Ocean Drive Studio is stepping back into familiar territory with Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch, a standalone spin-off of the original Lost Eidolons. While the first game was a straight tactical RPG in the mold of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics, the game takes that foundation and fuses it with roguelite progression, run-based structure, and high replayability. The result is a game that respects your time, keeps you engaged with meaningful choices, and challenges you to squeeze every ounce of strategy out of your party before the inevitable wipe.
After hands-on time with the game, it’s clear this isn’t just a side project or a budget experiment. Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch refines the tactical systems that worked in the first game, trims some of the fat, and adds roguelite systems that make every run unpredictable. For players who love tactical depth but want something faster and more replayable than the average 40-hour campaign, this could be the perfect fit.
Crunchy, Forgiving Combat
Battles played out on a tactical maps styled grid-based, turn-based combat, where you move your characters within their set range, positioning them to use skills, magic, and melee attacks to crush enemies. If you’ve played classics in the genre, you’ll feel right at home, but there’s a snappiness here that sets it apart.
Each encounter forces you to consider positioning, weapon affinities, and skill synergies. Elemental interactions like setting an enemy ablaze or freezing the ground beneath them give the battlefield a dynamic feel, and the inclusion of environmental hazards adds another layer. The game constantly rewards creative use of the systems rather than just throwing numbers at you.
Combat is approachable without being shallow. One of the smartest design choices is the undo system, which lets you retract a limited number of moves each battle. It’s a safety net that encourages experimentation without completely removing the stakes. That said, you can’t rely on it forever, every undo is finite, and rerolling skills with gold doesn’t refund the cost. Mismanaging resources still stings, keeping tension alive even in smaller skirmishes.
The balance here is excellent. The game feels tough but never unfair, demanding that you think ahead but giving you just enough room to fix mistakes. For a roguelite, this level of fairness is key and it keeps frustration low while pushing you to keep improving or adapt to different strategies.
Party Build Win Games
Every run begins with assembling a party, and it’s here where Lost Eidolons: Veil of the Witch shows off its flexibility. You can recruit from a roster of nine playable characters, each bringing unique skills, affinities, and personalities. Up to five can be deployed per mission, giving you plenty of freedom to experiment with lineups that suit your playstyle.
Some players might prefer a balanced squad with a tank, a ranged attacker, a healer, and a caster. Others might go all-in on heavy damage dealers, trying to overwhelm enemies before they can retaliate. With over 200 skills to unlock and dozens of persistent upgrades, the number of viable approaches is impressive.
During a run, characters can level up to 20, unlocking class-specific skills and abilities. However, once you die, that progression resets. The roguelite hook here is in how much of the game carries over outside of a single attempt. Relics, upgrades, and shards of story remain with you, changing the way future runs unfold. It’s a design that encourages experimentation and makes losing feel less like failure and more like progress.
Choices, Exploration, and Replayability
Unlike linear tactical RPGs, this game thrives on variety. The map branches constantly, forcing you to choose between paths that might lead to tough battles, lucrative rewards, or random events. Each decision has weight, because resources are limited and fights don’t reset your health automatically. Every wound you take carries over to the next encounter, adding long-term stakes to short-term decisions.
The journey is dotted with base camps where you can regroup, chat with party members, and promote characters to stronger classes. These quieter moments flesh out the story and give you a chance to prepare for what’s ahead. Talking to NPCs can also trigger unique interactions and sometimes handing you powerful relics or offering useful upgrades if you’re paying attention.
The roguelite randomness keeps things interesting. Picking up items often requires rolling dice to see what you’ll get, and resonance stones can upgrade gear in unpredictable ways. Even when you know the systems inside and out, runs never play out the same way twice. That’s a huge improvement over the original game, which sometimes suffered from predictability once you mastered its mechanics.
Story That Keeps You Hooked
It would be easy for a game like this to lean entirely on its mechanics, but it puts just as much care into its narrative. The cast of characters isn’t just window dressing, they’re misfits and killers with scars of their own, each dealing with personal demons. Between missions, conversations reveal their backstories, their struggles, and their reasons for fighting.
The more you play, the more you uncover. Relationships can shift, bonds can grow, and the story pieces itself together across multiple runs. Death isn’t the end of the narrative, it’s another lens through which the world reveals itself.
Your own role in the story is just as compelling. Each time you die, shards of memory return, slowly piecing together the life you lost and the identity of the man you came searching for. This drip-feed of mystery adds an emotional hook to the roguelite loop, making every attempt not just about beating enemies, but about learning who you are.
Witchlist this game
I quite enjoy the game, having lots of various things that keep me entertain and wanting to play something different that is reminiscent of old RPG game, and I believe I found it. However, while I am playing a preview of the game, there were some minor issues pointed out to me by the developers, but it will resolve or mostly fixed those issues in the upcoming release. So, if you like a good tactical RPG roguelite game, this game is definitely to be on your wish list. Lost Eidolons: Veils of the Witch is released on October 9, 2025, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Be sure to check it out.
