Fae Tactics

TL:DR Review: While I would totally recommend this game for people who enjoy tactical games, if you have any game specific question before purchase, feel free to leave a comment and I will try to answer it for you in order to see if this choice is right for you.
Disclaimer / Bias: I have purchased this game on sale from Steam. Most of my favorite games I play are tactical based games, making these types of games possibly leaning more favorable than other genres I review.
Gameplay: The gameplay seems a bit complicated at first with the elemental system, both in the days of the week in which stat buffs are given to a specific element, and the elemental advantage / disadvantage system, though you'll find out that each element has much similar skills to each other, granting you better strategy building. For example all Wind units grant a haste and extra movement as a buff to a character while Fire buff grants extra damage. Only 1 buff or debuff can affect a single unit at a given time. Each unit has multiple skills based on what you do on your turn… You can target an enemy for an attack, target an ally for a buff (which removes a debuff if it has 1 on), or wait which also has a different skill tied to it. There are then passive buffs such as the third attack always being a critical, and trigger actions. Other than that you have two types of Hit Points (Main and Shield). Your shield is always depleted prior to your Hit Points, which is important, since the longer you wait to attack, the enemy will continue to bolster their Shield Points as they wait for you to get into range. When you level up you can add points to Attack, HP, or Special. These points can be redistributed when the need arises before the mission starts. This is a fun mechanic and helped many times on chapters that team building required some of my units to respec their builds to complete. Ironically the Elemental day of the week always seemed to favor the enemies on the field… so my story progression was either really bad luck or the game enemy elements do change to buff them. I am not 100% sure, but I enjoyed the uphill battle personally!
Story: The main character, who is one of few witches within the world, is in search of her mother after abandoning her town on her motorcycle with her 2 companions. She meets up with other allies when she traverses the world trying to be helpful to all around her. I enjoyed the story, and most of the characters are memorable. It is unfortunate that only 3 of them can be placed on the field at a given time, since your other units on the field are your summons. This makes many of these fun characters, when the story doesn’t require them to be one of the units on the field, benched units. This is balanced out a bit since different dialogs are only mentioned when a specific unit is on the field during the story. However, there is no way of knowing if you are actually missing an event unless you keep repeating it with every character by resetting the game. A visual box with ??? at least would allow people to know to restart a mission if the game suggested there is something that can be missed at that particular instance. Most places allow for free battles to take place which can help you level up your team or obtain new summons.
Visuals: Art is always a personal preference, though I do like this art style, and it works very well for the game’s setting.
Sounds: The soundtrack is probably top 15 favorites of all time, and works wonderfully for the setting it takes place in. The title screen theme in the promotion video was 1 of the things that totally sold the game and soundtrack to me.
Value and Considerations: Fae Tactics is one of my top 3 favorite grid strategy games that I have played. I have not 100% completed the game yet, and have clocked in almost 50 hours, making this game's value superb. I will need to replay the game to 100% it I believe, under New Game +, since there are some missable events that can take place, and I might have missed a couple side quests for items, or at least haven't stumbled upon them yet. When a NewGame+ happens your level stay the same, but their defense becomes quite high, making the game more challenging. Some other considerations include that there are certain summons that you can obtain, but never use as there are much better options. Having a mercenary system to give names / having your own custom units could have been fun too, such as like FF Tactics does. However, these considerations don't impact how much I enjoyed the game, and will most likely have this game as the second one that I will 100% complete in the last 5 years.

Game needs a neutral rating. It's a solid game akin to FFT but has some really dogwater design choices. Namely the "Ultimate" attack system. The ultimate system is so heavily skewed in favor of bosses in the game that its possible their ultimate meter maxes out every single turn which means you're dealing with high AOE damage every single round. Most bosses have high resist and can't be disabled.
There is also a "downed" system where boss/player units enter a downed state and can be revived unless their downed HP is depleted or the other bosses are also downed. This also heavily favors the enemy team which often fields way more units than the player (and can summon reinforcements mid-battle while also casting spells). It's nothing for the enemy to waste turns reviving their boss units over and over while still applying full pressure to the player.
I also want to add the entire late-game, the bosses just turn into one-man armies. Multiple spell casts per turn, multi-target attacks and they always have some insane gimmick that multiplies their offense/defense every round. It makes the game straight up anti-fun.
They were sooooo close to creating something close to FFT but dropped the ball halfway through.

Not only is Fae Tactics one of my favorite games on Steam, it's cemented itself as one of my favorites ever. As a lover of tactical strategy titles like Disgaea, Fire Emblem, or Final Fantasy Tactics - Fae Tactics stands tall. Its streamlined combat system allows you to develop nuanced strategies to overcome the battlefield. Feels like a hidden PSX gem with vibrant fluid sprites and layered sound design which immerses you deep within the game's imaginative world. Really can't recommend this one enough.

I love SRPGs and I consider myself to be pretty good at them. This game is probably one of the most difficult in the genre that I've ever played, and it's made worse by the frequent inclusion of puzzle tactic solutions to various maps.
I recommend this game, though hesitantly. It isn't for everyone, though I suspect that the people that do vibe with it will absolutely love it.

I think this is one of my favourite games of all time.
Mechanics are simple enough that newcomers to the genre will find it easy to pick up, but complex enough to allow many different strategies to be viable.
Veterans will find similarities to genre staples such as Final Fantasy Tactics, so if you loved that game - I am positive you will love this one too as I did. Keep reading for a more detailed description of the mechanics.
In combat you have access to 3 commander units and up to 3 summoned fae units. Commander units are unique characters with their own bits of story and special skills, while summoned fae are manifestations of the main character's mana.
During a unit's turn, it can move, attack an enemy, assist an ally, or wait, which activates its wait skill. Commander units also have reaction skills, which are essentially counter-attacks.
With the exception of some physical-type units, all units have one of the elemental types assigned. Elements determine a unit's assist and wait skills, as well as their strengths and weakness against other elements.
The game also has a (very simple) day of the week system, where every battle or story event advances time by one day.
Each day has an element assigned to it, and units of the corresponding element receive stat boosts during that day.
The battlefields are quite unique and interesting. You can take out enemies by knocking them into water (unless they're aquatic units) or pits. Some maps have (visible, not hidden!) traps on them.
There is also a terrain elevation mechanic - all non-flying units use a jump stat to determine whether they're allowed to move to a tile higher than the one they're currently on. Units with arc attacks also get bonus damage if they're above their target.
You obtain new fae (summoned units) as drops from defeated enemies. Once obtained that unit stays unlocked forever, even if defeated in battle. The game has an impressive roster of different creatures that serve different purposes, allowing you to tailor your strategy to enemies you are facing, and synergy with your commander units.
The game doesn't require you to grind levels, as enemy level scales with your characters. The only real benefit of a higher level is more skill points available for your commander.
Behind the childish facade, the story is quite epic and touches some serious topics.
All the characters have their own unique personalities, although some of them don't get as much development as they deserve. While small, the game world is rather charming and features diverse characters facing different problems (although there is a central arc to the story, which isn't apparent at first).
My only nitpick is that the best ending requires playing out the story arcs of 2 characters in the right order, while deploying them in battle together to trigger their unique story events. Without meta knowledge of the game, most players will definitely miss this on their first playthrough. I had a hunch that these 2 characters are like this, and I still missed one of their events, because I did the missions in the wrong order.
Finally the game offers us New Game+ to replay the story while keeping all of our levels, unlocked fae, scrolls, gems, and crafting materials. You still have to recruit your commanders through the story, but they retain their levels and unlocked weapons. What doesn't carry over is your equipment (bike level, summon capacity, etc.), as the game locks some equipment upgrades behind the story, but all your materials do carry over, so leveling them up again isn't that big of a deal.

One of my favorite games of all time. In the genre, this game is second only to Final Fantasy Tactics for me. It has gorgeous pixel art, a great story and an excellent variety of characters. Combat in tactical games is often slow with an overwhelming amount of options available to the player each turn and constant menu interactions. That's not the case here. This combat system is designed to be executed in just a few menuless clicks. It's an ingenious system that I wish more games would take inspiration from. At first glance, that might sound like it leaves little room for strategy, but that's not the case. Party choices, weapons that change your playstyle (both actively and passively), items, fae summons, ultimates, and EX attacks all provide a surprising level of depth. All of the above contains unlockable content, some of which is hidden and must be accessed via various methods. Finding these hidden gems is always satisfying and expands upon the customization and strategy present in the game. Cannot recommend this game enough!
(P.S. their previous game, Valdis Story, is an incredible metroidvania. Another one of my all time favorites.)

I'm not going to say "BUY IT IT'S A MASTERPIECE" it's not. It's quite a mess, really.
This is a "Recommended only if", so imagine a neutral rating.
The game lacks a lot of Quality of Life improvements, and fails to explain stuff because - it's very obvious - wants you to "test" things while in battle and understand them. This is horrible design, really.
There are bugs here in there, but the most noticeable ones come from unbalanced fights getting super hard or super easy for NO REASON just because AI found a loophole in its healing scheme, or *you* found a loophole in healing/protecting. You can, with enough experience and especially on NG+, create the "squad for success" almost every single time, exploiting some of these.
The game is hard, unpolished in some areas, has great music, cool art style, very interesting subplots and secondary missions, interesting characters and I even cried in one moment of the main story. That said, sometimes you get absolutely lost in what is the "main" story anyway.
## Recommended if you're not too picky about SRPG and you find this on sale. It has some solid gameplay, that falls more into the "solve this chess puzzle" territory than "RPG".