Games worth discovering

The best demo yet. Prime of Flames

4K View2023-06-22

Prime of Flames.

Platform: Steam, Mobile.

Price: $10 USD (PC) - TBA (Mobile)

Note this is a review for the mobile version which is only the demo.

Okay let me start this off with a bit sad part, unlike for the review on Dwerve I could not find much info on PoF outside of its steam page (here) and it’s TapTap page: So we are going to have to describe the book by its title, unless you want me to talk about some Instagram named Rayka Studio which seems to be a modelling company. (I won’t.)

PoF is advertised as a “Wargame mixed with Roguelike,” I looked it up for you if you are confused, wargame just means strategy game in this context. The games offer the normal bells and whistles of fantasy games, magic, being able to make a party from three different unique factions, and of course the extra creativity that Turnbased games can sometimes offer.

The game currently sits at Very Positive, 9/10 ratings on steam out of 757 Reviews, I have also found reddit posts praising the game…

So honestly, here, the only question is, does the mobile version live up to the hype?

The Basics.

After a tutorial that does not explain the game enough, you are thrown into the game. Now I will give credit where it is due on the tutorial, this is the first demo of this even that did not have an overbearing tutorial, it gave the basics and an option to skip, overall the tutorial is pretty good… but it just doesn’t explain everything, I won’t be nitpicky though, as even Triple A turn based games like Xcom don’t have tutorials for everything, and most, if not all, of the stuff not covered in the tutorial is clan specific.

With the tutorial out of the way, first let us talk about the controls, the controls work, it is a bit confusing at start, but they work. The confirm button being, “End,” is confusing at first, but you’ll get used to it, my only gripe is that there is no option for a double tap to confirm move but I can understand why that isn’t in the game.

And lastly for the basics, the deployment phase, I was thinking of putting this in gameplay, but there is no confirm button for deploy, which is.. Painful; However, it is only a minor nuisance as you can just hit restart.

Now that we have all that wrapped up, let us move.

Gameplay.

Now that we are out of tutorial and starting the game we will see a faction (or clans) selection screen along with difficulties, before go into how gameplay works in this game let us cover both, as PoF’s meat and potatoes comes from its unique clans and of course, its difficulty.

Firstly, the game is broken into three difficulties, Travel, Challenge, and Conquest. These difficulties more resemble modes then they do difficulties, for example, when playing on Travel you do not even have a chance to find rare items, Challenging will bump this up to a 5% chance and even give the enemies skills to make them more unique, then Conquest introduces temp death for characters and legendary items, while also bumping up the chance to find rare items. There is no reason to play Travel as the game, at least in the demo, feels extremely easy on Travel as it limits the features of the game, you will have no use for healing fountains (At least from what I have seen in the demo) as characters can not be killed and need healing, I would suggest at least playing on Challenging for the enemy traits, but the true experience is on Conquest.

Before we move onto the clans I should probably mention the combat gameplay. The combat is what you would expect from a Turn based game, you and the enemy take turns until one side defeats the other. In terms of combat PoF does not try to reinvent the wheel; however, it does one thing unique. PoF blends manual skills with combat, though hard to understand in some areas due to the translation and the minor annoyance of some status effects only having an explanation in combat, this still leads to the game offering a pretty fresh feeling of turn based combat. I will explain some extra abilities in the clans segment as the combat is heavily linked to clans.

Before we go to clans though, I would like to mention my favourite feature from combat, the bees, they are realistic, they die after they attack or retaliate once, leading to some satisfying stages that are just all bees. You win without even attacking.

With that sorted, now we can move onto the clans, Ninelie, Everknight, and Stri.. Bronion. All three clans offer different gameplay experience, as such I will be breaking this section into three parts to explain each clan in a simple way.

In order of difficulty, we start with NInelie, Ninelie is my least favourite clan of the three as its gameplay is rather basic. Ninelie mostly relies on summoning enemies, backstabbing, and healing, rather basic in the grand scheme. While the faction does have some cool abilities like beast taming, it is just basic from what can be seen in the demo.

Bronion is the Clan that starts adding a lot to the game, their guards are strippers, yes you heard this wolf right, did you I get your attention with this clan? Their scouts place bombs, one can even push her bombs, and their warriors have complicated skills. Their gameplay can feel basic if you don’t read the abilities but they were rather fun as they also offer some of the best rangers in my opinion, I would definitely recommend trying the faction, but it wasn’t really my favourite, I could easily see this clan being good in the full, but in the demo this clan is pretty fun to play.

Everknight, now this is my favourite clan. They have a lot of unique abilities, their warriors have alternate forms, their archers have the power of the wind, their guards can crowd control, and their priests can inflict debuffs. Everknight offers a lot of unique gameplay with a lot of skills to manage even before levelling up characters, I can see that they may have a fall off point eventually in the full game, but in the demo they feel great. If you do not mind playing a faction that needs a little bit of extra thinking and planning, you should definitely try them.

Now for the roguelike element, the demo is broken into 3 maps called, “Acts,” each Act is a road with wells, merchants, chefs, combat encounters, and more that leads to a boss. Despite being a demo, there are still a lot of random elements that are switched up each run, making this the first demo of this event to offer hours of content. Yes you heard me right, a demo offering a lot of hours of content. The only game I can compare this path system to is Legends of Runeterra’s Path of Champions mode. You are not locked into one path after choosing it, but this does not make the game any easier. The bosses and elite encounters are almost designed with this in mind, feeling a lot more difficult if you don’t go back and at least check that shop you just ran past, or if you don’t go back to that well if you are playing on Conquest.

What is especially good about this is that in the demo you are not punished too hardly for losing a party in Conquest unless you are at Act 3, as you can quickly just pick up some mercenaries, they wont be as leveled as your last team, but they act as a good buffer. This might be different in the main game, but this is a review for the demo after all.

Overall I would give the demos gameplay a solid 4.9+0.1/5 due to my aversion of the number 5. The gameplay is solid and definitely makes me look forward to the full game, the content provided is also very generous. The only real issues I saw were with the translation and some skill descriptions only being viewable in-combat

Graphics.

The graphics style is pretty good, the more rugged is a bit hard to get used to but fits the story, the level design is a bit dull in Act 1, but it improves in Act 2. The characters look rather good, it's off how all Player clan characters are female but that's just a nitpick and doesn't change anything.

The UI design is simplistic and it fits, overall I like the simple water colour astehic

Not much I can say for once, so, 4/5

Overview.

Prime of Flames is a pretty good game is good, I would highly recommend it if you have pateince and enjoy turnbased games. The skill descriptions are a bit rough, but it's easy to get used to. I will probably try the game when it releases and give it a more proper review then, a solid 4+1/5. I didn't mention it before but the music is also lovely, which raises it to a 4.5+.5/5