So I picked up
Time Break Chronicles in the latest steam sale. Short form, to crib what I put in a review, is it's like Siralim and Slay the Spire had a JRPG baby, that went on to get knocked up by Secret of Evermore's artistic direction and that popped out.
Node/path based decision making, JRPG style turn based fights largely hinging on your ability to mix and match stuff to break the enemy over your knee (though that's easier said than done with some of the bosses), town based metaprogression between individual runs, decently large (25, with 8 skills each, all of them with two levels of upgrades, and four potential relics/pieces of equipment that can vary pretty widely in effect) slate of characters with mostly-unique abilities already in game with more on the way (devteam's apparently aiming for an even hundo by the time they leave EA), aesthetics that are pretty campy, so on, so forth. Overall it has potential, least from the ten-ish hours I've sunk into playing already, which has unlocked/rescued all the available characters and beaten the last available boss once, but hasn't tried a second time in endless 1 because that last available boss is goddamn
terrifying and just about party wiped me the first time I fought it.
To give an idea of what party construction looks like, my current main team consists of:
The MC you can't get rid of (but has three forms they can swap between more or less on the fly, and can borrow skills from other unlocked characters; basically, they're not a burden
at all) that starts fights by resetting the turn progression of every enemy on the field (which anyone
can do, but the MC can do once per fight for free, with an upgraded ability on their main form), then busts out a party boosting power ballad and spends most of the rest of the fight spewing poison and -poison resist on everything via a boss relic. I'm using them as support, but they can tank or DPS just fine.
The ranger you more or less start with that stacks up tons of poison (that, in addition to just damage, also slows enemies and makes them less dodge-y) on top of doing significant AOE damage and mildly bonkers single target. They also have a doggo that bites things just in general but also whenever she shoots something.
A post-apoc raider that spends 35% of the time uncontrollable, but sets everything on fire with molotovs, busts out a shotgun (hits entire front enemy line and reduces their turn progression), and occasionally opens up with an AK. Mostly, though, they just chainsaw things in the face repeatedly for huge damage after they set everything on fire.
A lizardman genetic experimentation I stuck a boss relic on that redirects most of their defensive stats into raw HP. It doesn't do huge damage, but it has respectable single target with some poison and mild AoE. Mostly it just sits in front and is a huge sack of health to tank hits with. Lately, I've also given them a relic that lets them get blitzed on whisky on top of making their attacks deal extra damage based on lizardcritter's (gigantic) max HP.
A medieval blacksmith that mostly just boosts up the ranger (or raider) a bit and lets them go hog wild. They're slow, but tanky enough and gives fairly significant damage boosts to my primary DPS, on top of dealing a bit of stun if necessary and being able to provide pinch defensive buffs.
And finally a plague doctor I'm trying for my main healer (I
was using a priestess that gave one critter a 20% attribute boost and then spammed free healing spells the rest of a fight). They, uh. They infect my entire party (and eventually the enemy's) with what's apparently the black plague, then provides a party wide buff that massively reduces poison damage and causes them all to heal a percent of their max HP per stack of plague. Also got some nasty individual debuffs and a bit of clutch healing/status cleanse/revive going on.
They win fights by stacking fire and poison on everything and then hitting it until it dies. It's going pretty well
E: Oh, and everyone except the ranger who already has a doggo has a boss relic that gives them a pet giant spider that bites for poison damage (i.e. my aoe poison res debuff the MC is throwing around boosts their damage) and bites progressively harder the more they bite. It's probably not pleasant for an arachnophobe, but damn if it isn't effective.