Turn-based, squad based fantasy games seem to be a dime-a-dozen these days, but the danger of assuming that they’re all similar means that you’ll risk missing promising titles like Zodiac Legions.
There’s a chance that, due to its visual style, people will look at Zodiac Legion and think it’s some long-gone, dated game that didn’t quite hit home when it launched. That’s a big shame, because it’s actually a fusion of a lot of popular mechanics and will feel instantly familiar to a lot of RPG and turn-based, squad-based games. It’s big appeal is in the flexibility and expendability of your order, that having just the right fighter present can completely change the result, and that sometimes leaving somebody behind to die is the best way to get through a scenario before the danger levels creep too high. That’s right, we’re channelling XCOM 2 and Battle Brothers baby.
I’ve been playing through the Zodiac Legion demo and having quite a lot of fun. The fundamentals of it are, as I said earlier, really familiar. You’ve a base of operation that you’re attempting to project from, you’ll take missions in surrounding areas to strengthen yourself, and also — later in the game — to protect your realm from invading armies. It’s the early game that I’ve been mucking around in, however there’s already solid foundations laid down for the escalation as things like an alarm level, certain prerequisites for mission completion and nods toward later-game abilities appear harmlessly, but quickly, from the get-go.
It means that Zodiac Legion is a game that grows through specialisation, with extra options coming later rather than totally new mechanics or, as with some of its contemporaries, weapons. Those same objects in the early stages can be portals for enemies later, those same walls and doors that serve as the structure to the levels can be smashed down with godlike abilities, or simply teleported past using magic. It’s all about named specialists who can become entirely core to your strategy but then become dead specialists.
Now, there are a couple of other things I need to discuss. For one, while I said that I can see how the mid-and-late game will likely proceed, the current build is very early and lacks some of the later magical abilities; so it’s going to have to be a grower for you if you get involved this early. Secondly, I’m an aficionado of this sprite-based artwork and played a tonne of games like this when I was younger. If you’re second guessing because of the UI and artwork, that’s not something I can help you with. It’s pretty easy to read once you’re in there, in-fact, the UI uses up very limited space despite being in the style of 90s RPG UI, which was notoriously unwieldly and used to consume a lot of the default resolution screen.
There are a few things that’ll hopefully be added in soon, largely the later game features that are on the way. However, there’s also something personal missing, namely that, while there are a bunch of different models and portraits available the character names simply exist as a small strip of text near their stats when selected. I don’t know quite where the fix for this comes from, but when your characters are essential puzzle pieces that level up independently and leave a massive hole in your team when they’re dead, some personality (or even just clearer visibility on which of the dozen characters they are) would really help them stand out from one another.
Once things click, it gets really good: Kite the enemies into bottlenecks and then mess them up with magic and arrows; Assemble and hold a formation against enemies with your reach weapons forming a second row behind your first; Get one of your troops around to the back to wipe out the missile fighters while your main group shield wall and suck up any melee attacks. There’re a lot of options, and if you’re careful (and have a healer) then you can get through most of the current missions without taking a scratch.
I love the idea of smashing directly through dungeon walls, or ultimately gaining abilities that seem frankly game-breaking from the outset. When you’re fighting hellish enemies to a legendary scale, you should definitely be able to develop legendary capabilities. The most compelling thing to me though is that only select characters can go to the utmost extreme, the characters that are synched to the Zodiac signs. On paper it’s the same as psionic capabilities in XCOM or reaching the highest stats in Jagged Alliance, but in a fantasy setting full of procedural layouts that lean towards step-by-step progressions it feels really fresh and new.
Even though its still got at least a year left in the oven, Zodiac Legion is already a really promising squad-based strategy title.
Zodiac Legion will be available on PC when it launches, there’s currently a demo available on Steam.
