A masterpiece and undoubtedly a passion project. It's everything I ever wanted from a Turn-Based Tactics game. I love the setting, the many mechanics and systems, the setting, the characters and design. Chefs kiss. It lives up to the description of "everything SRPG could possibly be".

This is the part where I'd speak about the game's features... Well, let me just say it has EVERYTHING*. Cool abilities, very good variances between characters, multiple upgrade systems, detailed RPG mechanics.

One aspect in particular that I want to mention is that I love how the world is less of a vacuum than other Tactics games. It's not just your party of heroes engaging in action, you have back-up from the local police force which are surprisingly competent. It's a very welcomed change of pace.
All in all, I'd say the game features some of the best combat mechanics I've seen in the entire genre. It has naturally occuring "Badass" moments that you can only dream off in other tactics games and which greatly reward your character building experience.

For example, in one mission where one of my heroes was ambushed, he solo'd half of the enemies in one turn using only the Counterattack, Berseker & Tactical Sense abilities whilst dodging every attack. It was like watching cinematic. I loved every moment of it.

The game can be a little too easy on normal but I don't mind the slight power-trip, you can adjust your difficulty as needed and I think there's a good balance on that.

The game is a slowburn, it has a lot of content but it follows an fun narrative and the levels environments are unique. It's not like Phoenix Point or Xcom where you're basically replaying the same mission over and over for half of the game. I love it.

Of the story itself, thus far I really like it. Sadly, a portion of it is lost due to some translation oddities but it's not a gamebreaking issues. The game does not have English voice acting, but it does feature subtitles for almost all of the dialogue (the exception being a scarce few ambient lines in cinematics but you can pick those up from the subtext). The quality is good overall. Of the voice-acting itself, much of the game does have voice-acting and I quite enjoy it, the actors did a great job making the characters stand out through it.

One very cool gameplay aspect to note, the levels tend to have more units on the battlefield than most Tactics game I played, which is something i am very happy about. You'll usually be facing 15 or more enemies and can be commanding anywhere from 4 to 12 during these first 12 hours.

I've had no technical issues of any kind. No crashes, freezing nor save file corruption. Game runs smoothly which is another plus.
I quite enjoy the attention to detail and foreshadowing during the early parts of the games. (A character you had a conversation with in a cinematic being in the background of a loading screen afterwards or walking around the level that follows). Quite nice, the game really does a good job building up the story.

The music is great, it reminds me of some of my favorite games, but it can get a little repetitive after the first few hours.

On the complaints side of things, I don't have anything major. I wish there was a bit of visual difference between the Police Suppressors that had different toolkits (some have Ice Grenades, some have Smoke Grenades, some have stronger healing items). I think simple addition to their names would help the player in discerning them. Their abilities are very useful during missions so it'd be a welcome change.

So far, the game hasn't been grindy. I like that the new repeatable missions variants you unlock differ from the scripted story ones, that's a good change. One annoying thing is that if a character is defeated during a mission, they no longer gain any XP from combat that occurs after their defeat until the mission ends. It adds an extra layer of strategy to missions I suppose.

The only proper complaint I have in regards to combat is that abilities that have multiple attacks only display the damage of a single one, which makes them seem less effective than they actually are. The game does mention whenever an ability has multiple attacks so I don't think it's an issue after you do your first multi-attack.

As for the overall structure, I don't mind the fact the game can be linear at times, especially since the story missions do a good job of standing out visually and you always have the choice of pursuing a secondary/repetable misssion if you like. You will largely be facing the same enemy types, which, frankly, is applicable to every game so I don't think that's an issue.

The levels themselves are pretty large and always permit more than one avenue of approach which is a great design choice.

The game offers choices at certain points, but so far I would not call it a choice-based game. They don't have significant impact on the story and most are flavor choices.

Visual Customization options are also lacking for the base game, you can unlock new customs with DLC which I think is a good way to support the developers. This is quite a solid project so I don't mind.
Character customization (in the sense of abilities) is however pretty solid, with many items, crafting & upgrading, as well ability and class choices. Though there isn't a large number of abilities/classes for each. I don't think that is an issue since what is present makes for a very well-rounded toolkit for any of the heroes.

Overall, I must admit, I am very pleasantly surprised. Hat's off to the developers for making such a cool hidden gem. I'll be updating the review based on the content I've yet to play (Giddy at the thought that theres possibly 60 more hours, if not more, of story content).
Also props for asking a very reasonable and accesible price for the game.
I give it a 9.5/10.

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The game takes for ever to get to gameplay. With almost 2 hours of time in game I've only got to play the combat tutorial and 1 additional mission because of massive and slow story dumps.