Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy is a tactical role-playing game from Curious Fate and Akupara Games. The game features a vibrant art style and some truly gorgeous artwork but does the gameplay itself stack up with the eye-catching visuals?
Tactical Gameplay
In Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy, players will take on the role of Huxley, an adventurer. After a very brief tutorial segment, you’ll be thrust into the heat of battle and things really escalate quite quickly. The tutorial is fairly basic and teaches you how to select your unit, move them, attack and then use skills. Any further explanation comes later in the game when new mechanics are introduced and it’s woven into the storytelling quite well.
The story kicks off with Huxley being on a mountainside gathering berries. Soon after, he discovers a shrine and something happens to him. A voice in his head then compels him to head to a town called Corliss, which is under attack. Along the way, you’ll stop by a farm which is being sieged by some evil henchmen and ghouls. An old lady gets murdered in cold blood and Huxley ends up defeating the henchmen before heading to Corliss.
When Huxley reaches Corliss, he sees that the town is already overrun by enemy forces. He’s commanded by a friendly soldier and someone else that he knows to just run away but he stays. Upon defeating the soldiers and reaching the end of the level, players will be introduced to “Father Eldritch” and his Daughters of Mercy. These are the main antagonists of the game.
Anything else from then on out could be considered spoilers so it’s best if you play the game yourself to find out just what’s going on. With that said though, Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy has a strangely compelling narrative. Players are driven forward at a gradual pace and the interweaving of gameplay and almost visual-novel-esque conversations in battle is very reminiscent of Fire Emblem and other SRPGs. If you enjoy turn-based tactical RPG titles, you’ll love Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy.
Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy further complicates its gameplay with numerous mechanics which interact with each other. Players can cast skills which are tied to the movement grid in shapes, there’s interactable objects on the map and even some light puzzles that need to be solved in order to progress. The class-based system for your heroes works well in action and as the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”. The blend of storytelling and gameplay segments is really well interspersed throughout the entire game even if it’s a tad formulaic at times. There are some stand-out moments in the story too but overall, it’s fairly straightforward. Oh and you can “Pet the Dog”!
Absolute Camera Control ?
The only major gripe with the gameplay lies with the fact that the camera is rather disappointing in Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy. Apart from being too zoomed in to be able to see everything on the battlefield/map, controlling the camera with your mouse and keyboard is a bit of a frustrating affair. If a future patch can address some of this, the game would feel a lot smoother than it currently does. As it stands right now, you’ll need to scroll to the edge of the screen with your mouse cursor to move the camera around or move block by block using the arrow keys which is less than ideal when the camera height/zoom level is so close to the ground. There’s also quite a bit of screen tearing that goes on despite Vsync being enabled in the graphics settings. Not quite sure if that’s a known gameplay bug or if it’s a compatibility issue with AMD graphics cards but in any case, it is a thing that players should be aware of.
Graphically, Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy looks fantastic with the character’s designs all being visually pleasing and quite vibrant. Honestly, a lot of the designs look like they’d fit right in in a fighting game like Skullgirls or BlazBlue The maps themselves feature some great artwork and designs too. Skills are rather flashy and attacks look and feel powerful in action.
The soundtrack of the game is well suited to it and the background music that plays in battles never gets annoying. Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of voice acting here and it’s a shame because if every single character and line was voiced in this game, it would truly excel. The story would hugely benefit from having a full voice cast backing it even if it does venture down a tried and trusted trope-filled path.
Final Verdict
Overall, Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy is a great tactical role-playing game and one that will certainly scratch any itch you might have. The only downside is the camera control and UI being sub-optimal for the type of game it is. Other titles in the genre have perfected this and Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy should try to mimic that in future updates. If Curious Fate and Akupara Games can update this title to refine these issues, the game will excel. We recommend giving Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy a try if you enjoy strategy-based tactical games since it does a lot right despite being rough around the edges.
Grab your copy here – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1636660/Absolute_Tactics_Daughters_of_Mercy/
Developer: Curi
Publisher: Akupara Games
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