When you’ve played so many titles over the years, it does tend to make you prone to snap judgments. The majority of the time I’ve actually learned to trust my instincts, as for so many of these games, what you learn in the first half hour rarely changes substantially over the next few. Dwarves, out of the gate, is unfortunately a little thin on interesting elements. That said, I had the sense that things could possibly turn around, so I was happy that once it gets properly up to speed, and you begin to get gear and resources to help better tune your squad, it at least starts to be a little more engaging.

The most unusual thing about this game is that once combat starts you have very limited abilities to do anything to help. You’ll take the time and effort to hire each member of your crew, equip them with weapons and relics to make them more formidable in combat, and then send them off to battle, hoping for the best. With each success you’ll get some money and hopefully a piece of decent gear, helping you to continue to power your team up. The problem is that some of your keys to success, like being able to change your tactical formation, enhance your equipment in the forge, and getting access to more varied gear that will help you ensure that you’ve got all offensive and defensive needs taken care of, take a little while to unlock.

This results in the game having a bit of a hump you’ll need to patiently wait to get over, enduring quite a number of battles where it will feel like you’re simply treading water with whatever you have to work with, before you’ll get to the phase where it all begins to click a little more. Another shortcoming is that the controls and various systems are absolutely a bit funky and complex, even if you can get used to them, and not terribly well-explained. With some patience you will get your arms around what you’ll need to do, and you can be successful without leveraging everything that opens up to you, but there’s no question that getting started was tougher than it needed to be. While I do wish that during battles there was a little more that you could do beyond mostly being a spectator, in the end this does at least feel pretty distinctive in the eShop, and could have some appeal to people playing as they’re watching TV or something.