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• gamedeal user

  Oct 8, 2021

  I felt a little dirty having completed Urtuk but not leaving a recommendation, despite it being such a hidden (if unpolished) gem, so here goes. Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first: Hurr durr, it looks like Battle Brothers with a Darkest Dungeon aesthetic. I know. But those two games are pretty unhelpful comparisons because they both rely heavily on RNG as a crutch for both difficulty and variety in combat - in both of these games you can pick the objectively best course of action and still have a 5% chance of getting critically fistf****d by RNG. Urtuk does not need to do this because of the large variety of enemies, their passive and active skills, and the interactive nature of the fairly large pool of map layouts. The difficulty presents itself in the amount of variables you have to take into account when you make decisions - you have a lot of options available to you, and you can spend many hours in the game and still feel like you're getting progressively better at making decisions. This is, in my opinion, the core of what makes a good strategy game - and that's exactly just what Urtuk is. I feel like that needs spelling out: This is [b]all[/b] Urtuk is. Consider that a compliment as well as a bit of a warning - A small indie team made this game (one guy). Story, voice-acting, world-building... all the fat, fluff and filler went out the window to make a robust combat system. You'll need the mindset of "I'm here to make interesting tactical decisions for the next 50 to 70 hours and that it". Waiting for plot-twists, character development, romance options and interactive minigames will leave you disappointed and the game will quickly feel monotonous and the encounters become repetitive. But play this game for the right reason, exclusively tactical combat, and there's a lot of fun to be had in the diversity of how you build your party roster and individual characters. The AI is a little abusable, but it won't break the game before you have played enough to get your moneys' worth of playtime, and honestly I think that criticism can be targeted at most tactical games that doesn't rely on RNG to invalidate your decision-making. Anyway, easy recommendation. Hopefully the dev will calm down being such a cool dude and start working on something I (brainwashed consumer that I am) can pay for rather than free content. Would love to see Urtuk 2, maybe with just a little more fluff to break the monotony next time. I'm sure Urtuk 2 would go mainstream if it just had a flesh monster dating minigame.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 22, 2021

  I think I'm going to try to make this review short, because this is the sort of nitty-gritty game in the long run that'll trap you in discussions of specific interactions that tinted your own playthrough. The core of the game is its tactical combat, and there's a few really clever things that make it stand out as excellent. I'll focus on one specific one, just to illustrate what I feel is an examplar of the design thought that goes into Urtuk's tactical layer. In the game, your main source of crits (and getting crit) is "flanking" - if you an attack an enemy while you have an ally on the opposite side of them (meaning the guy enabling your crits is also having crits for them enabled by you), you deal bonus damage and can apply status effects (like 90% of negative effects applied by attacks depend on crits to trigger). This makes positioning meaningful and fascinating from the start. Did you ever play an XCOM-type game (or XCOM itself) and notice how early on you paid a lot of attention to cover and flanking, but later on you were throwing around basically magic abilities and explosions and enemies being in cover barely mattered? Urtuk never gets there. From the very start to the very end, it's simple and satisfying to use positioning-related abilities to get some crits in. Oh, there's a bunch of stuff I could mention about the game's pretty damn rich character customization, a genuine compelling reason to have a deep roster, a lot of other fascinating mechanics (in particular with the functionality of Armor and Stamina)... but I feel at the heart it's just a really satisfying tactical combat experience. There's a fair few mechanics, in particular the "ally-enabled flanking crits" and the "you can easily get some free actions between turns, but they'll be harshly limited by stamina" that I'd love to see some other future games run with (whether by these devs or others). I ended up hearing about this game in a chat about another game from a friend of a friend, and it feels like a hidden gem that'll probably permanently alter my standards for strategy games. I'll scoff at every single game that just has a % chance at crits from here on in - Urtuk did it better.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 26, 2021

  Its Battle Brothers 2.0 with Darkest Dungeon graphics. I was a huge battle bros fan but literally couldnt go back to it after playing Urtuk, because of how much more strategic and interesting the combat is. Theres huge range of units that can be built in a lot of ways with mutations, and always find some new unit or setup or strat on any playthrough. Once you get comfortable with how the game works, you can really come up with some crazy combos which becomes very satisfying. I suggest playing the hardest mode(desolation) with ironman enabled for max enjoyment. The dev is really great and listens to feedback. Active and helpful discord community. Highly recommend.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 1, 2021

  I can't say I don't recommend this game. It has I will say, however, that if Steam gave me an "Ehhhh..." option for a review, I would have picked it. I am a huge fan of Darkest Dungeon, Battle Brothers, and Final Fantasy Tactics. This game is, on paper, a perfect blend of the three of them. However, in execution, it ultimately is less than the sum of its parts. The aesthetic is very DD-esque, but lacks the sense of oppressive evil that that game possesses, or the sense of normal people in over their heads and struggling with the horrors they face. It all feels very surface-level. You could replace the aesthetic with basically any other style and the game would remain fundamentally unchanged. This feeling, unfortunately, is not helped by the writing, especially with the overworld and random events. After playing in a zone for an hour or so, you will probably have seen everything there is to see in that zone. Every encounter boils down to "Scavengers/Beasts/Cultists/Vampires/etc are doing X. Get involved?". There is almost no lore to speak of, no descriptive language to help build the atmosphere. It all feels very... empty and repetitive. You encounter people with names, but a name is about all you get. Which is a shame. There are also villages, fortresses and so on you can capture, but doing so only gives you a short-term income of resources that are honestly in most cases not hard to obtain naturally. Once these resources run out, these sites seem to serve literally no other purpose that I could ascertain, which is, again, a big shame. Once in a while a band of enemies will hunt you, and being in one of these sites when they attack will help slightly, but less than you'd imagine, given what I will discuss next. The tactical battles are good, but the battle map generation is just... not good. Most maps are a nightmare to fight on, with half the terrain impassable, and another half of the remaining being hazards that deal large amounts of damage for passing through or standing on them. It is routinely difficult to even get all of your units in contact with the enemy at all, much less getting them into flanking positions like the game wants you to. The game seems to imply that fighting in a friendly village/fortress will generate the terrain in your favor (and it does, to an extent) but honestly the terrain is continually bad for both sides so much I can't say I noticed it much. The best part of the game to me was the character modification through mutations. It's very fun, and allows for a myriad of options. This, coupled with the combat itself (when the map is being cooperative) is where the game truly shines. This, ultimately, is a solid 6/10. It doesn't vibe like Darkest Dungeon, doesn't have the sense of combat weight of Battle Brothers, and doesn't have the grand story arc of FF Tactics, but on its own it is perfectly adequate. Give it a shot. Perhaps you will get more joy from it than I did
• gamedeal user

  Feb 24, 2020

  People are calling this Battle Brothers meets Darkest Dungeon, and while you will probably like this game if you enjoyed those games, that comparison is a bit reductive. There is no in-battle RNG to this game save for a cumulative -25% chance to hit on ranged attacks when line of sight is blocked. Otherwise, everything always hits and skills always successfully go off. Critical hits only happen in certain circumstances that you create. The game has some rough edges: Missing tutorials, battle map generation can be wonky, there could be some UI and quality of life improvements, there isn't a great sense of "racial identity" in the factions, etc. Otherwise, it appears to be largely complete and I binged it almost nonstop the day I got it. What I really enjoy about this game and specifically want to highlight is the level of intentionality in the strategic decisions and the uniqueness of character development. In Darkest Dungeon, a Crusader is just a Crusader with some traits and the best trinkets you can give him; once you are in a dungeon, the tactical choices tend to be fairly obvious. In Battle Brothers, the guy wielding your two-hander is just someone with stars in the right stats and maybe a trait that synergizes; you are always equipping the best gear to him that is available. There is a homogeneity in the characters in these games. By comparison, in Urtuk, each character has a set of invisible traits that they unlock as they perform certain actions in battle. My Berzerker probably isn't anything like your Berzerker, because my Berzerker developed traits that let him stay alive at 2 HP against an onslaught of melee attacks. He is also incredibly good attacking enemies beneath him, so I always try to pair him with my javelin mercenary who can change elevation. This is a great game with a very attentive developer and you owe it to yourself to check it out and give them a bit of support. I expect this will be something I come back to years down the line.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 26, 2020

  This is an excellent game that is a cross breed between Darkest Dungeon, Battle Brothers and Faster than Light. The combat system is similar to Battle Brothers, but Urtuk does it better with more interesting strategic options and party building. The skills you have are so powerful that it really allows you to play around and think about what clever overpowered tricks you can come up with and the difficulty is so high that you really need to do that! My only concern with this game is the same as with Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers: It is just too long and grindy. There is only so many groups of reavers you can fight before it begins to feel repetitive. I would very much prefer a shorter game mode on a smaller map with more loot and XP per fight. Maybe this will fix itself when more content is added as it the grindiness is largely caused by repetitive fights with too little variation. Don't let that keep you from getting this game though, it is highly enjoyable and you will have a blast.
• gamedeal user

  May 9, 2020

  Great game that is totally worth playing even while in Early Access. If you enjoy hex-grid tactical RPG combat at all this is definitely worth it. The game is mostly battle after battle with some party management and flavor text on the side, so it can start to feel repetitive and grindy at times. But it's a fun sort of grind that you have control over and play the game at whatever pace you desire. The game has its own scaling system so as long as you aren't running around in circles with absolutely no fighting you'll be okay. But what that means is you can literally explore the entire map and node, or you can speed run through the quests and make it to the end as fast as possible. Or somewhere in between. All the different playstyles work. So if you find yourself feeling the game is repetitive, can just stop checking every corner of the map and just beeline for the villages. Or can play against some Fortresses which offer a bigger challenge than the usual standard battles as the enemies have all sorts of advantages: Height, numbers, ranged weapons fired against you from said height, etc. There are also multiple difficulties to choose from. So if you find the game too easy/hard can always reset and try a different difficulty. However, even on easy I found myself suffering losses sometimes, especially as I was still learning the game. Eventually, as you learn the game and establish proper tactics and weild all sorts of fancy equipment, you'll probably end up out gearing the enemies and be able to easily slaughter warbands larger than yours. And that is what makes the grind so fun, coming up with powerful builds to overcome challenging battles with minimal injury. As for the combat, there all sorts of fun mechanics and different abilities for each different class. There is jumping to flank an enemy or take out pesky ranged, shield bashing and ramming to shove enemies into spiked pits of brutal death and so on. There are useful support characters with area denial, blocking, and so on. You can equip accessories to characters called mutators. If the characters wears them long enough, they can absorb the mutator so that it becomes an ability, and frees up the equipment slot to place something else. It's an interesting mechanic and I love the mutant warbands. It reminds me of Wahrammer Mordheim Chaos Warbands but with a lot less frustrating RNG. Speaking of RNG, you won't find the infamous XCOM style missing a 95% chance to hit attack. All melee actions are 100% hit. Ranged are 100% unless blocked by some sort of obstacle in line of sight. This makes the game feel entirely fair and any injiry or death sustained was likely my own fault and mismanagement. Even with 100% hit rate, I never felt like I was taking too much damage. The armor/block mechanic works well, and with good placement can usually sustain little damage or eliminate the enemy first. It helps that everyone full heals after the battle so you can always reposition members to send the healthier characters to the front lines. Plus, there are some good mutators that reward health regen for killing enemies. I recommend those if you try the game (Feast, Flesh Eater). Also highly recommend the Lightfoot mutation which allows your character to swap places with an ally without ending their turn. Very useful for holding chokepoints. Also, while the game starts you off with the human faction, there are many more playable factions in the game. You can win some while on the human campaign, or get far enough can even unlock other factions as the starting party which makes for some nice replayability. Now as much as I love the game I do have some suggestions. While I love the games aesthetics, I find it odd there is no sort of visual customization of the characters other than their names. You can change their equipment, mutators, stats, etc, but I would have liked to been able to differentiate different characters of the same class through different colored skins or skins with slightly different hair or clothes or whatever to choose from. I also feel like there needs to be more to do with the massive reserves. Six characters can be fielded on the battle but I probably had 30 characters by the end of my playthrough and I never even had half of them battle. You can send characters on missions to scavenge for materials and such but it never really seemed worth it. On a future playthrough I'll probably just get rid of extra characters honestly. It is nice to have such variability and a large roster though, I do like that. Just wish it was more encouraged to rotate members rather than just stick with the winning A-Team. Having different factions to fight against does help a little in this regard as some teams may be stronger against certain factions than others. Anyways, love the game, highly recommend it. Cannot wait to see where it goes next and improves on itself. I am looking forward to playing again on the completed version when it leaves Early Access! I do hope the game finds ways to improve on some of the balance issues (some classes seem to fulfill the same roles better than others, ranged is king of DPS and so on) and the feeling of repetition and grind that sets in around the end of Area 1. Oh yeah, there's 3 Areas in the game so far -- each has different prominent factions you'll fight against so that is a nice change of pace at least.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 22, 2021

  After 26 hours of gameplay I cannot fathom how anyone may think this to be better than battle brothers. This game makes an excellent first impression and the tactical component is very deep. Way deeper than most games. The models also are unique and very good looking. And yet it gets very repetitive, very quickly. There is little difference between maps, almost no story, the pacing is completely ruined by the fact that you go into battle after battle after battle. There is almost no exploration and very little actual party management. Sure you have a lot of options, but once you found something that works for you, every encounter will start to feel the same. I really wanted to like this game, but I can't bring myself to fight yet another battle just like the one I had before that and the one before that and the one before that. If you ever thought that Battle Brothers or Darkest Dungeon were somewhat repetitive than you should stay away from this game.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 15, 2020

  So, you are looking for a main Turn based tactics game which you can sink hundreds of hours in rather than a time filler roguelike and you have already completed darkest dungeon and XCOM1/2? Well, then lately, your only viable choices really are Vargus, Urtuk and Battle Brothers. So, you want a polished game which you can play more than you read? Then your choice really is between Urtuk and Battle Brothers. So, you want DEEP DEEP tactical combat with incredible amounts of synergies between party members rather than just the standard melee or ranged thing? Then you only choice is Urtuk. Period. Go buy now.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 13, 2022

  Excellent tactical combat, with a decent character development possibilities. The overworld however is sorely lacking compared to the games it is compared to (e.g. Battle Brothers). This is not a game with towns and cities you visit for various services, no merchants, travelers, soldiers, bandits, etc moving between and around them to interact with. It has the terms "Open World" and "Exploration" in the description, but that's really stretching those definitions. You just go from node to node fighting the set battle in each node till you complete that level and advance to the next, more like FTL. If you like tactical combat and only tactical combat, you would like this game. If you like your combat games to have "Open Word" "Exploration" mechanics, this isn't it.