- Unique, engaging, and satisfying tactical gameplay.
- Rewarding progression with strategic rewind options.
- Dark fantasy setting with bizarre, body horror themes.
- Unbalanced difficulty leads to unfair encounters.
- Game-breaking bugs can cause lost progress.
- Limited content results in short playthroughs.
![Tarnished Blood 🩸 [Tactic RPG] header](https://shared.akamai.steamstatic.com/store_item_assets/steam/apps/2291700/header.jpg?t=1740153051)
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 85% · Negative 15%. Score: 15 / 100
Positives:
- The game features a unique and engaging blend of strategy, monster hunting, and roguelike elements, with a time-control combat system that adds depth and encourages experimentation. Combat is fluid and satisfying, and the core gameplay loop is addictive, making each victory feel well-earned.
- The game's combat system shares similarities with YOMI Hustle, adapting its mechanics for team-based battles against bosses. This offers a familiar yet distinct experience for players acquainted with the latter.
- The game features a dark fantasy setting enhanced by a unique art style, detailed environments, and nightmare-inducing enemy designs. The bizarre and grim atmosphere contributes to the overall immersive experience.
- The game presents a novel and unique concept that becomes more enjoyable as the systems are understood. Character progression and skill development feel rewarding, enhancing the overall experience.
- The game features a turn rewind mechanic for strategic planning and a replay system to review battles. These features allow players to analyze and refine their strategies.
Negatives:
- Players feel the game is unbalanced, with encounters that are too difficult and unforgiving, especially early on. Some events and damage scaling feel off, leading to frequent deaths and a sense of unfairness.
- Players report experiencing crashes, freezes, and other bugs that can lead to lost progress and the need to replay sections. These technical issues significantly impact the player experience and make completing runs difficult.
- The game's content feels limited, with short playthroughs that don't allow for full exploration of settlement and character progression mechanics. Players express concern over the lack of content variety and the abrupt ending after only a few fights, hindering long-term engagement.
- The game suffers from a steep learning curve due to poor tutorials and a lack of clear explanations for core mechanics. Players find themselves struggling to understand the complex systems and must resort to experimentation, leading to frustration.
- The game contains instances of sexual violence that some reviewers found objectionable and lacking sufficient foreshadowing. This content can be distressing and negatively impact the player's experience.
Gameplay:
- The core gameplay revolves around tactical, timeline-based combat against bosses. Players strategically plan hunter actions, predict enemy attacks, and manipulate time to maximize damage and avoid threats. This involves managing a team of hunters with unique abilities and weapons to target specific body parts of the boss.
- Boss souls grant unique movement abilities. These abilities, such as double jumps, digging, or creating platforms/portals, consume movement points and offer strategic advantages for positioning and evasion during combat. However, some souls are considered less useful than others.
- Players manage a settlement and its inhabitants to support the hunts. This involves gathering resources from defeated monsters, crafting equipment, improving buildings, and managing tribe reproduction to replenish hunters. Resources like bones, organs, fat, and animal skins are used to craft new items.
- The game features deep party customization and team management. This includes balancing traits, addressing injuries, leveraging each hunter’s strengths, and evolving characters through scars earned in combat. Characters are not tied to classes but to perks and path features, allowing for flexible builds, however characters can permanently die.
- The game incorporates dice roll skill checks, similar to classic RPGs. These dice rolls influence gameplay, particularly during expeditions where players choose from sub-expeditions with varying difficulty levels determined by a d10 dice roll, which can be influenced by perks.
Performance:
- On Steam Deck, the cursor sometimes disappears, forcing players to switch to mouse mode to locate it. This is a specific usability issue on that platform.
- The game runs well on Steam Deck during fights. This indicates good optimization for the device during graphically intensive sequences.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers recommend the game, especially to players who enjoy challenging, tactical RPGs with time-based mechanics and dark fantasy settings. Several reviewers draw comparisons to games like Darkest Dungeon and Kingdom Death: Monster, suggesting a niche appeal for fans of those titles.
- Reviewers express excitement for future content and improvements, noting the game's potential. They suggest adding more content, such as modifiers, events, and resources, as well as quality-of-life improvements to enhance accessibility and depth.
- Multiple reviewers suggest trying the demo to get a feel for the game before purchasing. This allows players to experience the gameplay firsthand and determine if it aligns with their preferences.
- One reviewer suggests that while tweaking monster stats and rebalancing weapons might help, the core gameplay loop is unlikely to change significantly. This suggests a concern that fundamental issues may persist despite potential adjustments.
- One reviewer suggests adding a setting to disable a specific scenario that some players may find triggering. This highlights the importance of considering player sensitivities and providing options for customization.
Miscellaneous:
- The game features a dark fantasy world with body horror elements and themes similar to Kingdom Death: Monster, H.R. Giger's works, Trials of Fire, and Made in Abyss. The world is bizarre, hostile, and may contain potentially triggering subjects.
- The reviewer notes that the game is in Early Access, which they typically avoid. However, they find the unique art style enjoyable and motivating to return to the game.
- A bug with the Divine tribe allows infinite stardust gathering but prevents procreation or training. This significantly impacts gameplay progression and resource management for that tribe.
- The game imposes a 6-year time limit that is not clearly communicated to the player until they encounter the Warden. This lack of transparency can lead to unexpected game overs and player frustration.
- The game is described as nearly complete, with a sufficient number of bosses and battles already implemented. The developers plan to add even more content in the future.
