Urtuk The Desolation

It's like Battle Brothers, but a lot more METAL, and a lot less frustrating
if you've ever played Battle Brothers and raged because you had a good run ruined by some absolute BS RNG, then this is the game for you

Well... not a bad game for sure. It probably had an eye on Darkest Dungeon during its development, which is not bad. However, there are a few things that really make the game less enjoyable that it should be.
First of all, the gory bloody aspect, which doesn't bring any value in such a game.
Second, the map does not rotate, and is extremely difficult to read sometime. So you end up sending your troops on one side of the map, before realizing that the terrain is blocked. Bummer!
Third, you cannot see your characters' equipment and characteristics during a fight, but is clearly annoying and I cannot see a good reason for preventing this.
Last, for some reason, the difficulty is really not linear. The third level, The Ruins, is much more difficult and unforgiving than the previous ones.
Bottom line, if you can cope with the above, that's fine, but just keep in mind the (lack of) readability of the map! Enjoy Urtuk!

Positioning actually matters! It actually feels like you have to use tactics!
Call me crazy but I actually prefer this over battle brothers.

Initially it is frustrating when characters keep getting injured and require limited medicine to treat. After dropping to the easiest difficulty and understanding the mutator mechanics, and selecting some tank classes, the game starts to get fun and addictive. Now I can win on normal difficulty and probably also on hard.

4 hours into it and it feels great but interface and menus are a bit unfriendly to users.
It's obvious there's a lot of effort behind the game and I'm enjoying it a lot.
I like how many things can change your decisions in battle (type of terrain, elevation, a good bunch of statuses, etc.) just like this type of games should be. Kudos on this.
On the other hand, I've struggled trying to click on little icons under the characters during battle so I had to click at the same icons on the bottom.
Also, there is some cases where, for example, an unit is on a place where their surroundings are higher and there is other units around. When this happen, is a bit difficult to select that unit either for attack or just to check stats and info.
However, I'll keep playing it.

I started my first play through on veteran and thought the game was really decent.
There's still many, many issues with the game and it can be annoying at times, but for the sale price I paid, I felt I got more than enough value out of it.


Pros
- Great art style and soundtrack.
- Gameplay loop can be fun sometimes, but not always.
- Perk/mutation system makes it fun to create unique builds. (but let's face it, the balancing forces you into mostly ranged builds anyways)
- Equipment enhancement was great once I found out about it at the end of zone 2.
- Most encounter types are fun to play but they all have the same basic idea.

Cons
- Balancing seems to be a complete mess most of the time. I struggled to get through zone 2, right up until the boss fight and then finished the boss fight in 30 seconds. (replayed it many, many times as I wanted better legendary loot, each time I killed the boss in the first round)
- Most stat points are useless. I was struggling to get through zone 2 and then read about dumping everything into agility, so I did and sure enough that made the game a lot easier.
- Equipment doesn't seem to scale well. I have so much currency and there's nothing to spend it on; I'm still using equipment from zone 1 in zone 3 because the quality of drops has been relatively poor.
- Maps need more hand crafting instead of RNG; some of the layouts make absolutely no sense and make the battle unnecessarily tedious.
- Overall navigation isn't very intuitive. Inventory management is a massive chore and basic navigation like ESC to open/close menus and scrollbars don't exist.
- "Treasure Hunters Ambush" encounter is the worst. 2-3 waves of 7+ reinforcements every round (often spawning right on top of you) for trash reward items. I just skip this encounter because it takes so much effort for little to no reward.

Decent hex grid battle game. There is basically nothing but battling endlessly and equiping/combining gear. More on the meh side for me but the combat is solid enough to not give it a thumbs down.