Othercide - surreal horror-themed tactical RPG where battle sisters fight against cosmic horrors

[valky667]

Kinda looks fun and my type of game I'd probably enjoy.

Would also 2nd moving it to tactical gaming.

 

[Reader]

The cosmic horror never was so bland

Also even this female protagonist has more soul

 

[V_K]

I think you're confusing soul for boobs.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/othercide-review/

OTHERCIDE REVIEW
Bleak and hopeless, but that’s the point.

"You will fight, you will fail, you will rise again." This is Othercide's motto, and it deserves credit for sticking to the bit. It doesn't just say it's about a hopeless war against encouraging darkness, it commits to the theme. Othercide mixes turn-based tactical combat with the repetition and incremental progress of roguelikes. It takes the threat of losing your best soldier from XCOM and makes that threat a certainty. You will lose, and then you will try again.

You are The Mother, some sort of eldritch being fighting against Suffering, with a capital S, to protect The Child, using resurrected soldiers called The Daughters. Other extremely capitalised nouns also feature heavily. It's not a style of writing I'm usually a fan of, but big and abstract suits Othercide very well. It doesn't really need to define its terms—what matters is atmosphere, and this game is dripping with it.

The doom and gloom atmosphere isn't just confined to the striking black and white visuals however, Othercide really commits to the bit. Every system in the game is leveraged towards this feeling of hopelessness. Take healing, for example: there isn't any. The only way for one of your Daughters to recover health is to sacrifice a Daughter of equal or higher level. Even worse, some of your most powerful abilities spend health to activate. This means that any slip up, any damage taken will sooner or later result in the loss of a star performer. You aren't going to get attached to your soldiers here, especially given the lack of real cosmetic customisation, instead you are going to see your Daughters as a resource to be gently fed into the meat grinder of the forever war.

How does the game get away with being this lethal? Because, as I said earlier, it's also a roguelike. Each run (or "Recollection") of Othercide consists of a series of turn-based battles against waves of monsters, leading up to a climactic boss fight. Lose that boss fight, run out of troops or just decide you've had enough, and you'll have to start the loop again, but this time with a series of powerful boosts or "Rembrances" that can improve the whole team. Early on I got one that gave every Daughter 30% more health. Another gave me a free resurrection on a dead Daughter (including those from previous games). These are big, meaty bonuses that make a second attempt far easier.

The idea then, is to use these boosts to cut down on repetition, but it only partially works. After the first run I understood the game well enough that the routine 'hunt' missions that make up most of the cycle became easy, but that first boss still seemed an impassable wall. If I'm honest there was a big chunk of my playthrough (somewhere between hours two and ten) where I was constantly bouncing between trivial main missions and an impossible boss fight. Yet each time I felt like quitting, I learned a new trick—a new system that I'd missed at first glance that gave me an edge. Eventually I figured out how to use "Memories", small boosts that slot into individual abilities to improve them, to boost up the damage of my ranged attacks, letting me slowly chip away at that beastly boss's hit points without being hit by devastating counter-attacks.

The combat system itself is a pleasing puzzle, mostly reliant on manipulating the initiative tracker that is a constant presence along the bottom of the screen. Both Daughters and monsters have the ability to manipulate the initiative: some attacks can push an enemy further down the initiative order, while big, powerful abilities often act on a delay, taking several ticks to fire.

Let's draw an example: one of my Daughters, Douce, has been targeted by an enemy Curse Therapist with a delayed attack called Massive Shot, which will fire at initiative 30. If Douce had a turn before 30, she could simply move out of range, but she doesn't go until 50. So instead I move up Melody, a Blademaster (melee DPS class), who goes at 25. Melody could use her own delayed attack, Imbued Blade, which would kill the Therapist in one hit, but that wouldn't fire until step 50, so instead I go for a simpler attack that works immediately. Unfortunately that doesn't do as much damage, so I have to attack several times.

That's where another mechanic comes up. If I'd only spent 50 action points, Melody would be able to go again in 50 ticks. But as she's used up more, she has to wait a whole 100 ticks. She's effectively skipped one of her turns to do more right now. It seems like a lot to keep track of, but it's all fairly intuitive once you get the hang of it, and there's a clever Chess-like quality in figuring out how to save a unit from impending doom.

I think Othercide will split people. It is very easy to come up short against a boss several times and feel like you're doing a lot of busywork for very little progress. When I was failing to beat that first boss I had a far lower opinion of it, but when I finally made that breakthrough I got a great sense of accomplishment, as well as Remembrances that let me skip that boss and start my Daughters at a higher level, avoiding the grind that had tormented me entirely. Whether Othercide is for you will depend on whether you have the patience for a roguelike where you can spend a good eight hours feeling like you're making no progress whatsoever, before suddenly breaking through. It surprised me to discover it, but it turns out I do.

THE VERDICT
76

OTHERCIDE
Owns it’s bleak theming completely, even if it can get a little repetitive.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.focus-home.com/en/news/...ing-you-need-to-know-before-you-start-playing

OTHERCIDE'S TIPS TRAILER TELLS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START PLAYING!

Othercide launched last week and players have been flooding in to attempt to defeat Suffering. A tough challenge that only the most dedicated have already completed - here’s some help with the Tips Trailer. Watch it now for all the best methods to fight and evolve your army.

Warm reception and developers already working on players feedback

Since its release the past week, Othercide has received a great load of positive feedback from press and players alike. Lightbulb Crew developers are very attentive to the community feedback and are already working on a future patch to polish even more the game experience.

“We’ve been thrilled by how Othercide was received by players all over the world. We and our publisher for Othercide, Focus Home Interactive, have taken risks to bring a new twist on the tactical genre, and we are thrilled to see that our community has loved what we proposed. We know that Othercide is not a walk in the park, it has deep gameplay mechanics, but we enjoyed spending a lot of time watching players experiencing combos, and innovative moves exploiting our Dynamic Timeline System. We also wanted to give newcomers a few tips to master our innovative mechanics faster - so here comes our Tips Trailer” said Anders Larsson, CEO & Creative Director at Lightbulb Crew.

Othercide is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and will release on Nintendo Switch later this summer. Players can also get the GAME + OST + ARTBOOK Bundle on Steam, with an additional special discount.

 

[orcinator]

Oh there was a somewhat more active thread; I’ll just repost what I said in the other one:

Downloaded it for the edgy waifus, actually tried it because someone said you can make up a headcanon that this has incest.

Pretty disappointing so far, you have three units (edit, you get 4 units later but only 3 classes) with limited abilities and the big gimmick is you're not strong enough to face the bosses normally so you have to lose a run and then try again with new bonuses and the ability to resurrect girls you've already leveled up.

This boils down to grinding out a lot of synapse missions, which tend to be rather easy and are not randomly generated despite this being roguelike inspired so I started getting bored really fast despite having my fetishes catered to. They also didn't bother to put a limit on how many times you hear a single voice line per missions so enjoy hearing how doctors worship torture and call it science over and over again.


One thing I like is how they made all your girls anime dash when moving so you don't have to spend too much time watching them walk around. Too bad they didn't do the same for the enemies whose animations feel really sluggish, and in survival missions you'll have to watch random enemies fucking around at the opposite end of the map every turn.


Also for a game where you need to sacrifice your units, the naming field is too small.

My current score: Should have been X-Pirates/10

I finished it a while ago on the 4th loop (maybe I could have done it in 3 but after the initial synapses turned out to be piss easy I decided to face the 1st boss early and got cut down). Had to activate speedhacks since having to grind while watching slow animations just wasn’t my thing.



You get a 4th class that uses a scythe later on but I didn’t find her all that useful since she doesn’t get any mobility abilities and removing armor never seemed all that helpful since enemy armor either didn’t matter all that much (and you could simply give the gun girl an armor removing memory) or the enemy had enough of it to be immune to damage and chipping off 80 points wouldn’t help. Didn’t find much use for the spear and shield girl you get from the start either, being more resistant to damage didn’t seem all that great when the gun girl and sword girl could simply use their superior mobility and damage output to kill every enemy as soon as it spawned and thus take no damage whatsoever.

I ended up using sword girls and gun girls almost exclusively, only getting a token shield girl every now and then as sacrifice fodder and ignoring the scythe once I unlocked her abilities. Maybe some bosses would have been easier but doing tons of damage worked well enough, especially when both sword and gun unlocked the ability that makes en extra attack whenever an enemy is damaged.

Overall I found the mechanics to be poorly thought out, besides the class imbalance the “strategy layer” if you could call it that revolved around grinding boring synapses so you’ll be strong enough to face a boss and the time loop just made the game super forgiving since failure meant you’ll come back even stronger. There’s an option to skip sections of the game so you’ll be able to get to the place where you left off faster but them you’ll miss out on XP, the currency you need to equip skill upgrades and make new girls and it’ll take longer for newborns to acquire useful traits so there’s no reason to do it unless you start getting bored.

I’m not going to bother reading the reviews but whoever gave this a high score is either more aroused by edgy girls than I am or got a blowjob from the devs.

My updated score: Should have been X-Pirates and had an animation speed setting/10



Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention this: The menu for selecting memories is an amazing feat of bad UI, since it’s not sorted by name, price or tier but some esoteric formula that re-arranges the list every time you need to equip a damage or crit mod. (Actually I couldn’t figure out what crits do exactly or the base odds so I avoided touching those mods)

 

[Thac0]

This was a cheap pickup for me this steam sale, although I am pondering a refund still.
The actual tactics is fine, nothing wrong with it. Many interesting skills, some character building and nice high lethality gameplay centered around blitzing enemies fast and manipulating the turn order to deny them turns.
The overworld layer is retarded. Go as far as you can go before you die to attrition, then reset into a new loop and gain a currency which you spend for permanent upgrades.
You know where this progression system comes from?

Fucking autoclicker games like Cookie Clicker...

So do I stomach a retarded meta progression system in order to receive nice tictacs?
This is the question I, and anyone who thinks about picking this up, has to ask themselves.
Small annoyances like UI optimised for controller definitly do not help.

As for why this game is praised and reviewed so highly: July 2020 was Corona draught, but Wasteland III in August and Naheulbeuk in September are both much better games and have made this one obsolete beyond the aesthetics.

 

[Nortar]

This was a cheap pickup for me this steam sale, although I am pondering a refund still.
The actual tactics is fine, nothing wrong with it. Many interesting skills, some character building and nice high lethality gameplay centered around blitzing enemies fast and manipulating the turn order to deny them turns.
The overworld layer is retarded. Go as far as you can go before you die to attrition, then reset into a new loop and gain a currency which you spend for permanent upgrades.
You know where this progression system comes from?

Fucking autoclicker games like Cookie Clicker...

So do I stomach a retarded meta progression system in order to receive nice tictacs?
This is the question I, and anyone who thinks about picking this up, has to ask themselves.
Small annoyances like UI optimised for controller definitly do not help.

As for why this game is praised and reviewed so highly: July 2020 was Corona draught, but Wasteland III in August and Naheulbeuk in September are both much better games and have made this one obsolete beyond the aesthetics.

If you're going to play, do it in Nightmare mode as it was intended.
The retarded Dream mode, which effectively nullifies one of the most important mechanics, was added after influx of crybabies and "breed the perfect waifu" crowd.
It's surprising how many people run dozens of Recollections to amass all the best traits and memories on their favorite characters, before actually trying to complete the game.
Discord is full of them now. I'm not judging though, if it's how they get their fun so be it, but

The truly way to enjoy the tactical aspect of Othercide is to do a R0 run.
That is a full playthrough in the single first recollection.
Or at least try to push as far as you can get. Getting past Deacon on first blind R0 is a pretty good result.
Other then that, yeah - there are better tactical games around, if you have not played them yet.

 

[Crane]

This game is fucking trash. If you want a good roguelike play Hades. It's not tactical, but it's based on player skill. Here you just grind the same two missions, "kill everybody" or "get to the escape zone" until you have enough buffs to kill the bosses. Fuck that noise. What a waste of $20 dollars.

 

[Nortar]

This game is fucking trash. If you want a good roguelike play Hades. It's not tactical, but it's based on player skill. Here you just grind the same two missions, "kill everybody" or "get to the escape zone" until you have enough buffs to kill the bosses. Fuck that noise. What a waste of $20 dollars.

The tactical challenge is to do a Recollection-1 run.
The grinding is there to let retards and journos play the game as some waifus-tamagochi crap.

 

[jdinatale]

Is there a mod to add color to the game?

 

[fork]

This game is fucking trash. If you want a good roguelike play Hades. It's not tactical, but it's based on player skill. Here you just grind the same two missions, "kill everybody" or "get to the escape zone" until you have enough buffs to kill the bosses. Fuck that noise. What a waste of $20 dollars.

Well, Hades is shit as well, otherwise I agree though.
Both not worth playing, let alone spending money on.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

This game is fucking trash. If you want a good roguelike play Hades. It's not tactical, but it's based on player skill. Here you just grind the same two missions, "kill everybody" or "get to the escape zone" until you have enough buffs to kill the bosses. Fuck that noise. What a waste of $20 dollars.

The tactical challenge is to do a Recollection-1 run.
The grinding is there to let retards and journos play the game as some waifus-tamagochi crap.

Can you elaborate a bit?
Played it about a year ago, so my memory is hazy...

 

[Nortar]

This game is fucking trash. If you want a good roguelike play Hades. It's not tactical, but it's based on player skill. Here you just grind the same two missions, "kill everybody" or "get to the escape zone" until you have enough buffs to kill the bosses. Fuck that noise. What a waste of $20 dollars.

The tactical challenge is to do a Recollection-1 run.
The grinding is there to let retards and journos play the game as some waifus-tamagochi crap.

Can you elaborate a bit?
Played it about a year ago, so my memory is hazy...

The game is ok at best.
It has pleasant visuals, true action-point system (not nuXcom 2-actions) and a couple of interesting mechanics.
It is supposed to be a rogue-lite with each run called a "Recollection".
But the problem is there's not enough maps and missions variety to support long term entertainment.

After several recollections the challenge would be completely gone; and running the same map for 10th time would provide nothing but boredom.
I'd say those who can't beat the game by R-7 (including a bunch of runs to learn the last boss tricks), must be alternatively gifted tactically challenged.

If you want to get the most out of tactical combat, you have to do the whole thing in one go without recollecting, that is R-1 run.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

Thanks

 

[Lhynn]

Game is alright, I disagree that nightmare is the way to go. It doesnt really add challenge, it only adds grind, and its exponential.

In nightmare your sisters hp loss is permanent, meaning they will die sooner or later, even if you are careful and play perfectly. This just means more and more restarts and more and more stat grinding and repetition of stages.

The aesthetics are fine, my main problem with it is that what you get when you start the game is what you will be playing with through the entirety of the game, unit variety is not there. You have a tank, a melee dps and a ranged support units, and the progression is just adding stats and a few skills to them. I would have liked to see either a subclass progression or different class unlocks to add more depth to the gameplay later on.

The story is a bit barebones, you can see what they are going for but in the end it doesnt make me give a flying fuck about anything going on. Its like a nice painting, you see whats going on, but you dont care about knowing where its going, and even if you did, its going somewhere predictable anyway.

I would say its a lot of style and very little substance, and that you get the most of out of the game in the first 6 hours.
Boss battles can be fun with the mechanics, though they often feel bullshity and arbitrary, more like puzzles than actual battles.

There are better offerings around and I would encourage anyone to go with those instead, but this is unique enough to be considered worth playing.

 

[Nortar]

I disagree that nightmare is the way to go. It doesnt really add challenge, it only adds grind, and its exponential.

The Nightmare mode used to be the only mode.
They only added Dream long after release, specifically to cater to all the whining.
So personal preferrences aside, Nightmare is the intended way.

Imagie if Dark Souls had caved in and added "Brighter Souls" mode with enemies doing half the damage, I suppose there would be lots of porponents agruing that it's the best way to play the game too grindy otherwise.

In nightmare your sisters hp loss is permanent, meaning they will die sooner or later, even if you are careful and play perfectly. This just means more and more restarts and more and more stat grinding and repetition of stages.

Attrition in Othercide was the challenge.
The question was never if you can beat the game, but in how many Recollections you can do it.

You had to plan your team setup and skill usage considering there's no way to recover health except cannibalizing your own characters.
Back in the beta there used to be a cheeze strat with healing up by sacrificing newborns.
There was no level difference check, so you could spawn a new daughter and feed her to your wounded veteran as a bloody healing potion.

The Dream mode is basically that, except with no price and no cynicism.
What is the point of having health cost on your most powerful character skills if you recover health after battle anyway?

 

[Sarathiour]

Not too shabby for a first run blind.

Unlocking scyther class during the fight the maid saved my ass, i honestly did not expect to push that far. Also i thought that the cemetery would clear between each run, would have took every resurecting item to bring back the A team if I knew it.

 

[Sunri]

Pretty fun game shame that its not more popular

 

[ChildInTime]

Best thing about the game was the music.