Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch | Review
The Lady, the Witch, the Undead, and a Lot of Death
You know, for the past couple of times that I have covered developer Ocean Drive Studio & publisher Kakao Games’ latest strategy role-playing game title ‘Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch’, it somehow missed me that this game was also a roguelite. Not that I mind, I love a good roguelite—heck, the industry is infatuated with the genre. And in Veil of the Witch’s case, it comes as a boon to the game’s progression and pacing, with caveats because of the way the game structures levels, some quality-of-life considerations missing, and visual gaffes.
In Viel of the Witch, players take on the role of either a male or female protagonist—in my case, I went with the latter, and her name is Ashe—as they wind up on the shores of a broken land with the best affliction anyone could ask for: amnesia! You also apparently died, too, which complicates things as you now find yourself bound to a witch of sorts who’s actively eating her own hair. As you and the few survivors remaining make it to the only town in close proximity for safety, your judgement is once again smacked at when you realise that all the boats off this island have been destroyed and that a lot of Imperial soldiers along with lots of abominations are wandering about the island and making a mess of things.
But Ashe has better things to do than dawdle, so we yank together a motley crew of skilled people and set off to explore the island in search of the veil that blankets the land. Dying a lot also comes with the territory, this being a roguelite and all—a genre where a player still progresses even when they’ve lost everything they’ve earned in a “run”.
Veil of the Witch is part exploration part strategy RPG. Progression is dictated by exploring the island across multiple stages to reach the end of an expedition: either by clearing said expedition or dying. During the exploration phase of an expedition, you’ll find relics and other trinkets to help your party gain much needed buffs, debuffs no one asked for, and new allies to join your cause—and some of these will require a dice roll, so enjoy your critical failures as they roll in. Completing an expedition is ideal, but you’ll likely die a bunch instead as missions become too stressful, you’re overwhelmed by foes, or just plain bad luck. All though, you do get quite a few chances to “undo” a failed run, but I’ll touch on that in a moment.
Right, so the strategy part. Players will command five units across a variety of simple maps to either route enemies present, clear specific objectives such as non-player character rescues or pilfering, and slash or escaping the map. Movement is dictated by a unit’s speed which in turn, allows them to move across the grid either in leaps or short hops. When you’re within range of an ally or an enemy, you can either heal, debuff, attack, whatever options are available to you based on your unit’s specialisation. In a game like this, positioning is important as being in the wrong place at the wrong time can often result in a controllable character’s untimely death—though it is worth noting that permadeath is not a function in this game, so feel free to die away! (I’m aware that wouldn’t work in a roguelite, but I’m simply too used to losing units in games like these).
The motley crew you start off with all have their specialisations: Ashe, Evie, Marco, Laurent, and Emile can win you your first expedition alone, but you’ll need to invest in your runs. There are ways to do that, such as obtaining those relics I mentioned, collecting special stones that allow you to enhance a character’s gear, finding new skills and magics to be able to use, and the like. When you inevitably die in your first couple of runs, you’ll lose just about everything you find including characters levels—but you will keep a couple of things, namely these little purple shards that can be used to light up a skill tree at your main base of operations. This skill tree allows players to gain stat enhancements right off the bat, which in turn maximises your survival potential.
As with any roguelite, dying is part of the equation: by being sent back to town, you can chat it up with your allies, find new ones based on clues found during your expeditions, continue stories for Ashe and the cast, and more importantly: get stronger.
Where Veil of the Witch kept me engaged the most was its cast and world. I haven’t played the previous ‘Lost Eidolons’ game, but the mythos presented here was interesting to catch up on. Plus, the voice cast does a great job with their back-and-forths and the writing never meanders too much over any particular topic. It’s a solid Young Adult fantasy scenario and I quite enjoyed learning about the Eidolons and the war that came before all this veiled island muckery. And per the roguelite formula, nothing activates my neurons more viscerally than activating new skills from all the skills I unlock and rewards I can collect post getting eaten alive by monsters and stabbed by Imperial scum.
The combat is good. There are variations to the formula I quite like, such as skills and magic usage being dictated by numbers of turns past rather than having to worry about a separate mana bar. Enemy weaknesses are determined by a simple weapon-against-armour system that you can always refer to at the bottom of the screen. And since units can carry two weapons, you’ll never find youself in too much of a pinch to land maximum damage against baddies. Larger enemies can be routed by striking them the right weapon type in a single turn, rewarding players with severe damage and a free stun that could keep them alive for just a little while longer. If you do die or make a mistake, you can undo a fight or an action up to a set limited times as well—which helps as the game does have its fair share of visibility issues.
Getting into position and tearing apart foes is good fun. There is also a decent amount of objective variety and even enemy infighting that you can take advantage of to win fights. My problems begin when the repetition kicks in, however. As you die, you’ll start right from the beginning. This means that you’ll begin to run into the same encounters you did in the past, which in itself is fine—the problem is that certain core mechanics, such as basic level design and additional routing functions like side and rear attacks missing do make combat feel like a chore at some point. There is also no auto-play feature either, which would’ve helped alleviate some of the boredom I felt in earlier stages of repeated runs.
To touch on levels for a moment, they’re not very interesting. There is no elevation to take advantage of, and the only environment bonuses come in the form of rivers, random bits of poison mist, and grass that can be lit up. And while they can be useful, a lot of the time I never really had to take advantage of those mechanics as I either got strong enough to plow through baddies and Marco and company lending adjacent unit bonuses which would help me destroy foes. Overall, outside of some neat moments, many levels began to blend in, and my tactics really weren’t being tested much til I could activate Trials, which increases the difficulty of runs. What also didn’t help were the poor visuals of the stages and world, where the dull greyness of western-themed fantasy worlds was met with poor textures and lighting, which in turn sometimes made me mistake friends for foe and vice versa. A stark contrast to the lovely character art, really.
(Ocean Drive Studio/Kakao Games)
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch is a solid roguelite strategy RPG. I think players will enjoy the roguelite mechanics and world mythos very much, but combat and level design leave a lot to be desired. Still, it’s not a bad experience—I am quick to drop a boring SRPG, but this one kept me engaged throughout the entirety of my playthrough. ∎
Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch
Played on
Windows 11 PC
PROS
- Unit potential can be quite broad!
- Decent encounter and objective variety.
- Lovely character art and good worldbuilding.
CONS
- Combat gets repetitive and levels are bland.
- Modern SRPG features missing.
- Ugly visuals which inhibit visibility.
