Originally published September 2015

Water cascading down into a still pool echoes in your ears. A cacophony of serene nature singing in the great hall in which you reside, drowning out the thoughts and demands that accompany your role. Your throne, your prison. A land at your whim. An army at your command. A war at your doorstep. Your subjects beg for your assistance as the corruption pours in from the outer lands. Grotesque watercolor creatures threaten your dominion. Where do your priorities lie? Where do you send your soldiers to defend the land? Who will you choose to serve as regents? These questions and more will continuously be asked as you reign the land with your Massive Chalice.

Oh Double Fine, you rare instance of contemporary creativity wrapped up in the collective wrapper of a development studio! I won't say that I love everything that Tim Schaffer and the other creative minds working at his pet project development studio do. Nor will I say that any project they put on Kickstarter should be backed immediately, as they've proven that mo money = mo problems for them with how Broken Age has turned out.

I will say, however, that I respect the company and the individuals that make up Double Fine for putting out something creative and interesting each year, whether it be truly innovative or not. Unlike what we commonly see from game development studios and publishers that are constantly using the same tired franchises and ideas over and over, DF seems more interested in developing new IPs that are as different as possible from the last release.

Enter Massive Chalice, the new turn-based strategy game by the San Francisco-based studio. Turn-based strategy you say? Is it like it's XCOM: Enemy Unknown? Yes. In some ways, it is the same game. Review over.

Oh, you want to know more? Well... read on.

I've been a big fan of the strategy genre over the years. I started as a fan of real-time strategy games like Warcraft and Starcraft and over time my interest has shifted to turn-based strategy games. My affection has only been compounded, of course, after playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I saw video footage of Massive Chalice on Gianbomb.com and immediately saw the similarities. Thus, wanted to give it a shot, and sure enough, the main combat of the game is nearly identical at its core. However, there are a number of different things about it that set Massive Chalice apart from XCOM, and not all of them in a good way.

Story

I'm not too far into the game's progression, so some of the details of the story are a little foggy; the game also tends to be a little vague with some of its story elements. The gist of it: you're the ruler of a land that is surrounded by a poisonous corruption known as the Cadence and it's your job to rule over the people by divvying up resources and providing protection with the help of the elite warriors from the royal bloodlines of the land--don't get too many ideas about what all of this entails though, as my description makes it sound like there is a lot more involved than there actually is. In terms of story, I have yet to come across anything substantial beyond the tutorial for now.

What I do know is that there is an endpoint to the game established early on and you know (more or less) when you're going to reach it. The interesting thing about the story is the titular object. There are tons of questions that are immediately raised about the massive chalice, but so far they have gone unanswered. What you do learn quickly is that it's a powerful magical object and that for some reason it has two distinct personalities trapped within it. These personalities talk to you and provide advice for you as the ruler. They give other vague details about the situation, how you came to be a ruler, why you're immortal, and what the Cadence is, but it doesn't really get into much detail about anything. I can only assume many questions that Massive Chalice raises early on can and will be answered later, but the lack of information is a general problem I have with the game, which is not limited to just the story.

Regardless, you know that the titular object is magically imbued and that there is an endpoint to the game, mainly because it tells you that in 300 years the chalice will have built up the energy it needs to destroy the Cadence completely. So, as a ruler, all you have to do is protect the land until then. So at the very least, you have your motivation to get you through to the end.

Gameplay

The gameplay, like XCOM and Darkest Dungeon, is split up between two primary interfaces. One is the meta-game where you make resource and base-improving decisions at home, and the other is the core combat gameplay.

From the Throne

As I said, you are a ruler who must improve his land between attacks from the Cadence. This requires that you properly focus on upgrades, research, and nurturing the strengths of your warriors from the noble bloodlines. All of this takes time, years in fact. You can, of course, speed up the process of time until the next milestone in the timeline by clicking the fast-forward button. Once you hit a milestone, like the construction of a building or the completion of a research project, time goes back to normal speed for you to make your next decision.

Since the timeline to the game's endpoint is 300 years, you might be able to guess at this point that there is a rather important factor when it comes to the combat mechanics of the game. Unlike in XCOM, where your soldiers will only die on the battlefield, as years pass in Massive Chalice, your warriors die from old age. The veterans you may have found useful on the battlefield can no longer be used. Thus it is important to establish regents of different sections of your dominion who can then perpetuate their royal bloodline. Doing so allows your warriors to retire from combat and make babies who can then become future warriors as time passes.

Since these new warriors are the result of genetics and arranged marriages, Double Fine is taking a strong stance on the Nature vs Nurture argument of psychology by having the skill points and character traits of the parents passed down through the bloodline as well. While the chalice informs you that arranging the marriages should include some empathy on your part, there's no indication that trying to marry people based on any personality compatibility makes a difference. It is strictly a statistical choice. Considering the fact that you're pairing your male and female warriors with strong character traits and positive personality traits, as well as high fertility chances, I'm sure it won't take long for someone to fabricate some questionable subtext about creating a "superior" race. In terms of gameplay though, the main thing to realize is that if your warriors are of a certain class and have particular traits, be aware that their children and grandchildren will be a similar class with many of the same traits.

There are some positives and negatives about this system within the restrictions of the time mechanics. So to keep it quick, here's a list of pros and cons of this system:

Pros

If you have multiple families with high fertility, there will be no shortage of soldiers to use in 16 years, unlike XCOM
With the buffs each new generation gets you get some strong warriors pretty immediately

Cons

Even with a high fertility rate, the family will only produce one class of warrior, so you may not have much variety to your warriors or an excess of classes you don't prefer
If the Cadence attacks when you're waiting for warriors to come of age, and all your veterans have been retired, you're screwed and have to give up the regions under attack
If you only have one bloodline creating warriors at a time, you may run into trouble quickly down the road when the parents die of old age, (inbreeding is not approved)
Since you're expected to have strong warriors early on in the game, the enemies get strong quickly as well, so you can't afford to wait on your decisions or you'll soon find yourself in a very tough situation

A lot of these tips are learned through trial and error, and not specifically told to you early on, so be prepared to curse and lose a lot until you start making "smart" decisions. Even with the tutorial on, not much information is conveyed. The absence of information is made more apparent by how you can only research or build one thing at a time while at home. Each thing you have to research or build takes years to complete, so you don't really get to learn more in-depth details about the various options you have or their benefits without slowly trying everything. There are so many things to upgrade or build, however, I'm not convinced you'll ever be able to try everything by the time you reach the game's deadline. The conveyance of information is a flaw in Massive Chalice that is consistent in more ways than just the meta-strategy.

Combat

Once again, the primary combat gameplay is almost identical to XCOM. You have 5 units to command in battle, each can move a certain distance and attack once per turn. If you move a short distance, you can still attack, but if you send your unit too far, they cannot attack afterward. When they attack, there's a little percentage on the screen to tell you your chances of hitting and the possible damage output. Once all of your units have spent their turns, the Cadence creatures move around and attack until it's your turn again.

Where it differs is in the little things, which can pile up into big things. There's no cover for most units, so positioning your guys behind objects is usually less advantageous than you might expect. Positioning your units next to environmental objects, instead of sending them out in the open, can cut off their vision, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. Your guys can attack if they move two times, but doing so means you don't really get to choose the exact path of your fighter, which can also leave them vulnerable. The terrain can change on the fly and suddenly leave your soldier shrouded in the fog of war, again vulnerable, and unable to see the enemies that were right in front of them.

If it sounds like I'm playing it up that you guys are at a bit of a disadvantage, it's only because the game does not seem to lean in your favor much when it comes to the combat. XCOM EU is a hard game, but cautious and calculated tactics can still overturn some difficult circumstances because the game tends to only feel unfair when you've made poor choices and have to live with them. I won't say that XCOM is the most balanced game, as later missions and the overall progression of the game can leave you in situations where resistance is futile and there were plenty of instances where I felt like the odds went far against my favor. Yet, on the battlefield, it still felt a little more balanced than Massive Chalice.

I have had so many soldiers die due to the poor "dice rolls." Just in the battle featured in these images, I had all 5 of my soldiers miss an attack on a single enemy 3 times in a row. Bad dice rolls are common with this type of game, but it becomes more of a problem when the odds already feel stacked against the warriors. The first couple of skirmishes do very little to prepare you for the 3rd or 4th where they introduce larger enemies and decide to throw more than 20 of them at you in a single battle. You can only have 5 soldiers on the battlefield, and they aren't that strong, especially against some of the creatures the Cadence has at its disposal. If it only takes two, or even just one creature to put down one of your veterans in a single turn, it can get a bit frustrating when you're so completely outnumbered. It's not like this didn't happen in other strategy games I've played, but they usually wait a little longer in the game before they throw 4 times as many enemies at you. The overwhelming numbers of enemies and the consistently bad dice rolls for your soldiers to connect their attacks can lead to some hair-pulling moments.

Despite the headaches Massive Chalice can induce, the combat can still be just as satisfying as its competitors and there is an impressive amount of creativity involved in the combat. While on the surface there are only 3 classes, there are several versions of each type of class along with their subsequent skill trees that make them very unique in their use and strategy. There's quite a variety here and the abilities both your units and the enemies use are rather interesting.

Of the units I've gotten so far, there are Hunter types that can use stealth to explore the area and act as snipers with their long-range crossbow. They also happen to do probably the least damage of all the units you have. I tend to prefer having them because they can use stealth and remain invisible to the enemy indefinitely, so long as they aren't touched.

There are the Alchemist types which have long claws for melee attacks that double as a launcher for their chemical vial grenades. These guys can do the most damage with their grenades, but their accuracy is often an issue. Not to mention, they have a tendency to cause friendly fire damage, given the opportunity. They have their uses but if they run out of vials, their use is significantly diminished.

Then there are the Caberjack types. They carry a battering ram weapon and are the close-range melee types. They do the most damage up close, but it doesn't take long for that trait to become less appealing. There are a lot of creatures in the Cadence that can explode at close range and cause poisonous damage on top of their initial explosion. Since you'll have to face about 500 at a time in a battle, taking them out from afar is preferred.

As I mentioned, there are different versions of each of these types and I have yet to explore any of them in much detail or see how their skill trees change their dynamics. Likewise, I have not encountered too many of the cadence creatures, but what I've seen so far tells me it's only going to get harder.

Presentation

The presentation of Massive Chalice is rather interesting. For one thing, the music is fantastic and certainly not what you would expect. It's subdued and melancholic with the piano and violin being the stars of the songs. In some ways, it feels like Hans Zimmer's softer contemporary tracks mixed with the melancholy of Chopin. You never stop hearing the music in Massive Chalice. From the main screen, through the menus to the battlefield, the songs are playing and interweaving with one another. Even in the midst of battle with the drums adding to the intensity of the songs, it still maintains a somber sadness to its tone.

Which is surprising, considering the fact that the writing is still the comical style of Double Fine. The voices of the chalice are frequently cracking jokes or at least acting like comic relief in some way while the almost-depressing music is playing in the background. It's a rather harsh clash with the tone of the game's presentation. Perhaps they were trying to have some playful juxtaposition, but it actually is a little off-putting and confusing. This is mainly because the chalice voices also get serious and when they do, it adds to the dire nature of the situation. It works really well. Then they start getting goofy and it gets a little confusing.

The physical presentation is also a little confusing, though creative. It kind of looks like a mixture of construction paper cut-outs and clay animation. The people and the land have very sharp angles to their features and designs. They look like they were pieces of paper that were cut and glued to a mold. Meanwhile, the creatures are more round in their features with a lot of their colors and designs merging and melding with one another. There's probably some symbolism you could dig out of all that. Yet, even without it, I like the look of the game for its somewhat unique style. There is a bit of a problem though with the presentation though, and I've been hinting at it the whole time.

The Big Problem

Massive Chalice runs into some big issues that can really be traced back to the core problem: it doesn't tell you enough. If you understood more before going into battle, you'd be better prepared. If you knew what the various genetic traits meant when you were choosing a regent instead of having to look it all up separately on a character sheet, you'd be better prepared. If you knew what any of the random status effects you get in battle meant, you'd be better prepared, and so on.

The game just has a problem with telling you the information you need to know, or would like to at the very least. In one instance of playing Massive Chalice, I encountered a new enemy for the first time. The chalice told me the name of the creature-type but stopped there. I then tried to kill it with my guys, not knowing that it did devastating long-range damage and that it would suddenly armor up immediately after being struck. While its armor was up, even the biggest explosion wouldn't do more than a single point of damage. Wasting the turn of my other soldiers. When I finally killed it, after it had killed one of my men, I found another. The chalice THEN decided to tell me what its abilities were and strategies to employ. If you're going to tell me, then tell me. Don't wait till my soldiers die before sharing information I should know from the start. It's not that I need the game to tell me, because I was able to formulate my strategy on my own through experimentation with the first one. It was the fact that it waited to tell me the now useless battle intelligence. Thanks for your help!

The user interface does no better in terms of conveying information when it is needed. I would like to be able to find out the impact of nearsightedness and asthma on my soldiers when choosing a regent and their mate so that I have a better idea of the severity of the traits that are being passed down through generations. This could be done with tooltips or popup bubbles defining the traits, but instead it’s all buried in the character sheet. The traits themselves don't show their statistical impact on the character's details either, so you have to do some mental math.

Another thing that would be handy is to be able to see what the various classes are and what their titles actually mean when the game is telling me this particular bloodline I've chosen is only going to produce this type of soldier. Thanks for letting me know that they'll produce Brewtalist soldiers. What does that mean? The answer to that question can only be achieved by going into combat with them and finding out the hard way.

In games like Dark Souls and Rogue-Likes, the hard way is the expected way. However, you know the stakes and you know not to invest much time or effort into a situation when you don't know the details of your challenge. Encountering a new creature or area in these games and losing against them is a loss of a few minutes and is somewhat expected. In games like Massive Chalice, you want the information up front so you can avoid the loss because the amount invested is much greater. I don't want to have to lose 5 good soldiers in a region in a skirmish just because I had never encountered a particular enemy type before and the game is unwilling to give me the information I need to better prepare my troops.

Closing Thoughts

Massive Chalice is an interesting and rather fun game with some fundamental flaws. While not necessarily innovative in its design, there is some genuine creativity on display. And even though it can be incredibly frustrating with how little conveyance the game is willing to provide, once I've learned all the harsh lessons, I may warm up to it a bit.

Massive Chalice - Initial Impressions

Story

Gameplay

From the Throne

Pros

Cons

Combat

Presentation

The Big Problem

Closing Thoughts

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