The nasal greenhorn strategy gamer understands "strategy" to be about mastery of space by means of clanging offensives, shining shieldwalls, and brute attrition, but the true Napoleon of Drag-Select knows that strategy is always, primarily, the mastery of time. I don't think Napoleon would have approved of Ex Sanguis. He would not have liked all the willowy clone women made out of congealed blood and pincers. He would have suspected them of being divorcees and Babouvists. But perhaps he would have appreciated the game's fixation with seizing the initiative.
As with Lightbulb's previous grid-based tactics RPG Othercide, Ex Sanguis has you going up against dozens of vaguely eschatological bladespawn with just the three austere and menacing bladegirls. There are generally a half-dozen foes to start with, and reinforcements soon hatch from gross eggsacs around the map. You can't simply overwhelm your opponents, then. Instead, you must pre-empt and interrupt them, anticipating their advance and dancing your best moves in first on the game's fluctuating timeline.
Some abilities are performed instantly, while others trigger after a delay. However initially inconvenient, the delays soon become an asset, as you learn to aim your artillery strikes where you know your enemies will be, a few score ticks from now. Other abilities trigger when an opponent acts, cutting them off. Or when a friendly deals some damage, adding a follow-up attack. A key question is whether to exhaust your regular action points and dip into your Burst bar, which lets you sneak in some extra licks at the cost of wildly postponing the character's next turn.
And then there's repositioning: you get shoves, gravity pulses, and driving kicks that punt opponents around. This allows you to knock delayed enemy attacks off target, perhaps slamming the noxious seraphim into a boulder, or nudging them into the path of the AOE move you've just queued up with the previous character. As you preview these gambits, the character portraits and action indicators shuffle to and fro on the timeline. On higher difficulties, it's vitally important to avoid a scenario where the whole opposing force can take a turn, one after the other.
When I played Othercide, I didn't quite clock how much Lightbulb's approach has in common with Into The Breach. The resemblance feels a bit more prominent in Ex Sanguis. There's no fixed match countdown, true, but you're encouraged to finish fast: the angelbeasts are only going to get more numerous, and you generally aren't required to slaughter all of them - just a surgeon's handful of VIPs or a single enemy map fixture, sulking to the rear.
It's a messier experience than you'll find in Subset's game, however. The environments are full of blood blisters that blow up when struck, launching nearby characters a few squares. On more crowded maps, a single volatile pustule often triggers a prolonged cascade. The AI in the early access build seems overfond of setting the blisters off, in addition to controlling terrain. Some times, it's hellbent on swarming you; at others, it tries to lock down big portions of the map by preparing a delayed AOE move, wherever it finds itself.
The greater emphasis on terrain damage is one thing that distinguishes the early access version of Ex Sanguis from what I remember of Othercide. The other, more obvious point of departure is that Ex Sanguis has a trimmer roguelike structure, with more focussed progression.
On which note, here's my best effort at explaining the story: some kind of pesky vampire moon has leeched away the world's vital fluids and memories, reducing all of Creation to an ivory placeholder. You are the Mater, a goddess replete with the simmering intensity of Derek Zoolander. She can spawn duplicates of herself to fight the moon's minions. So far, it's very much the previous game's gothic mommy monster mash on fast-forward – all pout and glare and cod Latin metaphors, without much coherence but with a lot of enjoyable attitude.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/stylised-xcom-like-tactics-game-ex-sanguis-straps-othercides-obsession-with-timelines-to-a-leaner-roguelike-campaign
