Entropy left this phrase echoing in my head after my hands-on with it - "It's Suikoden with permadeath"

Last year, I got the chance to interview the Creative Director of Dread Delusion, James Wragg, at PAX West. He told me back then that he was already in the middle of developing his next project; recently, we learned that project was Entropy. The talented team at Lovely Hellplace decided to create a turn-based RPG with a 3rd-person perspective this time around and I was able to go hands-on with it at this year’s PAX West.

After spending almost an hour playing it, I keep returning to the phrase “it’s Suikoden with permadeath” in my head.

Entropy retains a similar visual philosophy to Dread Delusion. The world still oozes the low-poly 3D aesthetic that deliberately aims to emulate the PS1 era. It begins in a small medieval village holding a stage play at the town square. Players pick one of three starting characters that determine their starting weapon and stats. Stat allocation was confined to a starting boost in Agility or Grit at the cost of a small penalty to the other. I chose the lady with the crossbow that had an Agility bonus, though her low Grit meant she couldn’t take many hits.

One thing I gradually began to appreciate is that this entire demo of Entropy could be controlled on a keyboard alone. All camera movement had keybinds and all the menus were navigable through keyboard inputs. There was definitely some wonky behavior here and there, but all actions during exploration or combat could be done with just the keyboard. Of course, I could’ve used a controller or a mouse as well, yet I really appreciated that the game already allows a way to play it all on a keyboard.

Anyway, this opening stage play was quickly interrupted by invading fleshy demons. Your protagonist, several townsfolk, and a few guards form together to drive them back – time for a battle tutorial. If you’re familiar with Konami’s Suikoden series, its layout will be very familiar to you. Up to six active characters can be on the battlefield at any given time divided into front and back rows. Characters in the back row can’t attack with a melee weapon and must either use a ranged weapon or magic spell to attack. In exchange, they can’t be attacked by the enemy directly if there’s a character to block it for them on the front row, unless the incoming attack is coming from a ranged weapon or magic spell.

That’s all standard stuff for the mainline Suikoden games. Battles have your usual array of attack, weapon skills, guard, and pass options. Before committing to an attack, there’s a numerical percentage above the target’s health bar that indicates the accuracy rating of your desired action. Consumable items must first be equipped to individual characters to use them at all in battle – much like… y’know. 

Actions are executed immediately after giving a character a command, though. They aren’t “round-based” like the Suikoden games, where players would queue up their entire party’s commands and have them all executed simultaneously, once they give the final party member their command. 

One useful and amusing quirk to Entropy is that there’s a toggleable tactical overview that players can pull up. This will add a lot more HUD elements to the battle screen. It provides a handy description on what exactly each skill does when hovering over them. Additionally, it will add a new box at the top of the screen that visualizes the backend dice rolls that are happening for both players and enemies when actions are occurring. A combat log will also be displayed too. This adds a tabletop RPG flavor to the overall presentation of Entropy.

The tutorial battle in the demo build of Entropy is meant to be unwinnable; frontline characters fell after 1-2 hits. Entropy takes this opportunity to give a heads-up that once a character is knocked out, there’s a chance that they’ll just permanently die. Only your main character is the sole exception. During the battle results screen, Entropy will simply roll to see if a KO’d character simply ceases to exist, or lives to fight another day with an injury perhaps. Having a character fall in battle can also decrease other characters’ Courage which will make them easier to hit.

What I found particularly interesting was that I didn’t have to adhere to the 3x3 rule of having an equivalent number of combatants in both rows. Later in the Entropy demo after my tutorial party members were all slaughtered, I started filling up my party with new recruits once more. Some simply joined me after I spoke to them, while others filled up my ranks through hiring them via a recruitment board at an inn. I had the freedom to field 4 front-row melee attackers and 2 back-row crossbow archers. 

On the Formation screen in the menu, there were a total of 12 open spaces on the active party section so I assume that you could theoretically have an entire party all positioned on the front or back rows. There were roughly around 16 spots on the reserve party roster; I didn’t get the chance to clarify approximately how many recruitable characters there were going to be, but the recruitment board seemed to cycle across a lot of different characters. One of the character designs was especially striking; half of the man's face was torn-off and you could see his inner flesh… It reminded me of the DC villain Two-Face.

Details on the overall story were sparse in the demo, though your immediate goal was to flee the starting village invaded by demons. There were a few treasure chests across the linear pathways I ran across; there was the occasional branching path that led to a chest or shortcut. Enemy mobs were visible during exploration. You could unsheathe your weapon to attack them and gain the initiative in combat.

Several weapon skills quickly became my go-to attack commands, such as the mace’s stun attack to temporarily prevent an enemy from attacking. My protagonist’s crossbow had the capability to use a skill that bypassed an enemy’s armor value. While I’m not privy on the exact math behind the damage reduction, there were a few pieces of armor I picked up and equipped on my front-row combatants to raise their Defense value.

When any character levels up, I was given several stat points to manually allocate which stats I’d like to raise on that character. At level 3, a character could learn their first Perk. Some examples of Perks include Hardened (survive 1 fatal hit per battle), Lucky (increased chance to land a critical hit), and Powerful (damage increase depending on weapon type). 

A dying soldier asked my main character to go to a nearby tower and properly set off a signal to signify that the nearby town was attacked by demons. Once I escaped the village, I was greeted with an overworld map that had random encounter battles. I entered a small place with the aforementioned inn and tower that the soldier mentioned. Speaking with the apathetic individual that didn’t do his job of sending the signal, I had to memorize a simple sequence of what order I needed to interact with some levers to send the right signal that demons attacked. 

After that, I entered the inn to recruit some mercenaries to fill up my active party. It’s worth noting that the more party members you have, the less money you receive from battle. Active party members consume more of the money that would’ve been rewarded than reserve party members, but both take a percentage of your reward money regardless.

Unsure where exactly I had to go next, I ventured into a forest not too far from the inn. My newfound party members and formation felt great to play, since two of my frontline attackers wielded a greatsword. This gave them access to a heavy slash skill that would attack multiple foes at the cost of pushing back their next turn significantly. I still had my mace combatant stunning enemies, while my two archers pierced the armor of tankier enemies. My remaining party member had a spear that could reposition enemies by pushing them to the back row, so the enemy’s back row combatants would be left in a vulnerable state if I needed to prioritize them.

Eventually, I faced off against a winged boss that resembled an angel. It didn’t give me too much trouble with my setup, and I had a healthy amount of healing herbs equipped just in case I needed them. Behind the boss was a spring that initiated an adventure game-esque segment.

The game presented descriptive text on a static background with a small illustration to the right side of the screen.  It pushed me to enter the mysterious spring and plunged me into a surreal sequence of events throughout this text adventure; I ended up in a mysterious alternate world briefly before surfacing back into my current forest surroundings. There seemed to be some sort of deity or guardian involved with that portion, but it prevented me from unraveling any mysteries and asked me to leave the forest – thus concluding my first taste of Entropy.

I really dug what Entropy is going for. Having a western-style turn-based tactical RPG that seems to have been inspired by Suikoden in some ways is an awesome thing to see, especially as that series is in the middle of a resurgence after the recent HD remasters of its first two titles. Lovely Hellplace has found a visual identity for themselves off the heels of Dread Delusion and continue to evolve that style with Entropy. I’m very much looking forward to release of Entropy when it hits PC sometime next year.