Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch is a spin off of the turn based tactical RPG, Lost Eidolons. As is the nature of spin offs there’s a lot of changes to the formula here, with a move away from the 3d graphics of the original and a dramatic change in artstyle. The biggest change however is the change to a roguelike. As someone that hasn’t played the original, and is a fan of roguelikes I was intrigued when we were given the chance to play the Early Access build extra early. So let’s jump in and see how this roguelike, turn based tactical RPG goes!
Gameplay
As I mentioned above the core gameplay of Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch is turn based tactics meaning players must consider the positioning of their characters, the terrain, and the unique abilities of both allies and enemies. There’s 9 different characters (8 if you don’t count your character), and you select 4 to join you on each expedition to try and rid the island from evil magic causing the dead to come back to life. Each character has a specific role and set of skills, making team composition and synergy crucial for a successful run.
There’s some fun synergies to be found, like fire magic blowing up poisoned areas, or immobilising enemies then chipping away at them from a non counterable distance, but a lot of it comes down to the luck of the draw with enemy positioning and rolled perks. Offensive magic seems particularly meh, with a combination of the spells having very little range and the Librarian (mage) being incredibly squishy. In order to get into range to try and pull off a cool combo you are almost always then focused down by enemies and dying incredibly fast. As it’s Early Access, I’d like the spells to have a bit more range in the final build, especially as the standard ones are single target and don’t do any more damage than a weapon attack.
The big difference from standard turn based tactics games I’ve played in the past is the roguelike element. There’s 2 main meta progression systems in the Altar of Fire and Promotions: the first is a huge skill tree that upgrades various aspects of your offense, defense and exploration to make runs easier; the second is character specific and upgrades each character to a higher level. As you would expect from a roguelike, collecting the various materials to level up the meta progression takes a little bit of time, which is generally fine however I will say the runs are particularly long with act one frequently taking me up to an hour. This is fine in a standard turn based tactics game, but for a roguelike with 3 acts it’s particularly brutal.
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch boasts over 200 unique skills, upgradeable equipment, and more than 30 relics. This variety allows players to customise their characters to suit their preferred playstyle – within the confines of the roguelike framework of course. Using skills and killing enemies levels up your characters for that run, letting you choose between 2 upgrades each level, but I frequently found myself skipping over some of the more niche combat skills with higher cooldowns and just picking up another boost to my crit chance or guard. You can reroll these cards but it’s prohibitively expensive at the start of the game, and the permanent passive to reduce the cost is locked behind a whole lot of prerequisites.
Graphics, Performance and Story.
The narrative is engaging; who are we? What are Eidolons? Why are the dead coming back to life? And the characters are well-crafted. I particularly enjoyed the bond system, where you can build up bonds with your party members – not just as the main character, but between the side characters as well. The run events where you can utilise a side character’s expertise to potentially improve the reward outcome of a roll is good fun and a nice addition that lets you get extra engagement with your party. The fact that these checks inevitably involve a D20 roll that can by design fail I’m not so sure of. In a game that’s already brutally difficult with a not insignificant grind adding even more RNG mechanics seems like it’s adding perhaps a bit too much.
The character art in Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch is gorgeous, with each character’s hand drawn art showcasing a huge amount of detail and personality. I believe the original game used 3D models, but the art on show here is my preference – you can really tell a lot of love went into the character designs. Outside of the main characters, the boss designs are also great and alongside the standard foot soldiers and walking corpses there’s some fun enemy designs scattered throughout the biomes.
I did run into a few bugs – however that is to be expected from an Early Access title. On my first start up I had a visual bug that made the game run so choppy I have to restart it, and I’ve had a recurring audio bug where the music cuts out randomly and pops back on. I haven’t been able to fully resolve that one unfortunately as it seems to happen randomly and once it kicks in only a reset will fix it meaning I’ve not had a proper chance to enjoy the music and sound design.
Final Thoughts
There’s a lot to like about Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch. The characters are well fleshed out and the combat interactions are very fun when you manage to get everything lined up just right. But I’m not sure if the experience benefits from being converted into a roguelike. Even as a lover of the genre, I frequently found myself on the receiving end of combat scenarios and RNG that felt almost unfair. The game really expects you to grind out a lot of runs in order to progress – which I know is pretty common in roguelikes with permanent upgrade paths – but when the runs are this long and the RNG is this severe it can get a bit demoralising.
I think maybe the relics sum it up the best. Almost every roguelite I’ve played has relics that are generally a boon, but many here seem to have such significantly downsides that it’s frequently better to skip them, meaning you just chose a combat encounter for virtually no reward. There’s also the scenarios where more enemies are programmed to show up, which will happen even if you play well and get rid of the first wave quickly. The first time this happened I was incredibly demoralised, as I felt like my good play wasn’t necessarily being rewarded.
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch enters its Early Access phase on November 5, 2024. This period is expected to last between six months to a year. During Early Access, players can experience the full game from Act 1 to Act 3, facing increasingly challenging enemies and uncovering more of the game’s mysteries. And hopefully during this time there’s some balance patches to make the game feel like a little less of a grind.
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch was played on PC and enters its Early Access phase on November 5, 2024
