You open your eyes; you are on a throne, in front of you all your loyal subjects. In middle of them, above a small pool of glittering water your wisest adviser the Massive Chalice! Yes, exactly, you're a King and you listen to a magical, talking chalice. Also you're immortal, but that doesn't really matters because you cannot leave your throne room.
Massive Chalice is a single player turn based tactical strategy game in
which you will have to build keeps, create Bloodlines and lead team of
elite heroes versus the Cadence, your mortal enemy. The game is done by Double
Fine Productions and it came out on 1st of June 2015. For those of you who
don't know Double Fine are the guys behind games like Grim Fandango, Brutal
Legend, Broken Age and The Cave.
The Story or Why you're knee deep in Cadence
You awoke and find out that you're a king now and the whole kingdom relies
on your wisdom. But why? Because The Cadence is at your front door and the
people will not (for some reason) trust a giant magic chalice to lead them
against the invaders. But you they will because you are a mix of the strongest
Bloodlines in the Kingdom. From here on with the power of your inner vision you
will lead the teams of elite heroes who have only one task, to hold long
enough. How long? Well, just mere three hundred years, until the Chalice manage
to gather enough energy and destroy the Cadence with one final strike.
The game does not offer much story in the sense of directly telling it to
you instead it leaves you to sink in the role of the King and make your own
story. Under your leadership mighty bastions will be built, Bloodlines will
prosper and fall; powerful relics will be passed between generations. Something
else that also provides bits of story is the random events. Strangers will come
to you asking for your relics, explorers will want to take one of your heroes
to see what is beyond the Cadence; couples will come to seek your advice and
many many more. For every random event you will have a choice of three options,
based on your choice something will happen. It may be good, it may be bad. This
is a mechanic that you will be very familiar with if you have played Warlock:
Master of Arcane/Exiles. But mentioning those things I'm entering the part
about the...
Mechanics of the game or What exactly is expected from you as a King
Massive Chalice can be separated in two parts - Battle and Development. Let
me start with Development, because it is what leads to Battle.
Development takes place mainly in your Castle and in the Keeps of the many
Houses of your Kingdom. In your Castle you will choose upgrades for your heroes
and Kingdom. The ones concerning the Kingdom are mainly ones that increase the
speed of researches, building and recruitment. The ones concerning your heroes
are standard armour and weapon upgrades, each with three levels, but...BUT for
different numbers of certain enemies killed you will get special items, armours
and weapons. Some of those will give you things like lifesteal, piercing shots,
AoE attacks or even will neglect some of the nasty abilities that The Cadence
has. What's the cost you ask? There is only one precious thing in the situation
you are in - time. You should hold for 300 years and to achieve that you will
need to have well equipped heroes, therefore you will try to upgrade everything
you can. The catch is that you can do one thing at a time and every 10 years
the Cadence attacks. So you will have to plan in advance and have clear
priorities what you need most - new heroes, better equipment or new fortresses.
But this can found in pretty much every turn based 4X game. The more
interesting things to me were the Bloodlines.
When you build a Keep you will choose one of your heroes to become its
ruler and if possible you will choose a wife of husband for them. By doing this they will
be able to provide fresh warriors for your team of heroes. The parents will
effects two main things in their children - their traits and their class. In
Massive Chalice there are three main classes - Alchemist, Hunter and Caberjack.
If the parents are the same class then their child will be their class, but if
they are two different then it will be the result of combining those two
classes. This gives really good depth to the game and replayability. You will
have to be careful what classes get together if you're comfortable with a
certain one and have built strategy around its synergy with the other members
of your team.
Now unlike the class the traits that the child gets from its parents are
randomly chosen, but they will always be ones present with the parents. The
child may get only the good ones, or only the bad ones...or even a mix of both. For good or for bad the negative traits cannot be cured like in Darkest Dungeon.
Your team can have maximum of five members and they can be any combination
of the nine classes in the game. But don't get too fond of them, because you
may be immortal, but they're not and if they don't get killed they will die of
age. It's a sad thing especially when core members of your squad die. Despite
my advice I tend to get attached to my heroes and it’s...it’s hard when they're
no more...But if they have done well on the battlefield, they have become
legends and when they die, they will leave their legendary weapon behind which
then will be passed in the Bloodline until it exists. Those weapons are usually
a lot better than most weapons you can get with upgrades and they will become
even better as they gain experience and levels.
For the last few paragraphs I've been circling around it, but this ends
now, let’s talk about the Battle!
Approximately every ten years the Cadence will attack random outer
territories of your Kingdom. From the attacked ones you will have to choose one
and send your team there. Few factors will affect your choice. First of all
will be the level of corruption that the attacked region have. If the
corruption reaches level three you will lose this territory forever. The second
thing is eventual reward you get if you defeat the attack. This reward may vary
from more experience for the team members and get to things like reduced
research times for currently running upgrades. And the thing that at least
affected my choice (to you it may be otherwise) is the type of enemies you will
fight in the attacked regions.
After you decide what is most precious to you will find yourself at the rim
of the Chalice with all available heroes ready to jump in. Here you can change
them with other characters, change their equipment or level them up. When you
feel that they're prepared enough it’s time to jump in!
The actual battles are really similar to the battles
in X-COM. In turns you and your enemy will take actions with your heoroes,
until there is only one team standing. The main difference between X-COM and
Massive Chalice is may be the simpler cover system here. You will be able to
cover behind threes, rocks and hide in tall grass but you will have to move out
of your cover if you want to attack with straight attacks like charges and
crossbow shots. The Alchemists are the only ones who are able to attack from
behind a cover, because most of their attacks have a trajectory. Of course if
they hide behind a tree it won't work...
Interesting mechanic in battles is that the range
troops always have the chance to fully miss, but if they hit their attacks cannot
be glancing. While melees cannot miss, but there is always the chance their hit
to be a glancing attack which deal only minimum damage.
The battles are interesting, scaling pretty well with
the development of the game. The AI is a good opponent that will apply decent
tactics and use his special abilities pretty well. The Twitchers will swap with
your weak heroes effectively putting them in the midst of enemies. The
Wrinklers will attack your oldest heroes and so on. There is also the real risk
of friendly fire so be careful with those AoE attacks and piercing shots. Also
exchanging blows with your enemies have a good punch to it. You can feel the
hits, which makes the satisfaction from the battles even bigger.
Talking about your enemies I just want to say that I found very amusing the idea that most types of enemies look like some kind of mutated plants.
Lush forests, verdent fields and birds singing....well not exactly.
When I saw the Kingdom map for the first time I
thought "Ha! This looks like Game of Thrones opening map! “The visual
style of the game is a combination between GoT and Endless Legend, but unlike
the two here the whole game is in this rectangular style even the heroes and
the enemies. Now I've never been someone who pays much attention to visuals but
it looks like I'm part of a minority here.
Regarding the sound of the game - your heroes don't talk;
even the usual repetitive reactions when you give them orders are not here.
Instead their reactions are text that appears when they kill someone. In
contrast to your silent warriors the two parts of the Chalice almost never stop
talking. They will babble about all kind of things. Old battles, past
arguments, random remarks and of course they will mock each other nonstop. They
will also give you information when you encounter new types of enemies.
The music at first didn't have my attention much but
at some point I caught myself humming it while in battle so I guess we can call
it...atmospheric enough.
Conclusion
Massive Chalice is a turn based tactical game in which
you take the role of the immortal King who should hold the invasion of The
Cadence while your magical Chalice collect enough energy. During the game you
will build Keeps, marry heroes, create Bloodlines and pass relics of dead
legends to their heirs and lead a team of elite heroes in X-COM styled battles.
But by killing enemies you will not only give more time to your talking advisor
to collect its energy but will also be able by researching the dead enemies to
apply some of their characteristics to the equipment of your heroes and create
unique items that give them additional abilities.
The biggest problem that you may have with the game is
that it doesn't look...impressive. The chosen art style is something like a
combination between Game of Thrones and Endless Legend. So those of you who
insist their games to look amazingly good will be disappointed from Massive
Chalice. But...BUT in my opinion the game have more than enough to offer and
make up for its looks.
Not to mention that one playtrough will take no more
than a day or two and during this time the game will hold you under almost
constant pressure, with all the decisions you will have to make.
My advice is to give it a chance if you like Kingdom management
and turn-based battles, Massive Chalice have much to offer.
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