Othercide Review

Othercide

Developer: Lightbulb Crew

Othercide is a game surrounded by sacrifice and making hard choices. Its tactical elements really make it a game of its own weather to use Hp a Finite resource or if you want to take a chance and go all out on an enemy and take your turn later. The game also shows you the world your in is bleak and has no color in it to prove it's point with your chosen characters called daughters being the only ones to represent color and hope.

The story of Othercide paints a picture of how our world is always fighting against a entity known as Suffering. You start out playing a character that has been fighting for years and years in the veil. She talks to the Other which I'm assuming is the player asking you to stay till the end as you always have. after a brief tutorial you find that the mother has died and is now guiding you beyond death. Every chapter tells a small story of someone who is intertwined with the child and takes place over seven days. This person also tends to be the boss, and through out the campaign they talk to you as you go through the maps and you get a feeling of the type of person they once were. This however doesn't tell everything about what's really going on sadly and most the story of how the mother came is told through a codex. you never know why the veil is the way it is or why its interacting with our reality other than to be there, it gives a bit of mystery as to why the world is in such a state and I felt like there could have been a lot more of this put in the game or more lore as to what's going on. You gain daughters but they really don't have much interaction still I found myself becoming attached to them all the same hoping they wouldn't die.

Over the course of seven days you fight though levels of enemies per say. You take three Daughters with you and hope they stay alive After every map the daughters you used can no longer be used on the next map for that day unless there is an event that says otherwise. Each daughter can be given one of three classes and later a fourth class that in my eyes just doesn't bring anything useful to take a spot of the other three. I would have loved to have seen more classes in the game. Each action is taken by using AP and you have a total of 100 ap. This can increase through traits which your daughters can gain as they survive and fight in these levels. I thought this approach was great and made each of them seem a little different with how they were used in battle. by spending only half your AP your turn comes a little sooner but using all of your AP and your turn comes later. This could easily make you think before going all out on an enemy or waiting to do that to get your turn before the said enemy and do even more damage. As you level you can choose between two different skills which can greatly effect how you use the character in general for every encounter, with each ability you can place what's called a memory which basically buffs the skill one way or another.

There are some moves that use Hp. There is only one way to heal and that is by sacrificing a daughter of equal or higher level. Though the daughter your healing gets a small buff out of it you still loose a daughter. This game puts a thing of permadeath on characters you loose unless you get a revive token. These tokens are incredibly hard to come by as you have to complete a rescue mission. These mission spawn out a huge number of enemies that makes it nearly impossible at times. The other three mission types is hunt, ritual, and survival. The problem I have with this is there hardly any missions other then hunt that are available at one time. It sadly can make the game repetitive when you see the same map for the fourth time in a row. Another problem of the game is when an enemy spawns the mother will tell you a brief bit about it, each and every time... over and over... never ending... I nearly had to mute this aspect of the game with how annoying it became. There is also a bug on ps4 where sometimes you can get stuck in the Sacrifice menu as of writing this article and would have to completely close the application and restart it to get on with everything, my best advice is to quit t the main menu then go back and to look at the sacrifice menu. The boss encounters I would say are incredible the first time you come across them. Each having their own music theme, when ever you loose to a boss that's game over and you have to start over from either the chapter or era as they call it or completely over.

When recovering memories and completing small things like dealing enough damage your next playthrough you can gain a small bonus of sorts. this ranges from dealing more damage to particular enemies to having an increase in overall Hp. So eventually no mater how many times you fall you will rise much stronger for it. Another aspect with the codex is when you face an enemy or boss for the first time you get to unlock information on it about its mechanics and who it favors targeting and find ways of thinking how to take out the enemy the next time you face them. This was a huge help when learning which daughter to place where to minimize which one took damage.

Othercide has a great look to it and brings in that feel that there is no color and no hope in this world. your daughters on the other hand are the only thing that brings color or I guess you call hope. the enemies have that dark look at time's being scary and monstrous, but sadly I felt there was a lack in enemy variety, but the ones that are here give a great look, the sound overall was great other then the mother constantly saying the same things over and over, the music itself i felt was amazing and really brought the tone of the boss fights to life. In fact the sound track to this game is I would say one of the best in a game that I'm thrilled to say and wish they had a soundtrack in the game menus to listen to them outside of the battles.

The game is made by an indie studio and for what the game is I can say its impressive. Most indie game's I've played I didn't feel very strongly for and could tell they have limitations, but this game really brought out that its here to really impress. The minor bugs I'm sure will eventually be patched and the game itself left me wanting more, to know more about this world to learn more about them other other then the codex. to see what else could happen in this world. I personally enjoyed my time with this game and would love to experience more of this particular world.

Pros

• Great music.
• Hard choices.
• Daughters can feel unique.
• Tactics can mean a huge difference in survival.

Cons

• Small bugs
• Repetitive maps and enemies, and lack of classes.
• Very short story, not enough feels really explained.