Children of Zodiarcs

If there was a "Sideways Thumb" option or "Buy if on sale" I would choose that instead of recommended. Gameplay wise, the game has a really unique and intriguing combat system. However, if you're looking for a good story and characters to love, this might not be the RPG to look for. Honestly, I found the entire main cast (except someone who joins midway through) to be unlikeable. Thus, the side content and side stories actually ended up being more appealing when they were available.
Gameplay wise, the characters are good - it's just bad writing, dialog, and characterization that ruins the mood. It feels as if the main cast goes through no character development until the very end, and even then, kind-of, but not really? On the other hand, the side-story cast all seem to grow and move on in new directions which was interesting. There was a lot of potential with the story but it was just really hard to like the gang of child soldiers with a little too much bloodlust. The story also keeps hammering on these points - that they are kids, and that they are violent and constantly killing all these adults they hate. Well, the main character hates rich nobles specifically, yet she realllllly does not seem to discriminate who she kills.
The story also often gets in the way of the party customization as it will mandate what characters are available. Only 3 characters are ever in a party at a time, and the story will conveniently kick out members so only 3 are available. This lack of control over your own party is rather frustrating! There is also a huge lack of cast diversity for this reason. It would have been far more interesting to be able to select party members or rotate the cast based on the battle ahead.
Also the dialog is just so off-putting. I recognize it's all a bunch of children as the cast, but the writing should still be smart instead of also seeming as from children. For example, there was a long dialog of nothing but "..." until a character said they farted. Just stupid and a failed attempt at humor I suppose. The story also cannot seem to make up its mind if these should be innocent children or bloodthirsty maniacs.
Now, the actual lore of the world and the setting actually is pretty interesting as its not any of the usual save-the world business or typical fantasy setting. Instead, its a sort of clash between gangs in the streets and the noblemen and guards from higher up. It was actually kind of refreshing to fight over such petty things like turf wars and survival. However, it did not quite grab me as much as I hope it would because of all the aforementioned reasons where it just was not polished and written well enough to get me to care about the main cast. Instead, I just often found myself irritated at their behavior.
So up until now it seems like I should give this game a thumbs down. Well, if you're looking for a story and can't get past bad dialog and annoying characters, then yeah probably not recommended. But if you don't mind and want to try out some interesting gameplay I do recommend giving it a shot on sale. The battle system and gameplay is actually really fun. Although, even there I have some gripes.
Dialog during the battles has never been so annoying. You may have seen it handled more tastefully in Final Fantasy Tactics for example. This game will slowly rotate the camera, say one line of dialog, then slowly rotate back. I was getting so annoyed I just hit ESC and skipped the cutscene when that was happening every turn in some battles.
Also difficulty is weirdly paced. The best cards in the game are locked behind some side content where the enemy is level 45 and you will be way below this at the end game. So I completed the game then came back to do this... and it was still too hard as I was only level 40 and the last squad of enemies just combo my characters to death before I could respond (if I had a better hand then maybe would have been okay). So what's the point of leaving the best card in the post game if there is not much reason to keep playing after playing the hardest battle in the game anyways? And the final story mission was actually laughably easy. There was a different level in this side content (Arena) where I kept dying in the first turn due to snipers and mages on rooftops just bombarding the start position. This mission was unlocked like 3 missions before the final one yet is 10x harder than the final mission. I don't get it. This was all on Normal difficulty and I'm no stranger to tactical rpgs.
Anyways, when the game is well paced the gameplay is fun. Aside from 20 story missions there are 4 side ones, 6 arena challenges, and as many skirmishes as you want. It's a tactical RPG that is also a deckbuilder and dice roller. Every character has their own unique deck where they earn cards (and upgraded versions) as they level up. So you have some customization of choosing which cards to use, and which dice to set. The dice have their own faces with meaning relevant to the game. They are basically used to increase the power of attacks, block counter attacks, unlock special bonuses on the cards such as taking an extra turn, etc. It can be really fun building off a combo of playing 7+ cards in a turn in the late game due to rolling extra turns.
Each character has their own deck with specialties. The main character is a great damage dealer but also unlocks some support and healing cards. I built her to be a single-target combo DPS, where has a great chance to keep playing cards until the target is dead. In contrast, another character is generally a mage with a tons of options for different AOE spells and has no healing/buffing available. Yet a different character is a support-god and is similar to the dancer in fire emblem where can grant other characters a chance to move/act again while also healing them. Fun character to use, and one of the few like-able ones in the game personality-wise too.
I would recommend waiting for a sale, or at the very least check out additional reviews on this game before buying. It is fun for playing through at least once, and I hope if there is a sequel or similar game in the future, it will be better polished.

Creative mechanics, but a bit grindy. Story is meh.
The difficulty of the hard is due to a combination of the RNG of the customizable dice and the fact that enemies are just higher levels. You technically can grind dice to mitigate the effect of over-leveling.

Battles are a bit slow, but if you're looking for a turn-based tactics game with deck and dice mechanics, don't miss this game.

If you like turn based tactic games with dices and decks, this is the one for you to try out, however on sale only, as the game lacks polishing and ai overall.

Well, to sum it up: the game was fun until it wasn't. I'll get more into that later though. While I like turn based strategy, this game blends the whole "move + action" of that genre with card game and dice rolling mechanics. These all go hand in hand very well! The cards range from magic/ranged attacks, melee attack and healing. There are 4 main characters you alternate as and all have different strategy to how you play them. The dice you roll depict how much damage, defense, healing, etc. you can do AND you can get cursed dice too which are generally not good. Sometimes you are able to do multiple actions if you are lucky with the dice or you may want to reroll a bad roll... Again all of these plus the progression of characters and abilities and difficulty is done really well but that is also my downside. The game is challenging on normal and I can remember missions where I spent an hour retrying because you only have 3 characters while the game has like 10 so you need to be very tactical in how you go about the maps you also may need to pray to RNG gods to help you. It is always the same characters (except a couple missions) and it just got a little boring after 10 or so hours and tiring of making it to the end of the map then having a bunch of enemies pop up. I skipped cutscenes so I can't comment on that but overall the gameplay is fun and that is what matters to me.

It's a nice lil turn based strategy game.
I recomment that you play it on hard, because otherwise it's too easy.
The game itself is missing some good indicator of when you can upgrade different things (like add an extra dice to your rolls). So it pays off to check that every few missions so you don't find out later that you were playing gimped (yep, talking from experience).

A fairly fun pick-up-and-put-down type of tactical RPG.
The controls are pretty simple, though there's some minor QoL things I wish were included (e.g. camera scrolling when the mouse is at the edge of the screen). I appreciate that you can revisit old maps for skirmishes with randomized enemies, both to explore different scenarios and set-ups with allies and enemies and just for the fun of it.