Tahira: Echoes Of The Astral Empire shares a lot with Armello and Hand Of Fate. All 3 started off with Kickstarter campaigns. All 3 are developed by Australian studios. And all 3 try to bring the classic board game style back into fashion. Not to mention, I found all 3 games enjoyable.
Tahira: Echoes Of The Astral Empire
Detailed Review
The game is first part of a series, and is presented to the players as an episodic game. The tactical R.P.G developed by Whale Hammer Games, harks back to the turn based grid layout which was a staple in the 90s and has had a bit of a resurgence recently with games like The Banner Saga.
The game plays very much like you would expect it to with tactical battles intermixed with a tight script. Even the dialogs are delivered through text and the only sound effects are limited to special animations. This in essence encourages players to imagine the tones and the delivery in his own mind. Making up how a character would actually sound like, which in my opinion is always better than a bad voice-over job.
Tahira is a single player turn-based tactics role-playing game. The game is built around turn-based tactics battles, which draw inspiration from games such as Fire Emblem and XCOM, in that the player controls a force of multiple characters with different abilities on an isometric grid. Players versed in afore mentioned games will feel right at home once they fire up Tahira.
Each battle consists of units, commanded by you or by your enemies (there can be multiple units under you or your enemy). Units take turn to attack and each individual in a unit can be controlled independently, and moved around on the battlefield. Some units can be placed in ambush points, which can be used to break the flow of your enemy’s turn and disturb their plans. Sometimes it’s easy to tell how a battle will unfold based on the ambush points given and how units are spread out in the beginning, but sometimes the game just throws in some unfair curve-balls, for which you couldn’t have known about which makes some battles tough and in some cases UN-winnable for the first time.
Part One also features 3 other playable heroes apart from the titular Tahira. Whale Hammer promises more to be added in the following games. These include Tahira, The Princess of Avestan and last Great Conduit. Baruti, The Lion of Avestan and the commander of Avestan’s knights. The Claw and The Hammer, a swaggering mercenary power couple from the ruined kingdom of Oran. Each hero character has special abilities that help them in the battle.
Sometimes the sheer size of the battle grid may be intimidating, and you are always worried that you are missing something, or not following something that you should. Positioning is incredibly important, as having friendly units adjacent to a target will increase the damage done, and friendlies near each other will receive reduced damage from enemies. Therefore, it’s important to move units before actually attacking in order to maximize the damage done. Enemies can be pushed off of edges, which requires certain abilities, but only a few maps allow the player to even utilize this and most of the time it’s not really that much better than just fighting.
The game however offers an option to skip the battle on lower difficulties, which is exactly what I did, after I had gone through 3 consecutive tough battles on a cliff side. The entire game clocks to somewhere near 8-10 hours and has an abrupt ending for a game which has such an interesting story.
The game takes place on the fantasy and science fiction world of Ma’abtik, a world which was plunged into a dark age after the collapse of the galaxy spanning Astral Empire. When a vast army that claims to be descended from the Empire appears and begins laying waste to everything in its path, a princess named Tahira finds herself in command of the remnants of her kingdom. You play as Tahira as she transforms from a prodigal daughter to an exceptional leader. With such tight writing it was a little disappointing that the end of the first Part was such a cliffhanger, when a neat little bow would have been nice to wrap it up. A problem I have always had with episodic games in general.
