Info about Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga:

Official game description:
At the turn of the millennium, the world of Tahnra is headed for a reckoning. The long and bloody conflict of Veridian Succession left the Empire of Veridia scarred, its people subject to brutal hardships. Under the reign of Empress Florina, the vicious cycle seemed to be broken, until a rogue General abducted her from the capital, mustering his own armies and raising the flag of rebellion. You, a young academy graduate, will command an expedition against these forces… a conflict that will set off a chain of events and shake the very foundations of the world.
*   2D Turn-based Strategy RPG
*   Squad-based player army
*   Story-rich 30-40 hour Campaign with huge replay value
*   50+ Character classes for your troops
*   Massive depth of tactics you will learn through natural play
*   Limitless possibilities for how to build your characters and squads
The gameplay focuses on grand-scale operations, outwitting and out-planning the opponent, while individual battles are carried out automatically and are thrilling to watch unfold.
*   Maneuver squads of up to 9 soldiers across battlefields and seize the advantage by grabbing high ground, holding chokepoints, ambushing from the woods, and more
*   P ay attention to the weather, or fall prey to a sudden blizzard or heat wave
*   Liberate towns and capture resources to bolster your reputation and sustain your armies
*   Break the enemy's morale, while maintaining your own
*   Eliminate enemy squad leaders to shatter their chain of command
Tactics win engagements. Logistics win wars. Once the dust settles, it's time to collect the wounded, rally the troops, and prepare for another battle in the long march to peace on Tahnra.
*   Assemble squads from more than 50 unit classes, including heavy infantry, archers, shock cavalry, medics, arquebusiers, dragons, battle mages, and more
*   Outfit squads with equipment and artifacts obtained through looting and victory
*   Nurture your conscripts into elite warriors, or hire mercenaries to instantly boost your army's fighting prowess
*   Research upgrades through your faction’s tech tree across a multitude of classes to specialize or generalize your troops for the job
The graduates of the Imperial War Academy were sent to quickly contain a rebellion, but became embroiled in a vicious plot far beyond what they could imagine.
*   Meet friends, heroes, allies, and rivals from the many different factions across the world
*   Manage a dynamic relationship system, unlocking iconic conversations, unbreakable bonds, and powerful bonuses between your characters
*   Experience an epic tale brimming with malice, treachery, and ambitions, as the fragile peace of Tahnra unravels

Release date: Jun 10, 2022

Categories: Tactical RPG, Unit Management, Class-based Combat, Character Progression, Resource Management, Morale System

Feature scans:
- MTX: score 10; verdict: Fair Monetization (No Microtransactions); summary: The game uses a traditional one-time purchase model with optional DLC expansions. No microtransactions, pay-to-win elements, or aggressive monetization are present. The only negative feedback concerns DLC content value, which does not indicate predatory practices.
- Wiki: score 50; verdict: The Student; summary: The primary user complaints revolve around the need for external guides and wikis to understand complex mechanics, hidden systems, and achievement requirements. The game's tutorial is insufficient, and many details are not explained in-game, forcing players to rely on external instructional data. No evidence of farming, inventory management, or navigation issues was found, placing the feedback in Tier 3 (The Student).
- Proton/Linux: score 10; verdict: Works Well; summary: Works Well
- Steam Deck: score 40; verdict: Tinkering Required; summary: The game is largely playable on Steam Deck with native support and good performance, but a notable minority experience crashes, and one user reports small text as an issue. The small text issue alone places the experience in the 'Tinkering Required' band, and the crash reports, while not frequent enough to classify as 'Broken', add friction.

- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price:
  - Community fair range: $10.00 - $15.00
  - Reasoning: Multiple reviews indicate that the game is a good value at sale prices around $10 (70 RMB, under 1000 yen) and that full price (likely $15–20) is acceptable for some but too high for others. The community consensus suggests a fair base-game price range of $10–15, where the game is considered worth the cost without being overpriced.
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: 60.0h
  - Story completion: 40.0h
  - Session length: N/A
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The first quote indicates a typical first playthrough completion time of 60 hours, which includes side content and army customization. The second quote specifies the campaign length as 40 hours, representing the main story/campaign. The third quote gives another playthrough time of 34 hours on normal difficulty, suggesting variability but still within the 30-40 hour range for a focused run. The fourth quote shows a full completion including expansion on hardest difficulty at 100 hours, which is an outlier. For session length, no consistent typical duration is reported; one review mentions a 12-hour session but that is an outlier and not representative. For endgame, no specific hours are provided in the reviews; mentions of late-game content lack time estimates.
- Time-to-fun:
  - Summary: The game has a slow, tutorial-heavy start with poor writing and a cumbersome UI, but once players engage with the deep squad management and progression systems, it becomes highly addictive and hard to put down.
  - Stance: Clicks after
  - Anchor: After the initial tutorial and exposition-heavy first hours
  - Time to anchor: 2h 0m
  - Friction: boring and exposition-heavy tutorial in the first two hours; poor writing and simplistic dialogue early on; cumbersome UI that requires frequent reference to tutorial notes; vague progression system for units (e.g., rare upgrade materials); steep learning curve for the first 10 hours
  - Unlock drivers: deep squad management and unit customization; rewarding progression systems (class promotions, artifacts, tech tree); addictive gameplay loop of building and optimizing squads; variety of unit types and formations
  - Conditions: patience to endure the slow start and poor writing; willingness to consult tutorial notes and menus for deeper mechanics; interest in tactical squad building and unit progression; solo play (no co-op mentioned)
- Player Archetypes:
  - Squad Architect (buy)
    - Motivation: Optimizing squad compositions and unit builds through deep customization and theorycrafting.
    - Playstyle: Meticulously designs squads, experiments with class combinations, and min-maxes stats to create optimal unit compositions.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: min-maxer; theorycrafter; build enthusiast
    - Reference games: Fire Emblem; Ogre Battle; Unicorn Overlord
  - Nostalgic Tactician (buy)
    - Motivation: Reliving classic tactical RPG experiences and scratching the itch for games like Fire Emblem, Shining Force, and Ogre Battle.
    - Playstyle: Plays for nostalgic feel, appreciates retro pixel art and familiar mechanics, often comparing to classic SRPGs from childhood.
    - Experience: veteran
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: old-school player; genre fan; retro gamer
    - Reference games: Shining Force; Fire Emblem; Ogre Battle; Disgaea; Advance Wars
  - Challenge Seeker (buy)
    - Motivation: Seeking a demanding tactical challenge that tests strategic depth and decision-making under pressure.
    - Playstyle: Plays on hardest difficulty with permadeath, tests strategic limits, and seeks a demanding tactical experience that rewards careful planning.
    - Experience: veteran
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: tactics veteran; hardcore strategist; permadeath enthusiast
    - Reference games: Fire Emblem (Lunatic mode); XCOM


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Enjoyable gameplay and battles (weight 0.58): Players consistently report that core gameplay and the battle system are enjoyable, with specific praise for combat, army management, and tactical depth. Multiple clusters highlight the fun of fighting, squad-building, and class division.
- Good unit variety and customization (weight 0.41): Players appreciate the large class division, many unit builds, and the ability to customize squads and mercenaries. This flexibility enhances replayability and strategic depth.
- Great pixel art and graphics (weight 0.38): The sprite work, pixel art, and overall visual style are well-received, with comments on charming art and good character design. The RPGMaker-style is also noted as appealing.
- Interesting mechanics and systems (weight 0.36): The artifact system, random affinity, unit compositions, and formation logic are cited as engaging features. These elements add layers of strategy and discovery to the game.
- Fun early game experience (weight 0.36): Multiple reviews mention that the first few hours, initial levels, and early chapters are particularly enjoyable, suggesting a strong opening that hooks players.
- Difficulty and progression options (weight 0.22): Players note the presence of difficulty settings like Warlord mode and New Game+ options that allow leveling and weakening enemies, though some find the game not hard even on higher difficulties.
- Good value for price (weight 0.13): The game is considered reasonably priced for the hours of gameplay it offers, with comments on affordability and a fair price-to-content ratio.
- Decent music and sounds (weight 0.07): The soundtrack is described as decent, contributing to the overall positive but not standout audio experience.

Common complaints:
- Poor and cliché story (weight 0.95): The story is widely panned as boring, unimaginative, cliché, and fragmented, with abrupt and nonsensical plot twists. Writing quality is inconsistent, often described as simplistic, painful, or like a child's fantasy, with a predictable and disappointing ending.
- Poorly explained mechanics (weight 0.91): Many game mechanics are poorly explained or hidden, including damage, hit rate, stat growths, terrain effects, and morale. The elemental system is confusing and unintuitive, and combat outcomes rely on hidden RNG, making strategic planning difficult.
- Clunky and tedious UI (weight 0.91): The user interface is widely criticized as clunky, cumbersome, and anti-human, requiring excessive clicking for simple actions. Squad management, team formation, and equipment changes are particularly painful and time-consuming, with poor information display and lack of sorting options.
- Boring and shallow gameplay (weight 0.85): Players consistently report that the game lacks engaging gameplay, strategic depth, and tactical variety. Combat is described as bland, mindless, and repetitive, with no meaningful tactics or variability, relying instead on stat-checking and numbers.
- Unreasonable difficulty spikes (weight 0.84): The game suffers from severe difficulty spikes, especially in mid-to-late chapters like Chapter 12, where players face overwhelming enemy numbers and higher-class units. The difficulty curve is inverted or unreasonable, with some sections feeling like torture or requiring perfect play.
- Outdated graphics and audio (weight 0.81): Graphics and art style are criticized as outdated, ugly, or poorly executed, with pixelated fonts, RPG Maker assets, and a mix of inconsistent styles. The audio is repetitive, voice acting perfunctory, and the overall atmosphere is plain and boring.
- Bugs and technical issues (weight 0.76): The game is plagued by bugs, crashes, freezes, and progress loss, with critical issues like game slowdowns requiring reboots. Forced loss missions, permanent death without save scumming, and softlocks due to difficulty spikes add to the frustration.
- Poor class and unit balance (weight 0.74): Class and unit balance is poor, with limited class diversity, unbalanced heroes, and useless units until late game. The protagonist is either too weak or too powerful after resurrection, and class advancement feels weird and non-linear.
- Tedious squad micromanagement (weight 0.57): Managing squads with over 100 units becomes extremely tedious and micromanagement-heavy. Players find the squad-building system annoying, with troop arrangement taking up to half an hour, making the experience feel like a chore.
- Flat and forgettable characters (weight 0.49): Characters are described as cardboard, forgettable, two-dimensional, and stereotypical, with no growth or depth. Dialogue is crude, bland, and lacks substance, and character introductions feel forced and clichéd.
- Overall poor quality (weight 0.42): Overall, the game is described as garbage, crap, primitive, and rough, with bad game design choices that kill all enjoyment. Many players find it unplayable or extremely disappointing.
- Useless grinding and progression (weight 0.4): Grinding is boring and often useless, as hired recruits are always better than trained units. There is no place to grind levels or money, and the game lacks training battles, making progression feel like a numbers game that blocks players.
- Tedious pacing and length (weight 0.39): The game becomes extremely tedious and boring after the early stages, especially after level 20. The pacing is slow, with only 20-30 hours of actual gameplay stretched over 100+ hours, and constant resets to avoid squad losses make it feel like a chore.
- Terrible machine translation (weight 0.37): The translation is terrible, often described as machine-translated, confusing, and filled with modern words in a medieval setting. This affects story, talents, skills, and overall immersion, making the game difficult to understand.
- Annoying enemy mechanics (weight 0.36): Enemy animations are slow with no skip option, and cavalry units can cross the entire map in one turn, which is annoying and unbalanced. Enemy human wave tactics and glass cannon units that oneshot player units add to the frustration.
- Overpriced and not worth it (weight 0.32): The game is considered overpriced for what it offers, with many players feeling it is not worth the time or money. Better games exist in the same genre, and the overwhelmingly positive rating is undeserved.
- Unfavorable genre comparisons (weight 0.28): The game is compared unfavorably to other titles in the genre, such as Dark Deity 2, Kenshi, and older SRPGs. It feels dated and removes exciting elements from games like Ogre Battle while adding Fire Emblem elements poorly.
- Repetitive level design (weight 0.25): Level design is simple, crude, and repetitive, especially from chapter 9 onwards, with enemy spam and samey layouts. Battles lack design and rely on higher-level and more numerous enemies rather than strategic placement.
- Poor time-to-fun ratio (weight 0.21): Team building and formation take an excessive amount of time (up to 2 hours) for only 10 minutes of fun. The game feels like only 20-30 hours of actual gameplay out of 100+ hours, with most time spent on tedious management.

Gameplay feedback:
- Diverse gameplay mechanics (weight 0.8): Various mechanics include main character invincibility condition, limited locations, arena training, Donar churches for reviving, morale, bond conversations, fixed story units, formation design, side quests, no counter mechanism, no unit specialties, no training battles, simple AI, single player, nerfed exploits, relationship and dialogue systems, unit pairing, and map size scaling after level 20. The player can have up to 20 units while enemies have 50 glass cannon units.
- Squad and army management (weight 0.66): Players can create squads from available characters, manage armies, hire recruits, and form teams. The game features squad-building, team formation, and army management systems with unit-based deployment.
- Turn-based tactical RPG (weight 0.49): The game is a turn-based tactical strategy RPG with squad-based combat, similar to Tactics Ogre and Ogre Battle. It combines elements of strategy and RPG genres.
- Class system and diversity (weight 0.36): The game has a class advancement system with diverse classes like front line tanks, assassins, gunners, cannons, healers, cavalry, and archers. However, class change resources are scarce, and the protagonist has limited class choices at start.
- RPGMaker art style (weight 0.33): The game has an RPGMaker art style with decent pixel art SRPG battles but mobile game style character portraits. It uses an old-fashioned standard system.
- Extreme difficulty spikes (weight 0.28): The game has ludicrous difficulty, especially on hard settings like Warlord difficulty, with one-shot mechanics. Difficulty settings are available but may be unbalanced.
- Enemy ambush and AI (weight 0.22): Enemy ambush spawning and AI behavior are notable, with mechanics like ambush, charge, backstab, and thief backline cutting. The AI is simple and inducible.
- Unit sacrifice and permadeath (weight 0.22): Forced unit sacrifice is present, but there is no permadeath option by default. A permadeath mode exists, and save scumming is not allowed.
- Randomized shops and hiring (weight 0.21): Random goods from merchants and randomized unit hiring are present, but shops have no refresh option. Market reloading mechanic exists.
- Artifact and upgrade system (weight 0.21): An artifact system and upgrade loop system are part of progression. There is a random development system for items.
- Power scaling and min-maxing (weight 0.21): Min-maxing and power scaling are important, with the protagonist gaining skills later. Plot reasons may cause progress loss.
- Grinding and level disparity (weight 0.19): Grinding for XP is required, as battles rely on higher level and more units. Enemies often have higher quality and quantity than the player.
- Elemental and terrain system (weight 0.18): An elemental system is present, along with terrain and weather buffs/debuffs. These mechanics affect combat strategy.
- Tactics and auto-battler mix (weight 0.18): The game combines tactics and auto-battler genres, similar to Unicorn Overlord. Combat is stat-based tactical.
- Random attacks and RNG (weight 0.17): Random attacks and hidden RNG in combat affect gameplay. Combat is stat-based tactical with some randomness.
- Forced loss missions (weight 0.17): Specific missions like Chapter 17 have forced loss or defeat events. Story missions may require losing for plot reasons.
- Switch and portal mechanics (weight 0.17): Switch and portal mechanics are used in combat, along with move and attack actions. Multiple mechanics like stances and magic fatigue are present.
- New Game+ DLC (weight 0.12): New Game+ DLC is available, which provides a power increase. This may affect replayability.
- Powerful enemy bosses (weight 0.12): Enemy bosses have powerful attacks like black hole void, and dragons are strong units. This adds challenge.
- No animation skip (weight 0.07): There is no option to skip animations, which may slow down gameplay. This is a common complaint for turn-based games.

Performance notes:
- System slowdowns require reboot (weight 0.34): Multiple players report that the game causes system-wide slowdowns that persist even after exiting the game, often requiring a full PC reboot to restore normal performance.
- Frequent crashes and freezes (weight 0.34): The game crashes frequently, including during the intro, at specific points like chapter 2's first battle, and on high-end hardware such as RTX 4080 and i9-13980HX, indicating widespread stability issues.
- Stuttering after patch (weight 0.08): After a recent patch, players experience stuttering during gameplay, suggesting that the update introduced new performance problems.
- Game stuck after tutorial (weight 0.08): The game fails to progress past the tutorial, blocking players from accessing the main content.
- Missing dialogue text (weight 0.07): Dialogue text disappears during gameplay, likely a bug that affects narrative comprehension.
- Runtime error occurs (weight 0.07): One player encountered a runtime error, which may be related to software conflicts or missing dependencies.

Recommendations:
- Strongly not recommended (weight 0.43): Several reviews strongly advise against buying or playing the game, with some citing bugs and others simply saying 'do not buy' or 'refund'.
- Appeals to SRPG enthusiasts (weight 0.36): The game appeals to fans of classic strategy RPGs like Ogre Battle, those who enjoy team building and min-maxing, and beginners who like tactical progression. It is recommended for SLG enthusiasts at a low price if graphics are acceptable.
- Weak story and tactical depth (weight 0.29): Multiple reviews state the game is not recommended for players who prioritize story or tactical depth, citing poor storytelling and UI issues.
- Wait for sale (weight 0.13): Reviews suggest waiting for a sale as the game is not worth full price, but may be acceptable at a discount.
- Bug prevents play (weight 0.07): A review advises not playing until a bug is fixed, indicating a critical issue that hinders the experience.
- Better alternatives exist (weight 0.07): One review recommends playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses instead, suggesting it is a superior alternative.
- Nerfed single-player exploits (weight 0.07): One review criticizes nerfing exploits and farming methods in single player, which frustrates players who enjoy optimization.
- Skip cutscenes for gameplay (weight 0.07): One review suggests skipping cutscenes to focus on gameplay, implying the story is not engaging.
- Not for fast-paced gamers (weight 0.07): The game is not suitable for players used to fast-paced games, implying slow or deliberate pacing.
- Casual players beware (weight 0.07): Casual players are advised to buy carefully, suggesting the game may not be accessible or enjoyable for them.
- Buy base game first (weight 0.07): One review recommends buying the base game first and then DLC if you like it, implying the DLC may not be essential.

Other player notes:
No miscpoints

Emotions:
No emotions}