If you enjoy role-playing strategy games, you should check out Fae Tactics. This incredible video was developed by Endless Fluff Games and published by Humble Bundle on July 31, 2020. You can play Fae Tactics on Xbox One and MS Windows platforms. Fae Tactics is a magical game about a young magic user named Peony. She journeys across a world full of mysterious happenings and dangerous zones.

Peony’s Adventures Across the Natural and Magical World 

Peony’s peaceful world is destroyed when the elemental gate that separates the magical world from non-magic users breaks. The gate’s opening caused so much death and sorrow in both worlds. Although the survivors are trying to rebuild their lives, their world is no longer as it was in the past. The natural world is flooded with magical Fae creatures formerly thought to be myths. Man and Fae are in constant war against each other due to lack of trust and lifestyle differences. It’s now up to Peony to find a lasting solution to the growing conflict. 

To achieve her mission, she must explore her world to find clues. The journey is not an easy one as she faces all kinds of enemies on her way. She must make allies and cast spells to defeat the enemies. Fae Tactics is all about strategic thinking as you must manipulate your team’s magical elements to overpower your enemies. You must also recruit more units to your team and customize their abilities. 

Expect to Find Anything on the Battlefield 

As a strategy game, FAE tactics allows you to feel comfortable in a routine for some battles, then suddenly change everything. For instance, you can see some elemental enemies approaching to kill your team. In a few seconds, you will notice that the environment overlaps. The system modifies some traps and enemies to be deadlier or funnier than initially. 

Some of these challenges are very difficult on your first time since you never knew what was coming. These surprises result in tougher and deadlier battles that will keep you thinking about the best tactics to use throughout the game. There was a time when the battlefield suddenly became a pinball table, and the flipper’s traps just kept throwing my poor units around, poisoned them, and dropped them helpless in front of the boss. While it felt terrible that the enemies were defeating my team, I must admit that the method they used was pretty funny. 

Other times, I found ways to use those unexpected traps against the enemies. Once, a hideous enemy was shooting at my team with a cannon that covers the entire bridge, with another enemy stationed at the opposite side and ready to kill anything at sight. Every attempt to cross the bridge was futile, as the monster kept knocking me off with the cannon and throwing me into the pond. Of course, the enemies were having the time of their life, while I was the brunt of the joke. To end the embarrassing defeats, I had to change my strategy. Instead of using walking units to cross the bridge, I switched to flying units that simply flew over the monsters. It was hilarious to watch them shoot at a space for the rest of the battle. I guess I had the last laugh there. 

My summon and leader units have basic battle skills, and they are usually very good at assisting and waiting. The summon units usually use predetermined skills, while leaders can only utilize three abilities, which include offense, defense, and others. The game allows certain customization, which means choosing what weapons to unlock and what equipment to use. I can also switch my units after each battle. Some features are, however, restricted from customization to make the game more challenging.

Since most skills like regenerating HP and walking in water are passive effects that don’t take time to achieve, I quickly learned many things on the grid. Also, I had all the time to make active decisions, such as allowing my attack unit to activate a combo or to decide if I should make the next movement or wait.

Frustrating Moments that Would Make You Want to Scream! 

The most frustrating FAE Tactics battle moments for me were the protection missions where I had to fight alongside some friendly non-player characters. These NPCs hardly ever went with my plans, as they always had a different idea of ​​the battle plan. Sometimes, they move beyond my healing range to perform some mediocre attacks that end up getting them killed. I lost over 50% of my battles in this mission due to their love for jumping into dangerous situations where I could do nothing to help. However, these setbacks never stopped me from enjoying the battles. Instead, they motivated me to learn better and more effective strategies.

Rewarding Moments that Leaves You Feeling like the King

My most exciting combat moments were battles where I managed to bring the right combination of units, including three sets of leaders, summons, and spells. To conquer the enemies, you must inspect the battlefield and select the units you think will fight effectively. You could position my melee units to help activate the combos that would deal with multiple attacks on the enemies. It always feels great when I make the right choice as it gives me the wonderful feeling of being in charge of the battle. Before playing Fae Tactics, you should not that laying the best strategies aren’t the most straightforward task. Sometimes, it may take multiple trials to get it right finally. There are also many scenarios where the enemies will gain sudden reinforcement, getting you confused about making the next move. 

During one of my battles, I had already lost most of my units, and the leaders were already wounded and weak. Unfortunately, the battle wasn’t close to an end, as the enemies regenerated so fast that the battle was freely sliding out of my hands. It took some careful planning and luck to win the battle since the boss at that level was on a mission to frustrate me. The boss was an evil fairy that kept throwing waves of poison blasts at me. Chico, my dog, eventually saved the day by blocking the attacks and dealing counter-attacks on the fairy. 

Conclusion 

Unlike mist tactical turn-based games, Fae Tactics creates a balance by creating a complex but straightforward gameplay system. The game also engages players with exciting battle systems that build their strategic thinking skills. To some extent, Fae Tactics lacks personalization or more profound skills for game characters, as witnessed in other turn-based combat games, but this wouldn’t be an issue, as the developers made up for it in so many ways.