Over their fifteen year period in the video game industry, Double Fine Productions have brought us many games that we all remember fondly: Brütal Legend, Psychonauts, Stacking, Costume Quest, and more recently; Broken Age. When you look at the gameplay of these titles, you’ll notice they’re all quite different. Brütal Legend is a strange mix of real time strategy and action, Psychonauts is just a straight up action game, Costume Quest is like a light RPG, Stacking is a puzzle game, and Broken Age is a point and click adventure. It’s hard to think of many development teams that manage to pull off so many varied gameplay styles, and still manage to consistently create games we all love. And would you believe they’ve managed to do it again?
Massive Chalice–also stylized as MASSIVE CHALICE (see, because the text is massive)–is primarily a turn based strategy game, with elements of “Nation Management” simulation mixed in. The best way I could describe it as quickly as possible is like this: It’s gameplay is incredibly similar to XCOM: Enemy Unknown–except it has lots of jokes, arranged marriages, and big fat clubs and crossbows. So maybe now you’re thinking “So it’s just an XCOM ripoff? I’ll just play XCOM!”. Well, I was a bit iffy about this at first, myself; But when I actually got into Massive Chalice, I was completely surprised by unique and complicated it got.
Massive Chalice takes place in a nameless kingdom known as “The Nation”. The Nation is under siege by an evil entity known as The Cadence. The Cadence corrupts everything it touches, and is slowly devouring the nation. You essentially play the role of the king of this nation, who commands the building of new structures, research, and dictates which territories you defend from Cadence attacks.
The only way to completely wipe out The Cadence is via a giant, magical chalice. This chalice (for whatever reason) can talk, and has two separate “personalities” attached to it; A bull headed man, and a more level headed woman. They give you instructions on how to proceed and combat the corrosive Cadence, while also providing some comedic relief by constantly arguing and bickering over everything. The goal of Massive Chalice is to survive for 300 years, (Yes, years) so that the chalice can charge up some magical cleansing spell and wipe out The Cadence for good.
Much like XCOM: Enemy Unknwon, the majority of Massive Chalice‘s gameplay takes place on the nation overview screen. Here you can see all the territories in your kingdom. You’ll start out with a capital building, and a keep in the center territories. The Cadence attacks from the outer territories inwards, and if it reaches your capital, you lose. You can also conduct research at your capital. This can range from increasing weapon efficiency, discovering new items for your heroes, finding more hereos to join your cause, or building new buildings. Every so often, The Cadence will attack two territories, and you must choose which to defend with your heroes. The Cadence can successfully attack a territory three times before it’s gone forever, and you no longer have control over it. Luckily, if you repel an attack after a territory has been corrupted once or twice, you can lower the “Corruption counter” so to speak.
The most important building is the keep. You can appoint a regent to every keep you build, along with a partner. The goal here is to pair two heroes together that can have children, creating a bloodline, and giving you new hero trainees. This is definitely one of the focus points of Massive Chalice. You must be careful though, as children will inherit their parents’ traits; Including bad ones. There’s a lot of strategy involved in figuring out who will make the best babies, but long bloodlines will allow you access to young and powerful heroes to combat The Cadence.
Earlier I mentioned that it will take 300 years to win the game. Again, like XCOM, long periods of time are condensed into a few seconds. In XCOM, a minute of real time will equal maybe about a week in game–whereas in Massive Chalice, one minute will equal about a decade. This is where things start getting very interesting. You see, The Cadence doesn’t attack every five seconds; It takes several years. Unfortunately this means that if you repel an attack with a team of young, spry heroes–they could easily die of old age before they even see combat again. This is why bloodlines are so important, because if you aren’t raising children, you’re suddenly going to find that your allstar team of Cadence killers are a bunch of geezers that have asthma attacks any time they run ten feet. (That isn’t a joke, this really happened to me.)
While I believe this is the most unique and interesting aspect of Massive Chalice, it’s also one of the most annoying aspects. The game doesn’t pull punches. If you aren’t on the ball with recruiting heroes or churning out babies, you’re going to quickly find yourself in a bad situation. Unfortunately, to new players, having all of these things to think about can be very stressful and overwhelming. While I really enjoy this mechanic, sometimes I think that I’M getting gray hairs in a matter of seconds just like my heroes do.
You can also appoint heroes to do other jobs rather than just regency–you can have them act as Sagewrights, which give you research boosts, or trainers to give your heroes yearly XP boosts, giving them a chance to level up without even being in battle. Unfortunately, giving a hero these jobs means they can’t fight against The Cadence, so you must choose who you appoint carefully.
All this talk about fighting, I should probably explain the actual fighting. As I said, The Cadence will attack every so often, and you must dispatch up to five heroes to combat them. The Cadence creates a variety of creatures–known as pawns–that you must fight. These guys range from normal little attack drone, to massive rock-like creatures, to my personal favorite: A creature that, when it hits a hero, literally pulls a Last Crusade and makes your hero age rapidly. Though it’s actually pretty easy to kill these enemies, they shouldn’t underestimated, because they can still really mess you up.
Your heroes can have a variety of classes, which mostly encompass the standard fantasy classes: Archer guy, Warrior Guy, Magical Guy, etc. etc. These heroes are controlled in a turn based fashion on a grid map, and can each use different skills to get an edge on the pawns. If your heroes manage to do well over the course of several battles, they will create relics, which are usually powerful weapons. This is another important aspect of bloodlines, because once a hero dies, their relic must be passed to a relative, and if there are none, the relic must be destroyed.
While I do find combat very balanced and entertaining, I have to say that a majority of the maps you fight on are ludicrously boring and ugly. Most of the time I you seem to find yourself in an area that consists of mostly shades of gray, and it’s just–bleh. A few times I did find myself in a lush forest, with bright leaves scattered across the ground. This was definitely the most beautiful of the maps, but it only occurred rarely. It may just be that I was unlucky in the time I played the game, so don’t let this turn you off completely. With that aside, the art style in Massive Chalice is very very nice. It’s definitely got that Double Fine charm to it. The soundtrack is also great–especially the battle tunes.
So in conclusion: Massive Chalice is an incredibly unique and interesting game–if you can get passed the initial difficulty. Combat is pretty darn fun, but it’s definitely not the main draw of the game, I’d say. Managing your nation is very unique, and allows for lots of strategy. When I first started up Massive Chalice, I figured it was just going to be a tactical combat strategy game, but in the end it’s closer to a light grand strategy simulation. I was pleasantly surprised by how addicting it became. If you enjoyed XCOM: Enemy Unkown‘s gameplay, and want more emphasis on kingdom management rather than combat, you’d probably like Massive Chalice.
A press copy of Massive Chalice was provided by Double Fine Productions for the purpose of this review