roguelite

One thing Shadowveil: Legend of the Five Rings does well is invoke terror. Not just the terror of an overwhelming mass of dark energy encroaching on your fortress, which is what the story suggests. Moreso, the terror of hoping your little computer-controlled fighters will do the smart thing, then being forced to watch, helpless, as they are consumed by algorithmic choices, bad luck, your strategies, or some combination of all three.

Shadowveil, the first video game based on the more than 30-year-old Legend of the Five Rings fantasy franchise, is a roguelite auto-battler. You pick your Crab Clan hero (berserker hammer-wielder or tactical support type), train up some soldiers, and assign all of them abilities, items, and buffs you earn as you go. When battle starts, you choose which hex to start your fighters on, double-check your load-outs, then click to start and watch what happens. You win and march on, or you lose and regroup at base camp, buying some upgrades with your last run’s goods.

In my impressions after roughly seven hours of playing, Shadowveil could do more to soften its learning curve, but it presents a mostly satisfying mix of overwhelming odds and achievement. What’s irksome now could get patched, and what’s already there is intriguing, especially for the price.

The hard-worn path to knowledge

Some necessary disclosure: Auto-battlers are not one of my go-to genres. Having responsibility for all the prep, but no control over what fighters will actually do when facing a glut of enemies, can feel punishing, unfair, and only sometimes motivating to try something different. Add that chaos and uncertainty to procedurally generated paths (like in Slay the Spire), and sometimes the defeats felt like my fault, sometimes the random number generator’s doing.

Losing is certainly anticipated in Shadowveil. The roguelite elements are the items and currencies you pick up from victories and carry back after defeat. With these, you can unlock new kinds of fighters, upgrade your squad members, and otherwise grease the skids for future runs. You’ll have to make tough choices here, as there are more than a half-dozen resources, some unique to each upgrade type, and some you might not pick up at all in any given run.