Lost Eidolons: Veil Of The Witch is a sequel to the 2022 release title also named “Lost Eidolons”. Created and published by Ocean Drive Studio it follows the turn- based combat of its predecessor but Veil Of The Witch is an isometric style taking some queues from legendary games like Fire Emblem. Lost Eidolons: Veil Of The Witch released on November 8th in early access on Steam but may come to other platforms down the line.
“From the world of “Lost Eidolons” comes an all-new roguelite tactical RPG! Stranded on a mysterious island with scattered memories, your only means of survival is to fight”
I’m Loving This Art style
There is always a visual flare and charm when a game changes from what is expected to something more unique, Veil Of The Witch introduces Ocean Drive’s take on cell-shading, as we converse and enter combat with our team, every character’s card feels really unique and original.
The cell shading also makes it really easy to distinguish each character’s position during battle when we get an eagle eye view of the battlefield and what square they are in. The environments blend into the background really well which helps in keeping our focus on the combat.
The fact that this game is in early access means a lot of what we’re seeing is unfinished yet even now it looks really nice, by version 1.0 we are likely to see proper improvements to the visuals and artstyle which may do its fair share of making an impression among its peers.
The Fire Emblem Roguelike Merge
Getting into the actual gameplay, we can lead a party of 5 go out from our base to either shops or encounters. Rightaway we are on the roguelike side of the system, after defeating the enemies in each encounter we are awarded buffs which we will need to choose efficiently to maximize our party’s chance against the boss.
Another component of the roguelike system is the upgrades we collect throughout our encounters. Resonant stones, usually either one or two, are what we receive at the end of each encounter which allow us to upgrade the armor or weapon of any one character of our party.
What is an interesting feature is that these resonant stones have a chance of “resonating” highly with any character’s equipment, which gets marked with a red glow, this then allows us to fully upgrade that character’s equipment. This mechanic encourages thinking on one’s feet as we then have to change whatever strategy we had planned before receiving the resonant stone.
An Interesting Take On Permanent Upgrades
In terms of permanent upgrades, we get access to the “Altar of Fire Sacred Embers”, we interact and get access to three distinct skill trees, which are the Judgemental Flame, Miraculous Flame and Guardian Flame.
As the names indicate each tree corresponds to a different in-game mechanic, the Judgemental Flame tree has unlocks which increase the damage of our physical weapons such as swords, axes, bows etc. The MIraculous Flame tree has skills which increase our chances of events such as awarding us with legendary buffs for example.
Finally the Guardian Flame unlocks defensive skills such as granting us increases in our base health, more base defense or more defense to a certain type of attack such as an increase in magic defense if any of our characters are wearing leather armor.
A Solid Roguelike To Keep An Eye On
The game also has other notable features like players can talk and bond with his or her party members which then unlocks additional dialogue or clues as to how to use them in combat. Players can also promote their characters from their base roles, such as promoting someone from their base Vagabond role to a Pathfinder and then Pioneer.
Promotion is done through using runes and fragments which get collected on any run the player does. Doing these promotions unlock new moves and skills that are unique to the characters which no doubt help when doing runs or facing the boss.
All in all, Ocean drive may have something really successful on their hands, they have managed to combine the uncertainty of roguelikes with the tactical combat style of JPRGs to create something unique and interesting to play. They also plan on adding voice lines to the game which are currently missing, along with a lot of content such as new bosses, new random events and maps.
