The other day a full demo for the upcoming roguelike RPG Mistover released. You can see my post on the time trial demo here, to learn about the combat and exploration mechanics.
Doomsday Clock
This demo takes place at the start of the game. You’ve lost yourself in the mists and have no recollection of why you are there. After being rescued you become enlisted in the expedition corps. Those who are tasked with exploring the Pillar of Despair’s mist. A few years ago monsters came from there and nearly destroyed the world. Eventually it ceased but people were concerned that the monsters would come again and set out to explore it. Learning that it took you to various worlds of different dimensions.
The Doomsday Clock signifies the time until the end of the world. Depending on your performance on your expeditions the clock may move forward, stay still or even reverse. This depends on how many monsters are left, chests you opened and light flowers you touched. Plus some other factors. So my first expedition pushed it forward, but my last one was thorough enough to move it back. This prevents you from taking extra expeditions to grind, or becoming a coward.
There are three difficulty options, which also change how much the clock moves and how often your formation is moved by ambush attacks. As the clock mechanic is a concern to me I stuck with Normal.
Requests
Before you set off on an expedition you will be given a request or two. These are tied to specific dungeons and could be to find certain items, or beat a number of particular enemies. Each week a new dungeon will open in each area. For the demo you have two in the Misty Forest. When selecting dungeons you can see the possible rewards you can pick up and which quests you have to complete in them.
Combat Mechanics
Some more combat mechanics shown in this demo are the co-op skills. After a recruit has reached a certain level they can gain a new skill that they can use only if a particular unit is in the right formation with them. Most of the ones I unlocked required having the paladin in front of them.
Returning from a trip in the mists, your units may pick up jinxes. These are permanent status boosts or debuffs based on certain factors. Such as my Sister now has increased performance when at the back but if my team is under 25% fullness my Shadow Blade’s HIT stat decreases due to anxiety.
When you should be dead but are still in combat you can call an SOS on your turn. This will give your turn to someone else. You can’t choose who it is but very luckily for me it happened to be my healer.
Arta
Your home base is the small kingdom of Arta. With plenty to do in between expeditions. First you must recruit units to bring with you. There are different classes but new units will start with other skills. Such as when my Grim Reaper Shorty died in the first mission I hired a new one. Thusly naming her Shorty 2 I saw that she had different abilities.
There is also the shop where you can buy lovely uncontaminated supplies. Selling items is also possible. There is a storage facility as you can only have so many things in your bag at once. This can also become full.
Items can be fused together at the Alchemy workshop. These are the the equip items that you can find when exploring. In order to fuse or evaluate them you also need to use water and orbs you collected from those areas. Which can also be acquired from the disassembly of equipment you don’t use. Other items you may pick up are various journals. These are used at the support lab to expand you bag space or how maximum fullness and so on.
The training camp is where you can level up unit’s skills by paying money. This is also how you can modify jinxes. So by spending a good bit of coin and some purified mist you might turn a problem into a boost.
Will you save the day?
The game has more mechanics than I was expecting from the time trial demo. I found I had trouble putting down the previous demo and have since decided that I will be picking it up on launch. You can try out the demo for yourself, and the full game is currently available to pre-order with ten percent off.