wouldn’t hold my interest for long.
Verdict
I usually like to get at least halfway through a game before I review it, but I’m incapable of completing more than two quests so what can I do? From what I’ve seen it’s a solid, competent turn-based strategy game although its scope is rather limited – it’s in EA but I can’t think of anything they could do to it that would make any major difference. It feels like any other generic game in this genre without any unique features to make it stand out from the rest. If you like this type of game in general then it will satisfy your expectations I’m sure, but for me it’s a bit repetitive and I don’t think I would play it long-term, even if my skills allowed me to progress further.
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This is a great little game. If you enjoy turn-based combat, give Iron Tides a try.
The abilities for your units are varied and interesting. Combat is fun, and you'll be fighting 90% of the time. Jumping across impassable terrain with my Valkyrie, having my Vanguard buff her with an extra move to spear the flanked enemy to death is genuinely satisfying.
There is an enjoyable depth to the combat. You'll be constantly figuring out what sequence of actions will be best. My favourite example of this is the Beserker. He lands a critical strike every first turn of the match, gains action points when killing a bleeding enemy, and gains health when he lands the killing blow. I use this guy like a self-healing bowling ball.
I'm excited and hopeful to see a less linear character progression system, to customise my units based on their role (for example, one Valkyrie has a jump ability to flank as mentioned, and another has a HUGE aoe heal). I'm also hopeful for more classes.
If anything, the combat is too easy. I have sailed through the campaign so far--no pun intended--with little resistance. The AI often outnumbers you, but you are given many more action points per turn. The enemy always flow towards your units, and they'll flow at different rates. This is easily exploited by defending choke points and picking them off one by one. I look forward to a more hardcore/ironman mode, where perhaps my units have less action points.
To be critical to a degree most will think ridiculous, the opening text would benefit from a rewrite. The word "grew" is used five times in short succession, which I found distracting.
Great game so far. Get it.

I was gifted this game from a friend and so I entered it without any expectations. After a few brief rounds of thinking "maybe turn-based strategy isn't for me" (having suffered a quick death due to my own impatience and impulsiveness), I persevered...and quickly became hooked! As of this review I've logged 60 hours in this game, which probably speaks volumes more regarding the quality and appeal of the game, than does my attempt at writing a comprehensive review.
There are 3 game modes presently offered:
Campaign
The campaign is typically where most of your time will be spent, assembling and upgrading your crew and ship through completing main/side quests. As with any game with RPG elements, you gain XP by defeating foes and winning battles. You can gain extra plunder (even recruit new vikings) through exploration in campaign mode. Skill points are also awarded upon leveling up, which can be used to enhance skills and character attributes. The game already offers a nice variety of viking classes (6 at this time) but I wouldn't be surprised if more are added by the time the game is officially released. Each viking can unlock up to 4 skills and while skills are class-specific, not every viking of the same class will have the same skill set. This provides for even more variety in your crew (ex: one of my "hunters" has "venom shot" and "piercing shot", while the other is equipped with "kill shot" and "bandage wounds" abilities). As for enemies, there are more types than I've been able to count, with an equally varied number of weapons and attacks to defend against. I suspect this will be expanded on as well as new regions are added in future updates.
Skirmish
This mode presents you with a list of pre-defined battle scenarios, but with randomly chosen vikings (not from your "campaign crew"). It's your job to ensure your crew has the "last viking standing" from what you're given to work with. Personally, I find skirmish mode to be the most challenging...in a good way.
Editor
The level editor allows you to design and play your own battle scenarios. Based on my understanding from reading forum posts, players will eventually be able to publish their created battles with other players, which would offer an endless flow of new challenges--a very exciting prospect!
I'll sum it up by saying that for me, Iron Tides is a very enjoyable tactical game with great graphics and visual effects. If you're the type of player that "never buys early access", you may want to re-consider on this one as it seems quite polished, and the dev team has been very responsive to bug reports and engagd with the community regarding questions. There have been regular updates and I'm excited to see what new goodies are in stored for the currently locked regions of the map. Based on my experience thus far, I wouldn't hesitate to support this great indie dev team (Crash Wave Games) on this, or other future products.

The game has been completely abandoned by the developers so don't ever expect it to be finished, that being said for the current price of £2.09 it's hard to argue that it's not good fun for the couple of hours that you get out of it.
I've enjoyed my time with it so far and I'm going to go on to get all of the achievements for it to get it to another perfect game on my profile. I originally Kickstarted this game and while I'm sad to not see it completed I'm glad that I at least got a key and a fun experience out of it.
Gutting to see them not see it through to its full potential however.

I lovely little tactical battler game. Kinda reminds me of old-school games like Might and Magic 2.
I wept real tears when my viking died. But then I honored them with more bloodshed.