God doesn’t play cube with the universe, I as soon as learn on a Mini Milk stick, however Thea 2’s pantheon of Slavic-inspired deities appear properly up for a game of playing cards. You don’t play as a mortal on this hybrid technique role-playing game, however an omnipotent entity guiding the lifetime of a hapless schmo of their quest from wanderer to chosen hero of a blossoming settlement. Thus started the chronicle of Cabbage Joe.
Some say that on the night time he was born, the wrinkled inexperienced full moon considerably resembled a large luminescent cabbage. Some say that he had some cabbages in his portrait and I’d already been considering up character names for hours. Whatever the reality, he was the Bok Choy-sen one, Savoy-er of mankind. Like all heroes of renown, Cabbage Joe had an unbreakable bond with a magical spirit animal: a pet crow that elevated his notion ability. A helpful trait for, amongst different issues, gathering greens. And so it was that Cabbage Joe and his Cabbage crow set off for journey.
He’s a part of a gaggle who’ll be strolling round a hexagonal map and moving into card-based fights, whereas different characters handle a house settlement. The opening menu permits you a little bit of freedom over your beginning occasion, and since Joe is extra acquainted with greens than the methods of battle, I assumed it finest to stay a warrior within the occasion to deal with the swinging of sharp implements. An extra craftsman rounded out my beginning trio. There’s a number of extra specialised lessons you’ll encounter later, however these three roughly correspond to what you’ll spend most of your time doing. Picking up issues, crafting issues, and hitting issues that attempt to cease you doing the primary two in peace.
Aside from the fight, that is all achieved via initially daunting however moderately intuitive menus. Characters aren’t restricted to sure actions, however these with greater statistics or specialisations are inclined to get the job performed lots faster. A warrior would possibly take three turns to catch a fish, for instance, whereas a devoted gatherer geared up with the gathering instrument you simply produced from some wolf bones would possibly solely take one.
This is all performed in service of surviving lengthy sufficient to expertise as lots of Thea 2’s extraordinarily entertaining random encounters as potential. Brendan talked about a deluge of connect-the-dots fantasy faff in his Thea: The Awakening chronicles. There’s nonetheless a whiff of that stuff right here, however it’s made palatable by a superb serving to of Witcher-esque self-awareness and fairytale subversion.
The world is separated into islands. You’ll finally must craft a ship to go to later (tougher) islands, however initially, you’ll be travelling on foot, through motion factors, throughout a hexagonal grid. Both assets and story encounters are marked on the corresponding hexes, although many encounters are random. Also marked on the map are settlements, which will be both be hostile, impartial, or pleasant, relying in your previous actions. After you’ve used up all of your motion factors, you’ll be able to break camp for the night time, which accelerates therapeutic, and lets you collect assets. Once you’re all out of motion factors and have set everybody to the gathering of shiny rocks, you hit ‘end turn’, and begin once more.
It wasn’t lengthy earlier than Cabbage Joe and his retinue have been attacked by some hungry wolves. Despite their apparent confusion at why they have been defending a person whose solely ability in life was buying giant quantities of leafy veg, the occasion sprung to his support. Such challenges in Thea 2 are available three flavours. You can hit issues, you’ll be able to hit issues together with your thoughts, and you’ll hit issues together with your soul. Each character has six completely different statistics, two of which correspond to every kind of problem. An try to slay an evil pine cone demon assessments your bodily abilities, however you may alternatively attempt to persuade the pine cone to desert his lifetime of crime and go discover a good Christmas tree to chill out, which might check your sanity. Which is sensible as a result of, mate, that’s a pine cone. Characters have separate well being bars for every kind of problem, all of that are doubtlessly deadly in the event that they drop too low. This might sound needlessly sophisticated, however it often comes right down to checking what your occasion is finest at, choosing a color, and taking part in a card game.
This card fight is predicated round motion factors, flip order, and utilizing skills to maximise the effectiveness and velocity of your individual actions whereas slowing down your opponents. It’s turn-based, however the game additionally retains monitor of a ‘delay’ counter to determine which actions are resolved first. As the planning part progresses, you’ll be given extra motion factors to make use of, but additionally steadily rising delays. You can save motion factors for extra elaborate performs in later phases, but additionally danger taking a variety of injury first because of this. You’re additionally penalised for relying too closely on one character, as repeating the identical actions with the identical character prices extra motion factors every time.
Some encounters don’t offer you a selection wherein ability to check, nevertheless, so that you would possibly find yourself being pressured to observe in horror as your scouting band of warriors headbutt one another to loss of life over a very fiendish riddle. You can and can, after cornering your self into unwinnable encounters, be pressured to cope with the occasional occasion wipe. It’s right here that Thea 2’s fiendish roguelike tendencies emerge from the whimsical waves of pleased journey, like a hydra from a fishbowl, and munch in your progress. Dead or in any other case incapacitated characters are gone without end. If your foremost character will get smushed, you’re given an opportunity to sacrifice two others to carry them again to life. If you’ll be able to’t, or don’t wish to, then that’s you completed.
The game then tallies up what number of pinecones you battered, turns survived, and different heroic deeds, and awards you some ‘god points’ which you should utilize to unlock extra gods and bonuses to make use of in your subsequent run. Cheaper bonuses is perhaps issues like some additional beginning expertise or the aforementioned magical crow of notion, while dearer ones would possibly get you let you choose a rat as your foremost character, or use {powerful} magic weapons.
This is all very good and informative and excellently written, I hear you cry, however inform us extra about Cabbage Joe. Please, calm your self. I’ll now proceed.
On high of being a card game and an RPG, Thea 2 purports to be a 4X game. This is debatable, however since genres are large slippery, stodgy, ephemeral issues, just like the porridge-coated ghost of a beached whale, I’ll take it. Cabbage Joe was most likely sitting on a seashore making necklaces out of shells or one thing when the gods of style conference punched via the fourth wall and knowledgeable him it was time to construct a settlement. This is the ‘expand’ portion of the presentation over, as you’ll be able to solely truly construct one village.
Settlements are helpful for lots of causes, however principally they let you create buildings which confer all kinds of bonuses in your occasion. You can construct a sawmill to automate wooden gathering, a faculty to enhance analysis, a buying and selling put up to entice merchants to go to, and so forth. There’s solely round ten buildings in complete, with most of them turning into unlocked while you accumulate greater tiers of assets. A easy picket watchtower would possibly present a meagre bonus to your occasion’s well being regeneration, whereas a watchtower constructed from uncommon crystal wooden does a significantly better job. Rare assets must be crafted from different barely much less however nonetheless extraordinarily uncommon assets, and each must be researched earlier than it may be put to make use of. Building itself works the identical means as gathering and crafting. You set some appropriate occasion members to the duty, and hit ‘end turn’ till one thing good occurs.
I’ve spent a variety of time right here speaking about how the varied statistics and methods work collectively in Thea 2. It’s a sophisticated game with a variety of concepts, and virtually nothing I loved in regards to the game appeared prefer it was a results of them. Thea 2, like so many roguelikes, is just a little field you poke to make tales come out. A bard with math for blood and cube for a tongue, buzzing the refrains to 100 disparate ditties and leaving you to reconstruct them into one thing coherent and thrilling and hilarious and odd.
Thea 2 isn’t the hours I spent numbly crafting and cooking, or the cardboard fight which I ended up auto-resolving ninety % of the time, or the genuinely irritating means my beloved Cabbage Joe was mercilessly crushed by a camp of bandits after clicking my means into an unwinnable encounter. Thea 2 is the kid dropped at my villagers through stork, who grew as much as be a purple whirlwind demon, and spent their life learning rat corpses so I may discover ways to construct wishing wells. It’s the time my complete occasion acquired sick as a result of a demon determined it might be enjoyable to poo in my meals provides. It’s pleasant dwarves who rob you blind after extending your hospitality, and evil-looking goblins who bestow blessings on you after sharing your meals. Thea 2 is attention-grabbing in a ‘may you live in interesting times’ sense. An imperfect factor that I can’t assist however really feel affectionate in the direction of.
