"Fight, fail, and rise again." This is the motto of Othercide, and they are to be commended for staying true to it. Not just committed to the theme of desperate warfare that fuels the darkness, Othercide mixes turn-based tactical combat with the repetition and gradualism of a roguelike; it takes the threat of losing your best soldiers from XCOM and makes sure it's a threat. If you lose, you try again.

You are a Mother, an Eldritch fighting Suffering with a capital S, using resurrected soldiers called Daughters to protect the Child. Many other extremely capitalized nouns also appear. This style of writing is not usually my favorite, but this exaggeration and abstraction suits "The Other Side" well. What matters is atmosphere, and this game is full of it.

The doom and gloom is not limited to the striking black and white visuals. Every system in the game is utilized toward this sense of hopelessness. Take recovery, for example. The only way for one of the daughters to regain her strength is to sacrifice a daughter of the same level or higher. To make matters worse, some of the most powerful abilities consume health to activate. This means that no matter what mistakes you make or what damage you take, sooner or later you will lose your star performer. There is no attachment to soldiers here, especially given the lack of cosmetic customization. Instead, they will see their daughters as resources to be gently fed into the meat grinder of an eternal war.

How does the game get away with being so deadly? Because, as mentioned earlier, the game is also a roguelike: each run (or "recollection") of Othercide consists of a series of turn-based battles against waves of monsters, culminating in a climactic boss battle. If you lose the boss battle, run out of troops, or decide you've had enough, you have to start the loop again, but this time you get a number of powerful boosts and "recollections" that can improve your entire team. Early on I got one that increased the strength of all my daughters by 30%. The other is one that brings back dead daughters (including those from the previous game) for free. These bonuses are bigger, meatier, and make retrying much easier.

So the idea is to use these boosts to reduce repetition, but it only partially works. After the first playthrough, I had a good understanding of the game and the routine "hunt" missions that make up the majority of the cycle became easier, but the first boss still seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. To be honest, for the majority of my playthrough (anywhere from the second to the tenth hour), I was constantly going back and forth between the boring main missions and the impossible boss fights. But every time I wanted to quit, I learned a new trick-a seemingly overlooked new system-that gave me an edge. Eventually, I discovered how to use "memory," a small boost to individual abilities, to up the damage of ranged attacks and slowly chip away at the hit points of the beastly bosses without suffering a devastating counterattack.

The combat system itself is a fun puzzle, mostly manipulating the initiative tracker that constantly appears at the bottom of the screen. Both shipgirls and monsters have the ability to manipulate initiative. Certain attacks can push enemies further down the initiative order, and large, powerful abilities often have a delay that takes several ticks to activate.

Let me give you an example: one of my daughters, Douce, is being targeted by an enemy curse healer with a delayed attack called Massive Shot, which fires at initiative 30. If Douce had a turn before 30, she could simply move out of range, but she doesn't move until 50. So instead, she moves up the melody of the Blademaster (a close DPS class) and fires at 25. Melody could have killed the therapist with a single blow using her delayed attack, "Dwelling Blade," but that doesn't activate until step 50, so she opted instead for a simple attack that takes effect instantly. Unfortunately, the damage is not that great, so we have to attack several times.

That's where another mechanism comes in. If only 50 action points are spent, Melody can attack again with 50 ticks. However, she must wait 100 ticks for the amount she has used up. In effect, she has skipped one turn and is now taking more action. This seems like a lot to grasp, but once you get the hang of it, it is quite intuitive, and figuring out how to save a unit from ruin is as interesting as playing chess.

I think Othercide divides people. When you beat a boss over and over again, it is easy to feel like you are doing busy work for little progress. I had a much lower opinion of the game when I couldn't beat the first boss, but when I finally broke through I had a great sense of accomplishment, and the reminiscence allowed me to skip that boss and start my daughters at a higher level, completely avoiding the torment that had plagued me. Whether or not Othercide is for you will depend on whether you have the patience for roguelikes where you spend eight hours feeling like you're not making any progress before suddenly breaking through. I was surprised when I discovered it, but as it turns out, I was.