Glorious Companions Review

2024 has been a good year for strategy games and even a good one for turn-based strategy games. A wide array of games saw release, with some being bad and others far surpassing expectations. Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader saw a new DLC that was a welcome addition to a complete and fun game. Among other scenes, The Thaumaturge was a great game that found many fans.

Amid all of this, we saw the surprise release of Glorious Companions on December 28, 2024. Developed and published by Ancient Forge, Glorious Companions is a turn-based RPG and Strategy game that lets you command a mercenary company as you travel the vast world of Tescara. The game harkens back to the elements of old turn-based RPGs with mechanics, movement, and gameplay reminiscent of tabletop games.

The game saw increased delays and periods of inactivity, initially being revealed and released on early access in 2019. The exact reasons for the 'abandonment' were unknown, but somewhere in 2024, the developers were finally back and released the game to somewhat good reviews; at least contemporary ones are positive.

The game starts off with a nice and grand narrator, telling the story of the realm and world you are about to enter. You view the game through the eyes of your main character, who you get to design yourself. The game lets you pick between two races and four classes for each race. The classes hard-lock your gender, which is annoying and limits customization, but things like that can be glossed over.

You also get to pick your initial skills, get an overview of your stats, and edit some superficial details, basically just changing how the character looks.  As you finally get into it, you will notice something not too common in CRPGs and turn-based tactics games. The world is an open one. Instead of the formula of a group of soldiers fighting in linear battles, you get to explore and make your own path. There is a main story, but you can mostly follow your own path and explore, ignoring the main one.

Glorious Companions has increasing notes of high fantasy elements as you encounter many monsters and people of other races. You travel and recruit more mercenaries of different classes. The game does not put a limit on the roster you can have, letting you roam around with a comically large warband if you can afford it.

The game is very sandbox-y in the sense that there's no real recruitment for story characters aside from the one who you start with. There's also a lack of races, but a total of 8 classes leave ample room for experimentation and more. 

Glorious Companions utilizes mechanics from most turn-based tactics games. It has a grid-like battlefield where you can spend movement and action points to attack enemies. Your objective is obviously to win and defeat all the enemies, and you have a few tools to do that. You can attack them with the various weapons you have, use skills, and deal different kinds of damage.

Every weapon has specific damage that pings against the enemy's toughness; if the damage is greater, it hits against the armor. Glorious Companions utilizes an interesting armor mechanic that has its hits and misses. The armor is split into two types: light and heavy; the distinction between the two types is somewhat confusing at times since every weapon has a certain clause for each type. For instance, some weapons are better against light armor, and others are better against heavy armor.

This makes little sense and is confusing since a Warhammer will suddenly do worse against light armor than heavy armor. However, as a gameplay mechanic, this makes things pretty interesting and thoughtful. You also have elements of dodge, mechanics that piece armor, strike multiple enemies, and more.

The game also utilizes a captain mechanic, which basically makes leaders very important. Taking out the leader's weapons and enemies and, in turn, if your main character is taken out, you lose the battle. 

The companions you can get are not too different from one another. This really harkens to the classes themselves since most of the classes are only slightly different, with the Human Engineer and Lizard Caster being outliers. Glorious Companions could also be used with some variation in classes as well as new classes themselves.

The lack of real customization is also such a shame. This is not only an issue regarding cosmetics since you can't change your race, gender, or model—hell, you can't even change your appearance. It is also a further issue that you cannot switch weapons, stats, or do anything regarding companions, at least the starting ones. This is sad since it pairs very badly with the otherwise small world that leaves very few moments for interactions.

Speaking of interactions, you get to find random events around the map; they'll be spider nests, wells, or broken wagons. However, all of them yield one of the same results. There is no real variance.

The skill system within the game is also not very elaborate. You don't have any real options for specialization, with each level offering only three skills. While in battle, the game also has some minor issues, such as the lack of a speed controller, as well as janky attack animations. You also can't use your fists when you run out of things like javelin, which makes them almost frustrating to use, especially when you are dealing with a lot of enemies.

The combat in the game is very tedious, and a lot of it does not make sense. Action Points and Movement are split into two different resources, except you also use up action points as you move. This makes movement points very redundant. There is also a distinct lack of gear and equipment variety.

Quests are neat, but most get repetitive and are just different flavors of fetch quests or kill-the-boss. They are also not particularly long, which can be seen as an upside but ultimately plays into the game's bad balance.

Despite the many aversions to the mechanics, the game is surprisingly easy. It is easy to gain gold and experience, which basically annihilates the balance of the game. The various survival mechanics are also really easy to deal with since food is just as abundant as gold, and gold is everywhere.

One of the main reasons for the balance being destroyed is the game's leveling system. Higher-leveled mercs can easily take on numerous enemies at the same time, and it often feels like you scale way higher than the enemies do.

The game benefits from being a sandbox and open-world, enjoying the free reign you have in how you approach the game. However, one thing to note is that the map is not a real sandbox since it's not randomly generated. However, that point is moot since it takes place in an established world.

Glorious Companions also has many issues visually. Overall, the game really draws on the charm of old-school PlayStation 3-era video games but often just appears badly rendered. Naturally, the game has to compare itself with titles such as Wartales or the acclaimed Mount and Blade Series. However, a lot of the game feels flat and looks flat, and it has to do with lighting and color. It really feels like old Warcraft more than anything. 

The animations are also pretty bad. You'll swing a spear like an axe, and the ones that make sense are still very sluggish and janky. Even though it was released fully, the game feels it needs a lot more polish. The UI is not that bad, though; it gets the job done. The art style overall, as well as that of the cutscenes, is also very well done.

Speaking of which, the narrator's voice acting is excellent, although a lot of the charm the cutscenes could have is lost due to a lack of music. Many of the scenes are emotional moments that are robbed of any emotion due to the lack of music.

Overall, Glorious Companions is a game with many nice concepts but very poor executions. The genre struggles a lot, and among its many failures, Glorious Companions may just end up being one of them. It is neither big nor richly made. Its concepts are greater than their actual execution, and the overall content lacks any depth whatsoever. It needs a lot of polish and work to make it at least a playable mess. 

Right now, Glorious Companions suffers from a litany of bugs, long load times, and an array of poor game design choices and gameplay mechanics, but it still possesses potential for its ideas and open-world concept. It also has a good premise and storyline, and the overall mercenary system stands out as unique. It definitely has room to get better, and hopefully, it does.