How refreshing. Based on all the warnings about stocking Food and limited resources I was very worried at first about this game, but as it turns out the hunger system is easily abolished through modding and only the XP is limited (which is barely worth noting since quite a few RPGs have limited XP).
Once the needless hassle of the farmville simulator elements is removed it’s quite a lot of fun and reminds me most of, interestingly enough, the modern King’s Bounty games. You can pick up simple quests, find containers filled with loot scattered about, and encounter static enemies with listed difficulty classes which you can either temporarily avoid or fight (with exceptionally difficult/impossible groups blocking access to areas/items you’re not supposed to reach yet).
The very beginning is tough since you won’t have many skills and your accuracy will be awful, but once you hit level 5 or so battles start getting notably easier since you have more options available (assuming you built your characters correctly and didn’t waste skill points). At the moment I’m about to enter the Tower, having cleared the beach/forest/cave/mausoleum/roads (apart from the Ogre/Mushrooms obviously) with a level 5/6 party consisting of a Paladin (Evasion-focused), Cleric, Summoner (Golot, Raznet, & Valvet), Thief (shurikens/swords), Bard, and of course the Explorer (not being forced to take the Terrain skill let me easily build him fighter-ish). Early fights were a real slog due to the anemic damage but now the defensive synergies are starting to come together and I’m finally able to upgrade some weapons.
Of course that’s by no means an optimized party composition (their stats are though; Speed all the way) and I definitely would not suggest anyone try it on any difficulty other than Casual/Normal unless you want to do a lot of reloading. It’s nowhere near focused enough with weapon types scattered between bleeding, wounding, and stunning. Instead I suggest checking out multiple class guides to get a feel for the few absolutely necessary things to do (like always raise Speed each level, and max out Learning if you’re like me and want to decimate late-game) and then put together something that looks fun.
Speaking of which, I’m kind of torn whether or not to keep playing with this party or start up a new one using two Arcane Soldiers and a Mage (since this one has 0 magic apart from the Cleric). By default the AS class isn’t very exciting, but I believe that can be fixed by simply tweaking a couple skill costs. I also want to modify the Explorer skill costs a bit and tweak the Nalaet summon to work as a Cleric substitute… so that you’re not effectively forced to run a Cleric in every party… but I’m not sure if the AI would still work with altered skills. We’ll see how things go.