This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

Anyone who has been following this list knows that I am a sucker for games with tactics. I could re-hash my credentials for days, but I will just say that I played through Operation Darkness to completion and found things to enjoy about it, so I clearly have a stomach for slow moving, tactical games. So, if any company wants a shortcut to my attention, they simply have to put “tactics” in the title of the game. Thus the game we are talking about today would have probably gone unnoticed if it wasn’t called “Wintermoor Tactics Club.”

Wintermoor is a turn based tactics game (who would have thought) that has you alternating between playing the games version of D&D, and walking around a university doing sidequests and learning the story of the game. However, I think we need to start with the actual plot as that kinda informs the rest of the game. You play as Alicia who is attending college at the great Wintermoor academy. Alicia is a somewhat reserved nerd who belongs to a student club where her and her two best friends play D&D. The headmaster of the school for seemingly no reason at all decides to pit all the student clubs against each other in a snowball fight tournament. Any club that loses in the tournament has to be immediately disbanded until only a single student club remains for all of campus. Your group of friends isn’t quite the snowball athletes that you would expect to do well in a tournament, but they decide to treat their snowball fights like D&D fights and thus are able to thrive on tactics alone. Eventually, shocker, it turns out that the headmaster was looking to recruit the strongest kids on campus to help save the school from something much more nefarious, but that was probably to be expected. The game is trying to be humerous and while it isn’t as in-your-face as MDK2, it also isn’t as cringeworthy. For instance some of the other student clubs range from the Psychic club (kids who think they can see into the future) to the People-pretending-they-are-animals club and the Equestrian club (that doesn’t have horses). There was nothing that made me laugh out loud, but I am sure I let out a “Ha” on more that one occasion.

The biggest aspect of the game is actually playing actual D&D. The snowball fights are essentially end of chapter bosses for each round you advance, but the in-between is you continuing your normal campaign and drafting up new campaigns for new friends that you make during the game. To be clear you aren’t really playing D&D except for the fights, there is no exploring or ad-libbing, or even any real choices that you make. It is just small setup and then straight into a battle. The battles themselves are played on a standard grid where you control three characters (even when you unlock more characters you can only place 3 on the board) and your goal is to win the fight while hitting certain goals (more on those later). Each character is given a class and plays like that in both the D&D and in the snowball fights. So, Alicia is a mage who can do some big damage from far away, but can’t take a lot of hits. Colin is a paladin and he is your tank, and the third character, whose name I am blanking on, is a rogue. Each character has their own kind of stats with how much they can move, the damage they take from either physical or magical attacks, and the damage they output. While your main goal is to just beat each mission, there are little goal targets to shoot for. I think these targets are really only important for 100% the game, as I don’t think they lock out any of the actual content, but it was easy enough to hit the targets that I ended up just full starring them all. Those goals are almost always: “Win with no characters being defeated,” “Win with taking X damage or below,” “Win in X amount of turns,” and “Win using X number of super moves.” The good news is that if you get two out of the four on one playthrough, you can do the level again and just focus on the other two goals, and they will stack.

So how does combat actually work? Well its similar to all other tactics games, you essentially get two actions for your characters mainly to either move and then attack. Each character will only possess two to three moves to use, but one of those is their special that requires the expenditure of tactics points which you accumulate in battle for multiple reasons (doing damage, boosts, equipped items.. etc.). Once you unlock the other characters, the real challenge will just be in which characters synergize with each other well. For instance Alicia has a lightning bolt spell that will chain through enemies, so pairing her with a partner who can manipulate moving enemies around the board, means you can chain together more enemies and do more damage. After all of your characters take their turn, then the enemy takes theirs and you rinse and repeat until you either win or lose the fight. The good news is that characters don’t really level up or gain XP, so you don’t have to feel like you need to spread the wealth or worry if your characters are under-leveled for the mission you are about to take on. The only buffs you can really get is by equipping different items which you get by completing side quests throughout the game. While you will eventually earn about 6 items for each character, at most you can only equip two, so you will have to decide what is the most important for you. For instance one item for Alicia allows her to chain her same lightning spell through allies (without hurting them), while another may allow her to charge the team’s tactics points faster, meaning you can use specials more frequently.

Snowball fights work in the same way, and even though its supposed to take place in the real world.. you still get to cast lightning and use whatever magic powers your character has in the D&D Campaign. I think there is a line of dialogue somewhere in there that probably just says you throw snow extra fast or extra hard like you were hitting them with a hammer, but in reality it doesn’t need to make sense.

When you aren’t taking part in battles you are walking around the school, visiting different locations, and talking to other students trying to figure out what is happening. Some other students will give you sidequests, but they are almost exclusively fetch quests that just has you walking back and forth between areas or between students until you fulfill the brief. While it may seem boring to do, these are miss-able side quests that could lead to miss-able items. Almost all of the items you get are from completing side-quests, and they are usually only available for a single chapter or two, so you don’t want to throw away a chance that can help improve your team. If you are looking up this game you will see the phrase “Visual novel” thrown around to describe this non combat aspect, and it’s not entirely wrong. You won’t get in random combat encounters during your walk around school, and you really are just having conversations until your next combat event. One interesting little aside, is that when you are welcoming new people to your D&D group, you specifically get to help write a campaign to “hook” them. It’s really just picking some multiple choice options, but it can be fun to see that play out and see the reception of the people that you are bringing into the club. It is possible to write a campaign bad enough that you have to go for a second draft (that happened to me once), but I think it’s pretty forgiving.

Wintermoor is a fairly easy completion, especially if you aren’t looking to 100% all the battles, but it does have around 50 battles and the visual novel stuff can eat up a good portion of time. Really most of my frustration came from trying to figure out how exactly to 100% certain levels, and if you are avoiding that headache then it will be a quick playthrough. While I was enjoying the game, and I like the ending fights as a final culmination (made me think of FF6 briefly), it does drag on a little longer than it should. There were some characters that I just disliked using, not because I found the character specifically annoying, but rather that I just didn’t find them useful when I was limited to 3 characters (*Ahem cough COLIN cough). I think the real question is how does this compare to other tactics games? While a fair question, this certainly skews closer to “Kid’s first tactics game” rather then something deeper. If you are coming in with some experience you will very quickly find your way and be able to stomp most missions without missing a beat by just using other lessons learned from other games. Without having the depth of worrying about levels, experience points, specializations, it doesn’t really make you stop and think about how you are going to get through a new level. It certainly isn’t going to stand up to the titans like X-com or FF Tactics, but the game is certainly polished enough that if you are craving a SRPG to play on the go, then this will hit the spot.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: Nope

Where does it rank: Wintermoor Tactics club is a solid game, but it doesn't have the nuance of games that I feel are better SRPGs. I think this is a great game to ease people into playing SRPGs or even if you want a game similar to other of the genre but without the stress, but that doesn't make it necessarily better. I want a game that challenges me more, I want a game to make me occasionally re-think my tactics, and this game doesn't do that. Once you find the three characters you like to use, you can wipe the floor with a lot of the levels. While the story is endearing and some of the characters are genuinely charming or funny, it's also not a story that I think people Need to experience. There weren't shocking twists and turns that could make the somewhat easy combat worth slogging through just to see the game to the end. All that is to say it's not a bad or broken game, and I would recommend it as a great sale game.. it's just not going to crack the upper echelon here. I have it ranked as the 110th Greatest Game of All Timeout of 182 total Games.

What's it Between: Wintermoor Tactics Club sits between Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (109th) and Simpsons Road Rage (111th)

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Ghostbusters (X360) 2) Golden Sun (at some point)

Cool concept for a game. Curious, does it actually use D&D in the game or are you using it as shorthand for table top RPG?

Looking forward to Ghostbusters!

@chamurai: depends on what you are looking for. It's mainly a setup for the combat, you aren't rolling dice or making real decisions like you would while playing actual D&D.. but you do take part in a campaign, help "write" some scenarios, and a lot of the plot revolves around the game and the creation of it...

But keep in mind that it's not real D&D, just a facsimile.

Thanks for the read and comment as always