I guess once I hit 400 hours in a game I'm beholden to say something about it. I'd heard about this 'autobattler' genre for a while, and the whole thing seemed nonsensical to me. If you're not actually controlling your character during combat, what's the point?

But if you take a step back and think of some of the Final Fantasy mechanics, or more closely something like Siralem, you're pretty close.

And while the game at first seems trivial, it has a surprising amount of depth and nuance. One of the key mechanics is that items combine when placed next to each other in your inventory for one turn. An early-game example is a broom and a frying pan next to each other will turn into a shovel. (I never said it made sense)

There are several classes, all with their own set of items (with one underlying global set of items). Each round of combat is preceded by a turn in the shop to prepare for the battle. How you purchase items in the shop and arrange them in your inventory is the actual game. The battle is simply a test to see if you made the right decisions during your turn.

The inventory management is where things get really interesting. It's a mini-game of Tetris where you try to maximize your space and item interactions. In addition to items combining, they also buff each other based on various properties like adding damage, speed, mana, health, etc.

The only real complaint I'd have is that it's a *tad* grindy. That said, the matches are extremely short. The length of the matches is generally under 2 minutes. I got every character to platinum rank and plan on picking a 'main' and seeing how far I can get.

I highly recommend this game.