App Army Assemble: Crawl Tactics - "Does this turn-based roguelike run before it can walk?"

Crawl Tactics is a recently released turn-based roguelike that immediately conjures up memories of Final Fantasy Tactics for those of a certain vintage. For me, who hasn't played that, it's a bit more reminiscent of Into the Breach. Either way, those are great inspirations. Can it match their brilliance, though? We handed it over to our App Army readers to find out.

Here's what they said:

I have put a couple of hours into it so far, and I really enjoy what I have played. There is a lot going on, and the tutorial did well to provide all of the info, but I have to admit, I screwed up multiple times using the wrong potion or wrong spell because I forgot which colour/icon did what. That was unfortunate, but I am still learning. The game offers a lot in a small package. Once I learned to use the hazards/explosions to my advantage, I have been winning a lot more than losing. The combat is fun enough. I am a sucker for turn-based, so I will continue to play as free time allows. I was hoping the Quest mode offered more, but it's a little barebones at the moment.

I love Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance Wars and Tactics Ogre, so this one should've been perfect for me. Unfortunately, the interface is cumbersome and not properly adapted to mobile, the translation is not polished, and, most importantly, having to fight random enemies placed in randomly generated landscapes isn't fun. Levels feel the same after a while, and you can get stuck if your heroes' strengths don't match your enemies' weaknesses, which you can't guarantee because, well, RNG. I would've liked it more if the battles had been solvable puzzles with a real personality instead of purely random challenges.

Crawl Tactics will immediately bring you back to the classics of the genre, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, with its blend of turn-based combat in a rogue-like setting. While the experience isn’t necessarily perfect, there’s a lot to love with the dedication that clearly went into CT. If you’re looking for a deep story, you’ll have to look elsewhere, as the game really comes down to strategic environmental battles that present numerous ways to defeat your enemies.

 Along with the standard fare of RPG variable character traits, as well as customising the likes of your abilities and weaponry, there’s a degree of difficulty present at all times while attempting to set out on the best course of action for each battle. One of my favourite aspects of CT is the ability, with the swipe of your fingers, to not only change the view of your map but also to change the literal terrain by either flattening or restoring the land to better see the placement of units. While it’s been quite some time since I last played tactics-style games, I found a lot to like here, including a really well-done tutorial for those looking to learn or simply get back into the groove of it all.

Crawl Tactics is one of those games where, technically, there is a lot to admire. It mixes turn-based tactics with roguelike and RPG elements, and right from the start you can see that there is quite a bit going on here. The graphics are very nice, I quite liked them, and the sound is OK. I first started playing it on my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and here I have to say that the mobile experience was not perfect. The tutorial itself is very informative and easy to follow, which is great, because this is a game with a lot of systems to understand. But sometimes the tutorial text would go under the Dynamic Island, forcing me to rotate the phone just so I could read it properly.

The UI and buttons also felt a bit awkward on the iPhone, so I decided to open the game on my iPad, and there it works much better. It feels like the kind of game that really benefits from a bigger screen. About the game itself, I think fans of the genre will probably find a lot to love here. The combat can be very complex, and there are plenty of options to play with. You can use the environment, destroy objects, trigger traps, cannons, thunder pots, and then suddenly you have all these effects cascading through the battlefield, hitting multiple enemies at the same time. In those moments, you can clearly see the depth of the game and how much thought was put into its mechanics. There also seems to be a lot of variety in terms of classes, weapons, magic, and different tactical possibilities.

If you’re the kind of player who loves experimenting with builds, positioning characters carefully, and seeing how all the systems interact, Crawl Tactics gives you a lot of toys to play with. In that sense, it is technically very comprehensive. But, and this is where the game lost me a bit, I felt there was not much soul to it. When I saw there was a Quest mode and a Dungeon mode, I immediately thought, “OK, Dungeon mode is probably for those who just want to jump in, fight, and that’s it, but Quest mode will be the one for me.” I was expecting some kind of story to follow, some reason to care about the world or the characters. Well, not really. And that turned me off.

The fights can be spectacular, yes, and there is a lot of strategy involved, but the randomness of it all, combined with the lack of a proper story, made it harder for me to stay invested. I can see the quality here, and I can absolutely see some players getting completely absorbed by it, especially fans of tactical roguelikes. But for me, I needed a bit more narrative, a bit more atmosphere, or something to make all those clever systems feel like they were part of a world I wanted to keep exploring. In the end, Crawl Tactics is a very solid and technically impressive tactics game, but probably one more for genre fans than for someone like me, who usually needs a stronger story or emotional hook to really stay with it.

Well, it had to happen eventually. I had sort of high hopes for Crawl Tactics based on the roguelike/RPG description, but so far I'm a bit let down. The graphics are nice with good detail overall, the sound is OK, and the tutorial is appreciated and fairly informative. The problem I had was that many of the UI and gameplay elements seemed a bit too complicated for mobile play, in my opinion. Essentially, you have a hero and can hire other classes of characters to aid you in your quest. You will venture into combat across landscapes and dungeons.

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There are tactics, as stated in the title, that involve character and enemy placement, using environmental items like canons and flammable surfaces, and elevation. The high ground gives you an advantage, like in Final Fantasy Tactics, which I believe influenced this title somewhat. You tap to choose where to move and tap again to actually move or attack a unit. There are ranged and melee attacks as well as spells, single-use scrolls, and equipment to customise your group.

I will need to try this game again, honestly, to make sure, but the complexity of the gameplay mechanics on a phone screen led to some frustration. Some may like the depth and details of the combat and controls, but I feel it may just not be for me. If you LOVE tactics games and play a lot of mobile games, you may feel differently. I wish I liked it more, but I was still glad I got to try it out. I may need to give it a go on my tablet once my family life slows down.

There are elements of this game that I like. The tutorial is a great help. I like the different ways that you can use finger motions to get different looks at the map, including lowering terrain, so that the map is flat and a little bit easier to read. I liked how you can use terrain and tools as different methods of combat. I like graphics as well as interesting maps. But I did feel like the UI was a bit scrunched on an iPhone screen, and yes, tutorial text at one point was covered by the Dynamic Island, which forced me to flip my phone.

Not a major inconvenience, but something that shouldn’t have happened. I also thought that the ability to use objects was more complicated than it needed to be. You shouldn’t have to place an object on a tile in order to use it. Especially when the UI is already crowded. The individual battles aren’t bad, though they can get a bit repetitive after a while, but I care mostly about the story in a game like this (there is a great potential for one), and I found it quite lacking. I haven’t given up on Crawling Tactics, as I do like the graphics and the use of tactics, but it could have been much better.

The tutorial is beautifully laid out, and the controls are incredibly fluid. I especially love being able to swipe down with two fingers to flatten the terrain height—it completely fixes those hard-to-view camera angles that usually plague tactics games. The gameplay flows perfectly through three distinct phases:

- Explore Phase: Freely walking around and scouting.
- Battle Phase: Setting up my team, upgrading classes with battle EXP, equipping gear (which actually changes character appearance), and fighting old-school tactics style using AP.
- Village Phase: Building and upgrading my home base.

The tactical combat is excellent, especially with the destructible environments. I love that I can trigger traps to my advantage when I'm outnumbered, like having a fire mage shoot a cannon to explode barrels, or using an arrow to pop a thunder pot and watch the electricity spread through nearby water to shock groups of enemies.

There's a ton of content packed into a small 233mb file. I can dive into Dungeon Mode to clear floors and beat bosses with custom teams, or play Quest Mode to expand my village and fight off enemy waves. With 15 save slots, customizable difficulty modifiers, crisp graphics, diverse biomes, and a helpful autosave after every single move, it’s clear a lot of love went into this. I'm enjoying it a lot!

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Crawl Tactics