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.

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

wonderful game, well-crafted tactical gameplay and superb game progression. i love the improvements made to it from voidspire tactics and i'm looking forward to playing horizon's gate when i get the chance!

If you've already played Voidspire Tactics and Horizon's Gate and just want more of that combat system in a different little package, this is a no-brainer.

This game rules.

I played Voidspire Tactics and had trouble with it. Didn't end up finishing because the game frustrated me with its seeming inability to realize its own mechanics.

Alvora does not have this weakness. Alvora Tactics uses procgen in a very simple and elegant way to serve up varied encounters that can actually challenge your builds and provide novel battle scenarios. I wouldn't call it endlessly replayable, but it's definitely getting a 2nd run out of me.

Sick game, in my opinion a great improvement over the 1st while building on it in just about every way.

Alvora Tactics is the second Rad Codex game, featuring turn based combat and an FFTactics-inspired class system, Based around exploring a single, procedural dungeon--the remains of a giant city-eating worm--Alvora doesn't have much to differentiate it from the other games by this developer, but it's still fun and addictive in its own right.

The main added features here are new classes and the augmenting system. You also get a base camp with party-wide upgrades, including the ability to field six members at once. It's a nice balance between exploring Alvora and coming back to sell loot and buy upgrades, all of which feel impactful.

However this version of the class system feels pretty weak. Classes in this game have seven active abilities instead of the usual five, but most of them just don't seem worth using. There's a lot of status effects and movement based abilities, and other situational stuff, but relatively few direct power increases. To be fair this seems to be the idea behind the system--most upgrades consist of new tools, range increases, or duration boosts, while power comes from your gear and stats. But this makes the few direct power increases feel like the only things worth unlocking.

I finished Alvora in about 15 hours, and it felt too short. My team was decently leveled but only had mid-tier gear at best. It feels like a whole chunk of late game content is just missing. The dungeon has 5 biomes and other than one alternate 3rd floor that sometimes pops up, every floor has the same enemies and same power level every visit. Not only that, but the fourth floor is mostly puzzles with hardly any fights, and the last zone is short and mostly empty. After your first clear it seems like a sixth zone is going to be added, but alas this is not the case.

Alvora was a lot of fun, but Horizon's Gate does pretty much everything better. Only recommended if you can't get enough of Rad Codex games and are curious to see how they've evolved.