Deified: no mana, no action points, no cooldowns, and 96 per cent of players convinced

There is a line in Deified's description that ought to be framed in every tactics studio: no mana, no action points, no cooldowns.

Translation: you are powerful every turn, and the game rewards your decisions rather than your patience.

What that changes

Most turn-based tactics games build their difficulty on scarcity: not enough mana, not enough action points, an ability on cooldown at the wrong moment.

That is comfortable for a designer and often frustrating for a player, because you lose by waiting rather than by being wrong.

Deified removes those brakes. Your resources are available every turn, so the question is no longer when to act, but how. All the difficulty shifts towards building and positioning, which is considerably more interesting.

Relics and their slots

This is the central system, and it is elegant.

You explore, you discover relics with unique powers, and you trigger synergies by collecting those of the same type.

You restore artefacts by assembling multiple identical fragments to enhance them, which gives you a reason to keep searching beyond the first copy found.

And here is the constraint that makes it work: relics need slots, and each slot grants a bonus and a drawback.

In other words you are not only choosing what to equip, but at what price. A powerful slot imposes a weakness, and it is your strategy that has to absorb it.

That is rare, and it is exactly what stops this kind of game reducing to stacking the best.

The rest of the structure

Seven bosses to beat, each with a unique curse that turns your plans upside down.

Skill trees to refine your approach between runs, and new rooms to unlock to widen your options each attempt.

The setting is Wagnerian without being heavy: the Lords corrupted the Gold of the Rhine to craft relics of unmatched power and eternal curses, and you play Sator, determined to confront them and return the Gold to his people.

What it is worth

The game has been in early access since 27 April, at 14.99 euros, developed by Unexpected and published by Goblinz Publishing, and shows 266 positive reviews out of 276.

That is 96 per cent. One of the best ratios I have seen this year, and on a sample large enough to mean something.

Version 1.0 arrives today, cleanly closing a five-month early access.

My reservation concerns longevity, as with every roguelite. Seven bosses and a synergy system can hold for thirty hours or three hundred, depending on the real depth of the combinations between relics. The fact that every slot imposes a drawback is a good sign on that front: it is the kind of constraint that produces different builds rather than optimal ones.

For fifteen euros, from a publisher that knows the genre well, it is a safe bet.

What is the worst slot you accepted for a good relic? We compare compromises on the InsertCoins Discord.