Sdorica: Tactical RPG 9+

The art direction in this game is phenomenal. I enjoyed every second of the tutorial, which is all I’ve done before I wanted to write this review.

Sdorica is many things, but easy to explain? It is not. Essentially, it is a Gacha (Spend grindy hours to gather ressources to summon units or try to pull for them using real money) but it has many weird twists. Each character is personality-driven and comes with 3 unique active skills and two passive skills, one which is on at all times, given that you’ve unlocked it, and one that may be activated (or just be passively active) during quests when you bring it as a councillor (this game’s equivalent of a friend unit, or in this case, guildmate’s units). Now that’s pretty standard fare for Gacha, there are tons of them out right now so how does this one stand out? Well, in a pretty weird way, that’s how. First the combat: it is a turn based battle system in which enemy unit have a turn counter underneath them. Every action you make (except using a councillor) substrats from their turn number. When it reaches 0, they proceed to attack or use a skill. They way you actually use your skills, however, is dictated by a 2x7 grid of spheres. You can have a party of up to three characters so the grid has three sphere colours. (White for healer/mage, purple for damage dealers and yellow for tanks/defenders) each character’s three skills are bound to the number of coloured spheres you can link together, one single sphrere activates the first, two spheres (horizontal or vertical) activates the second and a four-sphere cube (And only cube, can’t be four sphere lines atm) activates the third and most powerful of your character’s skills. All in all it’s a real puzzle to try and make one team with all of the skills that work when you want them to. It adds A LOT of rng to each encounter and it IS possible that you’ll be locked out of a fight because of bad luck with sphere colours or placements. It’s a weird system, but it does encourage diversity, so I’ll give it that. You sacrifice having full control of your units to have every fight feel a bit more tense, and that can be good or bad depending on your relationship with RNGeezus. But where I think Sdorica made a really weird choice was in forcing you, the player, to use story characters for quests. See, the way you progress through the game, if you’re a new player, is by doing story quests, which gives you exp, items and money to prepare you for the events that happen over time, and that’s pretty standard fare for Gachas, but Sdorica doesn’t allow you the use of your own party until way later in the game. Occasionally one mission will allow you to use the team you are building up, but that’s one or two per mission. Not enough to gather exp for them or even to try them out. So you might be wondering, well why am I supposed to level up a team if the game just forbids me to use it in story missions? Can I use them elsewhere? In the events, perhaps? Well yes but no. Events often lock you with units too. And those who don’t are for players who are beyond level 30. You CAN use your own teams for explorations, replays of past story quests without the story to gather materials, and that’s about it. For the first, huge half of the game, you’re locked in with units you might not even ever have. I understand the appeal of putting them there. The characters are key to the story that is unfolding. And it’s pretty neat to be able to test units before you have an idea of what you want your play style to be. But why the locks? Why the limitations? Speaking of limitations, the game does NOT have energy, you can play to your heart’s contempt (which is a godsend, really, I wish more games followed Sdorica on that point...) you do, however, have a daily cap of event missions. What I’m trying to say is, Sdorica tried and managed to be very different from its competitors, and is looking outrageously beautiful, doing so! The art team really knocked it out of the park on this one. The details and presentation are truly gorgeous. The interface is a bit clunky to navigate tho, with some commands being unresponsive if pressed in succession. Overall, it is a very solid game, fun and worth your time if you’re willing to put it, it’s just such a shame that your early progress has to be so restricted. I personally would really love to have the option to play the story characters or my own team. Giving the player choices instead of taking it away from them is always a win in my book. Solid foundation, I really hope they keep improving the game from now on!

This game is beautiful, all the characters all have personality, and they are characters you really fall for. This is incredibly worth playing and investing. It’s a strategic hence is a slow pace but it has an easy learning curve. Ignore all the low rating saying this game crashes, you have to have a really old phone for this game not to work on your device. You do not need to spend endless of hours to invest into this game. Great for casual gamers.