We’ve had everything from soldiers to aliens to superheroes but one fanbase has been left wanting in tactics and strategy. Where oh where is the strategy game for black metal fans, aside from, maybe, Brutal Legend? Beast: False Prophet seeks to fill that gap in the market with brutal combat, an Eastern European setting, mechanics that push you to constantly murder and brutalize people, and also you get to turn into a brutal monster. That’s pretty brutal.
Somewhere in Carpathia, you’re escaping Tartar slave traders and trying to make your way back home…but when you get there, the king’s demented, there’s a plague going around, and those slave traders are pretty pissed you’ve been murdering them and all their friends and they also want to keep murdering you and your friends. There’s also the religious tensions of Islam versus Christianity, given the time period, and if you’re uncomfortable with that, well, now you know that.
Sporting a gridless tactical system, Beast: False Prophet seems like it’s going to be a fairly straight forward tactical strategy game with a little RPG flare, but adds a few elements to the mix. For one thing, you have a gun that’s also an axe, which is pretty metal. People also have bows, so there’s an element of ranged combat as well, but the game keeps pushing you to close and do brutal melee fatalities.
This can be where the Early Access nature of the game shows: some weapons aren’t flagged as blunt, for example, so your allies may brutally run through those danged Tartars with…a giant hammer. Granted, being impaled with a hammer would hurt, but it’s pretty clearly a bug. Likewise, the main character has a gun-axe and your party members frequently have flintlock pistols and you can fire them and frequently guards don’t alert, but they may alert on reloading, leading to the funny mental image of Mohammed ignoring the roar of gunfire but suddenly getting furious when he hears someone opening up the pouch with more bullets in it. Early Access: It be like that.
The gridless system is also early on: It is theoretically gridless, in that you don’t see a grid on the ground and you kind of can move anywhere, but it’s also pretty clear where it wants you to go, and sometimes you can’t move to that exact point for vague reasons. Positioning, unit facing, flanking, and range all play into combat as well, so…look, sometimes a grid would be nice is all I’m saying.
The brutal twist is your dude is literally a beast, a monster not just in metaphor, but literally. When you do enough brutal things on the battlefield like slaying friends and enemies (yeah, when your friends get injured, you can just kill them!), you turn into something like a werewolf with claws and teeth and the ability to teleport around and otherwise wreak havoc on the treacherous Tartars. You also bark and howl like Big Bad Brody King, which is kinda funny.
As you move through the world and battles, you’ll have allies. That’s when a pretty beefy RPG development system shows itself. There are ability trees allowing you to build out and tweak your dudes. You’ll get the idea pretty quick and it’s pretty apparent what everyone does based on their kit. The guy in heavy armor with a big sword and gun is probably gonna be good either charging into combat and beating the hell out of people or tanking. Likewise, the classes are pretty descriptive. The Scout is good at scouting. The Honor Guard is a beefy fighter type. You are…basically a fighter but also have a gun and when you lose your temper you see red and it’s go time and the bodies hit the floor bro HAHA. Stats cover things like Strength, dex, and stamina, skills cover the usual melee, ranged, athletic, etc, but also occultism. Oh yeah, it’s gonna get weird. Remember, you turn into a wolf monster.
This is one of those games that relishes in the grimdark atmosphere but the grimdark atmosphere can work against it. Like I get everything is grim and dark but sometimes it’s hard to see where the enemy units are. There is a key you can press to get a better read on the line of sight, who can see what, and where everything is. But that’s also pretty funny, like, “okay hang on, ease up on the atmosphere so I can figure out what the hell I’m looking at. Okay now put the corpse paint back on”
The game pretty clearly wants you doing sick medieval fatalities and melee combat and pushes you in that direction but you also have guns and bows. I found that the Classic Xcom Cheese Strat of “move everyone forward just enough to see the next group of dudes, pick some off with your snipers or archers or whatever, put everyone else in Overwatch, and let them rush you” worked pretty well. You do eventually run out of ammo, but I also didn’t see much of a downside to firing guns everywhere as often as possible. In this, medieval Europe is much like America, and God bless it. On the upside, when you do run out of ammo, you can turn into a werewolf and slaughter some guys.
As mentioned above, Beast is currently in Early Access and it has some bugs. There is a black metal soundtrack coming. Hardcore, Ironman, and Permadeath are distinct difficulty options. There are the usual Eastern European/Early Access janky translations (bandages are “canvas”, your character mumbles about holding the breath whole pulling the bowstring when he’s pulling the trigger on his gunaxe). I’m not sure what “loiter-sacking” is but apparently, it’s what you do when you try to read tutorials too long.
So if you like black metal and strategy games (I know, where’s the crossover there?) and don’t mind a little Early Access jank, the story is interesting, the combat is kinda fun, and you get to turn into a wolf and style on some dudes in brutal fashion. And if it’s not hard enough, you can make it Hardcore Ironman Permadeath. NOW THAT’S BRUTAL.
