Othercide – Review

What is Othercide about?

Othercide is a turn-based strategy game, and in it, you get to control humanity’s last hope, known as The Daughters. The Daughters are echoes of the greatest warriors who ever lived, and now they are the only ones who stand up against Death and Suffering. You will have to lead this army of Daughters and choose their actions carefully, as not only are their fates in your hands, but your actions will also shape their skills and personalities. And at certain times, you will need to make tough decisions, as in order to heal them, one will have to give their life as a sacrifice, but that will make the one who survived even stronger.

How to play Othercide?

At the bottom of the screen, you get to see a timeline that shows when you and your enemies will be able to take action. Depending on what skill you use, it will take longer for you to recover and to be able to act again. Some moves can delay attacks, and there is also something called a vengeful stance that will cancel your opponent’s next attack and allow your character to deliver a counter. However, they cost HP instead of action points, and while they are a powerful mechanic, overusing it can be dangerous, so be sure to use this move wisely. Another combat mechanic is the action points burst, which will activate once you go below fifty AP (Action Points). While this will allow you to use extra moves, it will take you down to the bottom of the timeline, leaving you vulnerable to enemies attack.

Let The Nightmare Begin

Right at the start, I already loved the soundtrack and the overall aesthetic of the game. It looks incredible, and I was impressed with how the game plays even while playing the tutorial. The story seems to be a bit confusing a first, but we know that there was once a warrior known as The Mother who decided to fight against the Suffering so that she could stop the world from being destroyed. However, she couldn’t defeat it and ended up losing her life, but her blood remained, and we now get to control her Daughters and help them finish what their Mother couldn’t. We start with two daughters that we can use already, but there is also the choice to germinate new ones. We do that and can now choose a class for her. There are three starter classes:

• Blademaster, which excels in close-quarter combat
• Soulslinger is excellent at providing assistance from a distance
• Shieldbearer, who is fantastic at protecting her sisters.

And since we already had one Blademaster and one Soulslinger, the Shieldbearer was the obvious choice so that we could have one of each. So we are finally ready to hop on our first mission, and it seems that we can only use three Daughters for this synapse (mission).

Our first mission is pretty straightforward. There are four creatures on the map that we must hunt down and defeat. None of the monsters were challenging, but it was an excellent opportunity to learn how to use each class and their skills. After finishing it, all three of the Daughters leveled up, and each one of them learned new skills. Two options will be shown to you when a new skill is available to unlock, but you will be able only to pick one. Some of them will cost AP, while others might cost HP. We also learn that during our first mission, Daughters can earn traits depending on how you use them in combat. For example, our Blademaster got two new traits, one that gives her extra damage and another that reduces her end-of-turn delay. I also took the opportunity to see how to heal the Daughters, and since we are playing the Nightmare difficulty, we need to sacrifice another one of our daughters to do that. Doing that will heal and give them a fragment of the sacrificed Daugthers soul and give the one that survived some of its power. But we still do not need to do that, as all of our Daughters are still pretty healthy.

From the explanation of the “normal” mode, seems like the Daughters are to auto heal after getting to the next day. That makes the playthrough way easier 😀

Fight Against The Suffering

Later on, we get to learn about something called Memories that enemies can drop when defeated, and we can equip them in any of their skills, giving it a buff. It can either be extra damage, increasing critical injury, or damaging the enemy’s defense. After equipping the Daughters with memories, we go on to the next mission, but this time we only have two Daughters available, as they cannot fight more than once a day. Sadly, the task was too difficult for only two of them, and we even ended up losing one of the Daughters. But after that, on the next day, there is a rescue mission available, and completing it might reward us with a resurrection token. This one seems different from the others, as our objective is to escort a bright soul and the Daughters to safety. It wasn’t exactly easy, but we managed to do it, but our Daughters took some pretty good damage, and in the end, we can either choose to free the bright spirit and receive 400 Vitae or sacrifice it and get a resurrection stone. 

And since the Daughters took a lot of damage after taking on all these missions, we need to sacrifice one to heal them. But to be able to do that, both Daughters need to be at the same level, and in the end, we ended up sacrificing one of our Blademasters in order to heal our Shieldbearer. On the fourth day, we see that we can now choose to fight against an enemy called Surgeon, but we can decide to either fight him now or fight him on the seventh day, and since we’re not very strong at the moment, I decide to take on other synapses, and this time, it is also a new one. This one is called penance, and while it doesn’t give us any Vitae as rewards, if we’re able to complete it and have every Daughter leave alive, they will all receive a lot of XP. To escape, each Daughter needs to fill up a bar, and they need to kill enemies to do that. Stronger enemies fill up more, but the tricky part is that every Daughter has their bar, and they will escape as soon as the bar is full. So coordination is essential, as we want all of them to leave alive. Hopefully, we were able to complete it, and no one died.

On the next day, we took on a pretty hard mission, but we could have four Daughters in our team this time, the mission was challenging, and it took us a while to finish it, but we were able to complete it. It was another synapse where we had to escort a bright soul, and we again chose to sacrifice it. So now I decided to try and fight the Surgeon. The three main Daughters that I’ve been using are pretty strong. They have some great traits and also some strong memories attached to their skills. The Surgeon looked like a pretty strong enemy, and it wasn’t just the looks. He also had some lackeys around him, and while we were able to kill all of them, we had no chance against the Surgeon. However, it was a pretty fun run, and even though it was my first time, it was a lot of fun, and to be honest, I did pretty well.

My Conclusion

Othercide is a super fun game, the mechanics are very easy to understand, the combat feels amazing, the game looks great, and it is pretty easy to play it on a controller. Other than its visuals, the soundtrack was one of the things that I liked most about the game, it is really epic, and it fits so well with the game. Sadly I wasn’t able to defeat the boss on the first run, but these types of game are the ones that you are supposed to die in your first couple of tries, as it gets easier the more you play. I cannot wait to play more of it, and hopefully next time I’ll be able to beat The Surgeon.

Where to buy?

• HumbleBundle (Affiliate Link)

If you like this you might like

If you liked Othercide then I think you are either into turn-based or strategy games ;). So here is a small recommendation list from me: Also, if you have any other recommendations of a game you’d like me to play, feel free to leave a comment here, or on my YouTube channel:

• FTL – Faster than Light
• Ring of Pain

YouTube

If you want to relax in your own timely manner then come watch me on YouTube:

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