Over the past few years, the Turn-based Tactical Strategy genre has seen a resurgence. Between Triangle Strategy, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem Engage, Tactics Ogre: Reborn, and other recent releases, fans of the long-dormant genre have had a lot to enjoy. Redemption Reapers is a darker take on the concept from developer Adglobe that tries to go back to the difficult roots of early tactical strategy titles.

Redemption Reapers puts you in the role of Sarah and the Ashen Hawk Brigade, a once-reviled (for some reason) band of mercenaries who are the last line of defense against the monstrous Mort. The Mort are a horde of creatures that seek to snuff out all life they come across. Instead of a sprawling army that grows as you play, you’ll be limited to only five characters.

As you play through each tactics-based level, each time a character kills an enemy they’ll gain XP. Additionally, at the end of the battle depending on your performance you’ll get shared XP that you can distribute freely. This is similar to a mechanic in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, which happen to be two of my favorites. However, Redemption Reapers lacks some quality-of-life additions that make it a slog to get through.

Firstly, there is a single difficulty and I would only recommend it for die-hard, hardcore Fire Emblem fans who always play with permadeath on and never play on a difficulty below hard. Redemption Reapers doesn’t have permadeath, but the number of enemies it throws at you is obscene. Not only that, but if a character dies early in a level, they lose any opportunity for XP for the rest of the fight.

To make matters worse, each character can only heal themselves one time with a Spirit Draught unless they touch a Spirit Vein. Veins are spread around the map, but there are usually only one or two per map, so if more than two of your characters take a ton of damage, you have to either be very careful or just use them as cannon fodder. The ability to make money is very limited, but you almost have to scour every map for any item you can find, because you’ll need every bit of gold you can get.

Weapons have durability and after a while the repairs get expensive. This doesn’t even take weapon upgrading into account, which requires money and crafting materials that you find in various maps. Only having five characters also really limits your strategic options, since as you progress they throw more and more enemies at you, and they get stronger as the levels progress.

I wish I could say the story made up for it, but the characters and environments are all gray and lifeless. It fits what little story there is, but they throw you in the middle of the conflict after the Mort has been a problem for what seems to be a while. The characters have no chemistry with each other and there is very little plot other than “the mort are killing everyone.”

Why are they killing everyone? Where did they come from? Who are the characters we’re playing aside from being a part of some band of mercenaries that seem to have a bad reputation? What little bright side exists to Redemption Reapers is that the character models themselves are great. The cutscenes are pretty, even though all you really see are desolate environments and bloody combat.

I really wanted to like Redemption Reapers, but for a 50-dollar price tag, I absolutely can’t recommend it at all. Even if you’re a die-hard Fire Emblem fan, or you just feel masochistic, I’d wait for a sale. Between the shoddy plot, brutal gameplay, and gray, bland environments Redemption Reapers just isn’t worth your time.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Redemption Reapers was provided by Binary Haze Interactive for this review.

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Redemption Reapers

$49.99 USD

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Gorgeous Cutscenes
• Interesting Shared XP Mechanic
• Multiple Character Builds

Cons

• Limited Party Roster
• Harsh Difficulty
• Limited Healing
• Terrible Story/Character Development
• Gray, Lifeless Environments