I tried Glorious Companions. Promising turn-based strategy RPG developed by the indie Ancient Forge Studio currently available through Steam in early access.
From the release of the early access till today, considerable progress has been made. Here some details about the game.
The beginning
After having chosen the race, the company name, the emblem, and colors, it’s time to create our character by choosing Name, Class, Face, Hair and starting traits. After that, the intro told us about the misfortune that happened to our caravan, and then we will find ourselves in the world map, followed by two trusted soldiers. We will be immediately attacked by a pack of wolves that will introduce us through the battle’s tutorial.
Combat phase
Every group we face, including ours, has a captain who must always be defended. Once the captain is eliminated, the battle will end instantly. In the maps where the fighting takes place, we find covers that will give us some protection from the enemies’ distance attacks (a bit like X-Com). The captain has skills that can inspire his own troops. (in our gameplay, the captain had the chance to increase the defense of our soldiers).
Each unit can make moves, attack or use their special abilities depending on the available action points.
At the end of the fighting, experience points are awarded depending on how a unit behaved on the battlefield. (how many enemies managed to defeat or helping to)
Exploration phase
Once the first battle is over, we will already have the whole world to explore. During our movements, we can decide to speed up the flow of time, slow it down, or stop it completely to control the situation in the vicinity.
Moving around, however, has a cost, especially in terms of energy, in fact once our energy level reaches zero we will be forced to camp and at this stage we will be able to give various tasks to our units, such as healing, cooking, set up fortifications to protect yourself from night attacks, go hunting, train, etc. This mechanic was added to one of the last updates, and I liked it a lot.
A bit like what happens with Battle Brothers, we will then have to keep our food stocks under control and, above all, always have coins available to pay the wages of our units.
In the game world, we find many cities, each with its own;
- Market: where we can buy stuff.
- The tavern: where we can enlist new soldiers.
- The quest board: where we can accept missions in order to get precious items and experience.
- Various structures where we can train different categories of mercenaries in order to help them learn new skills.
In addition to the cities, within the game world, we will find points of interest of various kinds, which we will be able to visit using units with appropriate characteristics, we also find other groups that move within the map as bandits, animals, and guards
Company and unit management
In Glorious Companions, each unit has its own level of growth as well as the company. In fact, with each battle and quest completed, our mercenaries will level up, increasing their characteristics as well as our company, which will thus be able to increase its leadership, thus increasing the maximum number of units that can be recruited rather than the intelligence it will allow for example to understand which objects a specific group of bandits will drop if defeated.
Being only in early access (0.38) I can say that Glorious Companions has great potential and I invite everyone to try it because there is already a lot to do in the game world.
Below, my Glorious Companions gameplay video with the first 50 minutes. Discover new games, subscribe to our youtube channel and meet us on Twitter.
