izigame.me

I've completed 100% of the game on hardest difficulty with all obtainable (non-bugged) achievements and optional challenges and i do not recommend doing the same to any of you potential players. Steam shows i have 40h+ played,but half of that time i just kept the game running and was watching streams or doing whatever because i was too bored to continue.
The game is advertised as having "HoMM-like exploration,city-building and turn-based strategic combat, with a roguelite twist". And it is exactly what it has to offer – exploration similar to HoMM series (without any real economy, tactical depth, interesting plot or replayablity), building a single city throughout the entire campaign (“meta-progression”) and a single “roguelite” feature (slightly randomized starting hero choice at the start of each mission).
The core gameplay loop (after the prologue mission) is the following – you have a base of operations with a modest selection of buildable facilities, where you can choose from up to 3 slightly randomized versions of starting hero (per mission), up to 3 starting units in the hero’s army and up to 3 artifacts your hero can equip. Then you choose a mission and embark on an adventure in HoMM-like style, where you hero travels the selected map in turns, uses movepoints, picks up resources, artifacts, recruits monsters and fights enemies in tactical battles reminding of HoMM V. Maps are always the same as well.
While initially it does seem like a good deal, you quickly realize how shallow and boring the game is. There is no real economy management – during each map you have plenty of resources to recruit the best units, activate various resource-consuming things and so on. Even in maps where you have to mandatory sacrifice some of your units to progress further its still very easy considering the amounts of reinforcements you have at your disposal.
The food-consumed-per-turn mechanic that is supposed to add some strategic value is in fact completely obsolete – you will quickly understand which upgrades and artifacts to use to boost the amount of hero movepoints to 16+ and clear everything on map without any problems.
Even on hardest difficulty AND doing all optional challenges for missions simultaneously the game is just too easy. Some units clearly outclass everything else you’ve offered so it is a really no-brainer to pick the best combo and stick to it. The units may differ in different biomes, but the main principle is the same. I haven’t lost a single unit in combat during the whole campaign.
I’ve actually written down a whole lot of different notes about various things that pissed me off when playing or just made no sense gameplay-wise (like I killed the dragon in the prologue mission, but the game still somehow treats it like it killed me, which is a big story point), but for the sake of keeping this review as brief as possible I skip most of them.
Let’s just say I’ve encountered one game-breaking bug with corrupted save files (managed to repair it myself after an hour or so), several bad map-design decisions (like when I cleared the Necropolis map in half the time required by the scenario, had to skip like 15-18 turns to fight scripted enemies to progress further), several very bad monster design decisions (srsly, who thought it was a good idea to add a 90% dodge beast with the potential to make it 100%? Pure cancer, both when you fight it AND when you have it in army).
TL;DR
This game is not what is seems when looking at screenshots and gameplay vids, so if you expect a good turn-based strategy with some actual depth – you should look elsewhere. Buy it only if heavily discounted and you have nothing to entertain yourself with.