Sometimes, as a game critic, one of the hardest things you can do is be critical of a game. This is especially true with indie titles and even more so with the ones that were graciously given to me for the sole purpose of reviewing. I do my very best to be fair and report the good and bad I experience in games as I come across them, but it can still be particularly hard to write up a review when I mostly have a bad experience to report on. Untamed Tactics is one such game that I have mostly criticisms for, even though I can tell a lot of heart went into it.
Untamed Tactics is a turn-based strategy game that pairs a party of three against a procedurally generated world. That is, if you’re not playing the campaign, which locks the more “roguelite” mode behind its completion. Though, whether or not you’re actually able to complete the campaign is dubious at best, as I’ll get into later in this review.
The campaign is told as the stories of Greycoat the Rabbit, an old retired soldier and adventurer sharing tales of his past glories with his grandchildren by the fire. You start with three characters as you enter the campaign, which maxes out your party, with each one having two separate classes available to play. You can unlock more later on.
At the moment, I’m not sure if I like Untamed Tactic’s characters or if I’m totally indifferent to them. The game’s writing teeter-totters between very skippable dialogue and tiny but potent character moments that made me go “Oh, woah,” such as when the fox recalled how her time as a soldier made her skilled enough with daggers that she could join the circus someday. Not the best retelling of the moment, but it was strangely engaging, as most character moments would continue to be, only to be immediately followed up by a scene that made me go, “OK, people do not talk like that.”
People is a strong word, actually. As you may have already noticed, all of the characters in Untamed Tactics are anthropomorphic animals. Cleverly designed ones, at that; each character feels like they were designed for some long-forgotten Disney film about brave animal sailors exploring a dense and unforgiving jungle continent in the early modern era. All of the characters are rendered well in a bright, hand-drawn art style that works well with their easily identifiable designs.
And then, conversely, you have combat animations, which were disappointing. Each action a character takes in combat looks like a paper doll being stretched and warped, albeit briefly, low-effort movements. I understand animation is incredibly hard, but with how short and unimpressive the quote animations used in combat are, I would rather they weren’t there at all and I could simply use my imagination instead.
After writing, I discovered that the characters belong to the series Untamed: Feral Factions—taking away a lot of the perceived passion and creativity I thought this game had. Much of the positives I had to say about this game were based on the idea that these characters were all originally made for this game. Instead, they already exist in a much better game than this one.
All of this would mean a lot less if the gameplay was solid, which I’m unfortunately going to have to say it is not.
The turn-based strategy combat takes up most of the game and is fairly straightforward. You move characters across a square grid and use abilities to fight your foes or buff your team. You have a certain number of action points per turn that limits what you can or can’t do.
The statistics in the game are either incredibly straightforward or super complex, and after playing, I’m still not sure which. Abilities and effects either buff or debuff a glossary of terms such as attack, defense, and dodge. Boosting attack, for example, might seem straightforward, but watching my rogue fox get her attack boosted to 10 and hit for the same damage was rather confusing.
The absolute worst sin the gameplay commits is being boring and long.
See, your characters, often outnumbered, only have one attack each. Or, in the case of Doctor Frog, no attacks and only buffs. On top of that, everyone has a huge health bar; your foes often have a significantly larger one. Killing anything in this game feels like a chore as their health numbers are so high, their damage is so low, and you can only hit them once per character per turn.
What’s even worse is that the computer takes so long to process anything happening with the AI. It takes upwards of 15 seconds for a character to move and then again to attack. Pair this with a group of enemies, every one of whom gets to make a reaction after being attacked (yet another 16-second delay), and soon combat has slowed down even further than your typical turn-based game.
One interesting mechanic, however, is the ability to taunt your enemies after many successful actions, effectively giving them a debuff. This is done with a tiny cutscene with dialogue ranging from good to obnoxious.
To top it all off, I don’t know if the game is properly balanced. By my third combat encounter, I was stuck, with my party being hopelessly outmatched by the harder-hitting, higher-health tigers on the enemy team. Even with them being slowly whittled down (not fast enough to prevent character death of my own, of course,) even more enemies began to appear with stronger attacks and more health. It got to the point where I really thought that game was a roguelike, and dying was part of the point, but all I got was a continue screen that would restart the fight each time I did.
The Final Word
Though coming from interesting source material, Untamed Tactics is a confused and seemingly incomplete game that was basically just a chore for me to play. There are far too many better titles in what is a heavily polluted genre out there. I can think of very little that could change to save Untamed Tactics, but it clearly needs more time in the oven and maybe even a full revamp of its combat system.
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Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Untamed Tactics is available on Steam.