Brutal Orchestra

Most games copy existing games, shuffle ideas together, or make very small incremental adjustments to established formulas. Games that try to step a bit far into unexplored mechanics territory often don't get it right the first time and suffer because of that. However, I feel Brutal Orchestra does just that, and, judging from the amazing reviews and being in the top 1000 Steam games of all time at the time of writing, succeeds at it.

The rules and mechanics of the game aren't complicated. The game is a turn-based roguelike where you repeatedly choose between one of three paths, leading to various encounters (treasure, a new party member, etc.) or a battle. In battle, you control a party of up to 5 characters, each character has 3 abilities, maybe a passive, and an equippable item. Each of your characters can move and attack, and then the enemy does the same. But it gets deceptively complicated.
See, the board has 5 lanes, so at a full board, each character is facing an opponent. Character health carries over between battles. You can see what your enemies are going to do, and in what order. Most abilities hit only 1-2 tiles, so you could for example go into battle with fewer characters, allowing you to play more evasively. Enemies can also change their positions or trigger passives when attacking or being attacked, and so could you, which is also an axis that has to be kept in mind. Further, all abilities cost pigments of various colors, which is a very central game mechanic. You generate pigments by attacking enemies with the corresponding health bars, or getting hit yourself. If you don't have enough pigments you can't use an ability, but if you have the wrong color pigments, you will hurt yourself when using an ability. If you have too many pigments by the end of the turn, they get deleted, but hurt all your party members.

This isn't actually a lot of information, but there is nothing that is irrelevant in combat. Every single detail and decision matters, and as the game gets harder, you will find that you can't rush things, but have to contemplate each turn if you want to win. And this, in my opinion, is where there might be a divide in player opinion, because it certainly is where my opinion did not match up with the glowing review score. I can appreciate the work that went into making sure that everything the player does has a purpose. But I can not enjoy the agonizingly slow pace of combat. This plays like a puzzle game, where each battle is a puzzle to be solved. Choose the right party members to deal with the enemy composition. Consider the squares they threaten. Make sure you're in position to attack them, but also that you can move out of the way before their attack hits you. Alternatively, perhaps there's some way to heal or block the damage. Choose abilities based on what pigments you can use, and what you need to use to not overflow. Perhaps taking a hit on purpose just to generate pigments that an enemy does not have? And so. much. more. A single turn can take minutes, and a single battle can take over an hour, if you want to be thorough. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay, then this game is probably going to be amazing for you. If not, you will quickly succumb to the frustration that it's taking too long to do anything.

To mention a few other things, there's a good amount of content in the game. Completing just the main "easy" mode will probably take several hours, as you can rush it a bit more if you want, but if you want to see all the characters, items, enemies, then there's definitely a few dozen hours to be put in here. The art is a bit unsettling, but otherwise pretty good, and while I didn't care to read much of it myself, there's supposedly also some lore to be discovered. There is a surprising lack of keyboard support, which might have slightly increased the game's tempo, but it's not really a problem as you spend more time thinking than acting anyways.

In short, Brutal Orchestra is very highly rated turn-based roguelike, where simple mechanics combine to form complicated battles that can be solved like puzzles. I can not personally enjoy games where I can clearly see I could perform better, yet where doing so would take so much of my time as to bore me. Here, I found performing optimally to take far, far too much time. Still, I have to acknowledge the good game design that went into making every action meaningful, as well as the fact that most players do like it. In light of that, this get a partial recommendation from me.