Massive Chalice Review

Massive Success?

I think Tim Schaefer would be first to admit that some of Double Fine’s output of recent years has been a little bit mixed as they find their feet making smaller games. Does studio stalwart Brad Muir deliver here with this crowdfunded strategy game?

Storyline:

Massive Chalice certainly has the kind of bizarre story you’d expect from the studio – a giant speaking chalice and a fantasy land where a corrupting power, the Cadence, is invading. Regardless of whether you opt for the serious or funny script when playing (the game doesn’t take itself too seriously whichever option you go for), Massive Chalice is well written, but never goes quite as deep into the lore or background as it could do.

The game also doesn’t do a great job of conveying the urgency of your 300-year task, but story is (perhaps surprisingly) secondary here to the gameplay.

Gameplay:

If there is a game that Massive Chalice could be compared to, then it would be a fantasy XCom. There’s a grand strategy played out on the world map, where you spent your time dealing with random events and marrying off the members of your dynasty to give you a decent stream of heroes with which to find the Cadence. You’ll probably need a couple of games to finally get to grips with all the systems though, as Massive Chalice’s greatest flaw is the inability to tell you of what the consequences of your actions are, and a brief (and poor) tutorial doesn’t help matters.

In my first game, I found that after about 100 years, I’d managed to fumble my way into only producing children who would grow up as drunks, of a single hybrid class that was utterly useless in most combat situations. Oops. You also need to manage your research and buildings, and assign heroes to your buildings effectively, but it’s never really overwhelming to manage. The main issue is managing the turn-based strategy battles which make up the remaining portion of the game. When the Cadence attack, you can only defend a single region at a time, meaning that you will lose regions over the 300 years before the Chalice is charged up.

The turn-based strategy also has notes of XCom to it, but has the added complexity of trying to manage your destiny with it. This element is tough too, but you need to approach the game with a different mindset to other, similar titles. You will lose heroes to natural causes anyway, so as long as you have sufficient genetic stock, then victory is all that matters. But it’s not easy, as Massive Chalice tries to get you to care about your bloodlines, either because they will have been part of your vanguard for years, carry some important relic, or just have gained enough experience to have become bad-ass. Replacing them with another 15 year-old with terrible eyesight and limited movement as a result of all your inbreeding can be frustrating.

The maps are expansive, and the enemies often numerous, and packed with annoying abilities which can result in your party of 5 losing XP, getting older, or being teleported across the battlefield. It makes strategy tough, compounded by the fact that to succeed, you need to focus fire on small groups of enemies, which can prove almost impossible. There were battles I faced that either through enemy generation, or the state of my bloodlines at the time, were literally impossible, regardless of what strategies I tried. However, the variety of enemy types, and almost endless possibilities of your vanguard (despite, at heart, only being 3 character classes) do make for an enthralling mix of combat.