The Iron Oath
EARLY ACCESS PREVIEW
But where it differs from, for example,
Battle Brothers, is in its less gritty world,
and its focus on a set narrative as you
seek to avenge a devastating betrayal.
There’s a lengthy prologue that leaves the
company in ruins and sets them off on
their retribution mission, although you can
ignore this main quest and go
tramping off across the world
whenever you like.
The story is concise and well told,
adapting as your mercenaries meet
untimely ends. Playing on the medium
difficulty, I had buried all my original
soldiers by the time I finished the
prologue. The resulting text narration
made a point of commenting on the
losses, while a later event invited me to
perform a burial. I expended precious time
on the funeral, because the game was
treating these expendable mercs as actual
characters – and, consequently, so was I.
The flip side of this narrative focus is
that The Iron Oath is limited as a sandbox
game. Where similar games procedurally
generate their worlds, or offer a suite of
starting options, here you’re deposited in
a fixed landscape with no way to tailor the
world of Caelum to your liking.To be fair, there is plenty of stuff going
on in the background. Little icons by each
town tell you which factors are affecting
them, including the presence of bandits or
monsters, or environmental effects like
dust storms. These might sound
dramatic, but mainly they decide the
types of jobs on offer. If there’s undead in
the region, there will be more jobs asking
you to hunt them down, for example.THE IRON PRICE
When combat breaks out, it’s handled
swiftly and gracefully, in the tried and
tested turn-based tactics manner. You can
take just four of your company into fights,
on smallish hex maps with a smallish
number of enemies, which really gets you
into the heat of battle quickly.
There’s light and heavy cover, but there
are also spike pits and holes, and sigils
that trigger magical effects when stepped
on. Rarely do your abilities just cause
damage to your opponent; you’re laying a
fire trap with your pyrolancer, then using
your pugilist to push the enemy into it.
It’s not just one-off battles, however.
Your mercs are more than happy to
descend into monster-filled
dungeons packed with obstacles and
branching pathways. The closest
comparison is Darkest Dungeon, as
you hop from node to node while
managing dwindling resources, but – at
least in this Early Access version – the
quest rewards are hardly worth the effort.
I found dungeons a tense, satisfying
experience – the first couple of times.
After, I would tend to focus on the shorter
jobs. Jobs that wouldn’t leave my mercs in
the infirmary – or the grave.
The biggest issue at the moment is
content. Oh, there are stacks of towns to
visit and piles of dungeons to clear out,
but not enough varied art assets to make
any feel unique. I’m interested to see how
The Iron Oath will develop over the coming
months, as compared to many Early
Access games it has launched in a
remarkably solid state. The story is
reactive and the combat satisfying, even
with the small number of classes currently
available. More of pretty much everything
is coming, according to the roadmap, but
this is already an engrossing and hugely
promising tactical RPG.
Tom SykesY
ou can hardly move for mercenary
companies these days. Parked outside
every bandit camp are bands of blades
for hire, all bickering over who gets to
claim the bounty. The Iron Oath is the latest merc
game, and you won’t be surprised to learn it offers
turn-based tactics in a medieval fantasy world.Mercenary sim meets dungeon
crawler in this slick tactical RPGTHE IRON OATH
WHEN COMBAT BREAKS OUT,
IT’S HANDLED SWIFTLY
AND GRACEFULLYEXPET TO PAY
£15DEVELOPER
Curious Panda GamesPUBLISHER
Humble GamesLINK
theironoath.comNEED TO KNOWPLAYED
ITYou’ll need to utilise the
terrain, particularly on
harder difficulties.