Telepath Tactics Liberated Review

Telepath Tactics Liberated by Sinister Design is a strategy role-playing game (SRPG) where you play two sisters, and a host of support characters attempting to rescue their father from the same slavers they escaped from a decade ago. In the process they can recruit a number of allies to your cause, creating a rather large cast of characters which you will use to engage in expansive battles against enemy groups.  

Overview

The central focus of Telepath Tactics Liberated, which takes up about 95% of the game, is combat. It is a turn-based tactical affair where you control a team of characters. When you have finished with all of your character’s turns all of your opponent’s characters get theirs and this continues until you complete the map’s conditions or lose. 

Battles start small, but get steadily larger with maps in the late game allowing you to run close to twenty characters. They feature terrain elevations, all sorts of terrain, and various obstacles as are appropriate to the map you are on. Characters can interact with all of these things. Elevation gives you extra damage, enemies (and allies!) can be pushed off of elevated surfaces or into pools of water or lava. Obstacles can similarly be used to push people into, but can also be destroyed by attacks. In addition to terrain, facing is also important, with side and back attacks doing more damage and having a greater chance to succeed. 

Characters have a menu of abilities that vary based on their class and map situation. While there are a total of twenty-four different bases, these mostly follow the sort of patterns you see in other turn-based tactical games. You have more offensive and defensive melee characters, healers, archers, offensive spellcasters of various sorts, and a fair number of hybrids. Characters who share the same class tend to have many of the same skills, but there is some variation between individual characters. No character will have the exact same order of skills, and they usually have at least one or two skills that differ between them and other characters of the same class. Additionally, characters can take actions based on interactable terrain, which is mostly related to specific mission goals.

When characters level up they typically get a combination of two stat increases, with specific stats and their increase having different frequencies depending on the character. This results in characters varying a bit from play to play, meaning sometimes you might end up with a specific character being more offensively or defensively oriented. Each character gets access to one of two different prestige classes once they hit maximum level, and how they end up can, and should, influence which one you pick for that character. 

Character inventory lets you carry a mixture of equipment and usable gear. Equipment largely influences your stats, particularly defensive ones, and your weapons define what sort of attacks you are able to make, though there are some that give you special abilities of some sort. The ability to wear either of these is dependent on your proficiencies, and provides a fair amount of distinction between characters, particularly different types of frontline warriors and the two ranged attacker variants. Usable items typically restore some combination of hit points and energy, but there are some others that provide buffs or remove status ailments. Weapons feature a durability stat: there is no way to refresh weapon durability, so you are forced to periodically replace them through found weapons or merchant purchases. 

Achievements and Triumphs

The core gameplay loop of Telepath Tactics Liberated is fun and challenging. Each and every map provides new tactical considerations, and there is a pretty wide variety of goals. There are no random maps and the game benefits from this focus on design. This is only enhanced with all the ways that characters are able to interact with these maps. Certain characters are able to transform the battlefield in specific ways (the ice mage can turn water into traversable ice) and there is even a character whose entire toolset is focused on transforming the battlefield in fun and interesting ways. 

Character progression, outside of the random ability scores on level up, is also fun and interesting. While not every ability is fantastic, you continue to unlock new and interesting options as the game progresses, even up to the point where you reach the end of the game. 

Character distinctiveness is also quite nice. Even characters who share the same class (like the two starting sisters) end up feeling quite different thanks to different ability score progression and slight variations in the character’s overall kits. It feels like you are making real choices when using one character or another, and while I don’t feel the game has a ton of replayability, there is some potential in playing again just to explore character kits and how using different character sets impact the way stages play out. 

The story is also perfectly serviceable. While this may seem like faint praise, I have played countless games where the story is mediocre to actively cringe-worthy. Telepath Tactics Liberated transcending this makes the game much more pleasant to play, and I found myself looking forward to seeing where the story would go next. 

Limitations and Failures

As much as I normally disregard art in my overall evaluation on the worth and value of the game, I can’t help but admit that Telepath Tactics Liberated does not look good. This doesn’t mean the game conceals information or it makes it difficult to play, but even when compared to some of the other low budget indie tactical turn based games out there it doesn’t quite stand up. 

This extends to the fact that there isn’t any sort of visual indication of space and where you are in the game’s overall world. While I understand this may be something that is easy to dismiss considering the scope and the scale of the design team (a small indie dev), it doesn’t change the fact that the game’s lack of an overland map results in you losing a sense of scale and location.

The interface is also a bit rough in places, though that is usually more relevant on the rare non-battle maps than it is in the battles themselves. There is no ability to remap keys, which makes doing certain common tasks a little bit awkward. The game has various useful tutorial hints and information, but once you dismiss them you can never see them again. This makes it so if you miss or forget something, or just take a break, that you can come back and be unable to understand how something works.  

I am also not a huge fan of the random attribute increases. While I understand their legacy (they are present in the very influential Fire Emblem series) and the fact that they improve replay value, they mostly feel like a source of frustration especially if the character develops too far from how they were initially presented. 

Conclusion

Telepath Tactics Liberated is a good SRPG that successfully carves out its own unique identity despite clearly being inspired by giants of the genre. While it suffers some from the limitations that you could expect coming from a small indie dev, the enjoyability of the combat, characters, and stage design overcomes it making it a good choice and well worth exploring for fans of the SRPG genre.

Jesse James Dean

Jesse is another of our turn-based game aficionados and is often found playing many different types of turn-based games, whether they be strategy games, deck-builders, RPGs, and much more. He also really likes cats.