Urtuk The Desolation

Review: Urtuk
TL;DR: A very well executed turn by turn strategic RPG that feels pretty sandboxy. I am going to petition for a Kickstarter for Urtuk 2 !
Pros:
A ton of player agency to create and customize the most formidable rag tag gang roaming the wastelands. Weapons, mutators, skills to discover and level... Urtuk has them all
Everything you encounter has a chance to be recruited. Werewolf fighting alongside an Elder Vampire under the cover of a human sniper ? It is called a Tuesday around here
No RNG, fights are games of chess. You can blame only yourself when you lose
Difficulty for all tastes
Theoretical replay value (see below)
Cons:
We need MOOOAARRR, Urtuk is a never ending sandbox with a stat check for final boss. The dev did flesh out the lore, but... not in the game. There should be so much more to do, rather than playing the same 10ish missions
The above prevented me and I guess others to replay the game with another faction in another difficulty. Over 45h was enough for me. That is a real shame because there are many factions and some unlocks
Clunky inventory and team management, seriously

Pros
1. turn based strategy
2. grid based combat screen and large parties of 6 that you can control
3. tons of items to equip
4. unique environment
5. unique storyline
Cons
1. No workshop
2. same maps on replay

Bought the game 5 days ago, doing my review now. Yes, my playtime is right. 5 days have 120 hours, I played this game for 93 hours in the last 120. Why? Well I don`t know. I do that with most games I buy. Also, I have completely lost control of my life and sanity (this is a call for help). I have not finished the game, and I will not, the last boss is strong as heck, and I just can't grind anymore. I'm frustrated because I can't champion anyone anymore because there are always some 'allies' on the field (I'll explain later). I have 25 characters in my party, 80% of them useless. But all of them quite unique.
Anyway, about the game:
It is like an easier but dark(er) fantasy version of Battle Brothers in a Kenshi universe, but with LISA: The painful settings and abominations plus evil Don't Starve style of graphics. 
Post-apocalyptic "wastelandcore" on point btw. The world is merciless, dirty, tough, ugly, disgusting, violent. Not even the strongest survive much.
The game is no way nearly as punishing as you'd think doe. For example: units go back to full health after the battle. The first death of most units is free, the unit gets 'injuried' and you can just put it in reserve and wait for it to heal (there is a timer). There is basically no RNG, for both you and the enemies, any clear attack will hit.
Feeling of progress is decent, but leveling up is annoying as heck, expect to change only one or two units from the main party throughout most of the campaign. (most of the time you switch because new characters are already high level).
Recruiting some bosses you beat is really interesting. 
Roleplay potential is nice if you are an attention-seeking streamer.
There are some basic stuff to make you pay attention, like how skills are progressed by activating them (being hit, being posined, etc.), some units requiring wages (you can just kill it if it asks for wages doe, nothing negative happens if you murder your own men), and other smaller details. Nothing is hidden doe, if you use the wrong skill against an enemy, it is because you did not read that the enemy was strong against that skill.
Honestly, if you think the mechanics are too complicated you are not on the right side of Steam, everything is quite intuitive and you just have to use your brain a little.
At first the game requires some tactics, but, funnily enough, they remove some of the strategic thinking in the late game. You would guess that the fights would get more complicated as the game progresses, with more mechanics and stuff, but it is the other way around. And that has one single reason: High level characters can`t get pushed into death zones.
The first zones had me positioning my units so they wouldn't be pushed into insta death zones, while at the same time trying to kill strong enemies with one move. But that is removed once every single character is immune to forced movement. Then it gets repetitive. In my case I had one character too strong and the others kinda weak, so it was everyone distracting the enemies while my main character insta killed most of the enemies with crits. (until the last boss fight that is too hard for my dude alone)
Once you figure out some mechanics, it gets a little easier, but eventually easier becomes boring.
About championing, basically, to get a special bonus and make your units stronger you have to fight with a party of exactly 2 guys against more than six, but the quests are random, so the game add some random allies to the field. Then the game won't give you the special bonus because you had more than 2, even though the third guy was placed on the field by the game and you had no way to remove them. If you are unlucky, like me, you can go looking for hours and still won't find a quest without added allies. 
Anyway. I do recommend, it had me invested for a while. I liked the aesthetic, the setting, and the fact that it is not rng heavy like other turn based games.

An honest game that did not scam people under the concept of "Early Access" but instead progressed decisively and gave what's been promised in an efficient fashion.
PROS:
*A unique approach to character development and building
* Different viable team comps that do not rely on luck
* Minimal RNG included combat system that does not punish good startegy under any circumstances.
* You can basically be what you beat by either recruiting them from their own settlement which you have conquered or simply pick them on your next playthrough.
CONS:
- Story feels like a placeholder of something that could have been greater as it is REALLY shallow. But then again, this game is not about the story but the content it provides to turn-based tactical game enjoyers.
- Some encounter types are just not worth the trouble as it takes too long to complete or too uncomfortably risky in nature (Like the encounters that you have to save someone and run to the opposite side of the map to extract everyone but an infinite amount of enemies immediately starts spawning from the beginning point.)
- Remember what I said about RNG? That excludes the "Strong vs ???" mechanic. Basically characters randomly start to develop a trait which somewhat specializes the character to be strong against a type of enemy. However, as far as I have observed, what will that character be strong against is heavily depends on RNG which sometimes might not be what you want or could use.
TL;DR: You will most probably like it if you are solely looking for a tactical turn-based game to play for an extended period of time and hate RNG.

Urtuk is a turn based tactical game with some very light RPG addons. It is purely focused on battles and the lore itself plays less than secondary role. Very developement of our characters is simplified and allows some limited choices - it is more about upgrading than really doing builds. Having said that I must admit that I dont remember any other game that delivered so much fun just from doing battles over and over. It is our choice whether we speedrun the game and focus on most critical targets, or rather roam around and annihilate enemies in never ending encounters. In latter case there is no time limit needed to actually end the game.
Best things in the game?
- how it looks -artstyle is one of the best I've ever seen, though this might be a subjective matter
- mechanics in battles - very simplified, yet interesting and allowing some tactical thinking, with some special attention to enviroment, for example superb killing holes ;-P
- almost no fillers - battles are frequent and we dont need to spend much time between each fights, sometimes it is like 15-30 seconds, in most cases around 1 minute (didnt I mention that game is focused on battles?)
Worst things in the game?
- short progress curve - we can easily get most of it in first stage
- other stages dont bring anything unique, maybe outside some enemies - there are no extra weapons to be find, no new traits ect, just same thing, with slightly progressed quality of weapons (moving graduately from "iron" stuff to "mithrill")
- almost no fillers... yeah... at some point we dont remember what are we fighting for ;-P

Awesome Game it's like Battle Brothers a little only very dark and not as hard. Very good game . Just started no real story just killing .

this is a great darkest dungeon/tactics combo