Inkulinati Review

thesixthaxis.com:

It’s been just over a year since Inkulinati first went into Early Access, and the time since has been well spent with continual improvements and additions to make the full release a real strategy treat. The main concept – turn based strategy taking place on medieval manuscripts – remains as fun as it is distinctive and the depth of approaches and options elevate it even more. While it is the iconic manuscript characters that take centre stage, it is the balancing and challenge that will have you coming back for more.

Inkulinati is clearly more than just an aesthetic attached to a game, but that aesthetic is so perfectly pitched at my special interests that it feels more targeted than a Facebook advert strapped to a crossbow bolt fired by a particularly accurate dog person. The myriad units and characters of Inkulinati almost all come from actual medieval manuscripts and offer a bestiary of weird and wonderful delights. The main exception is the utterly inspired tie-in with Obsidian’s Pentiment, which sees that game’s main character, Andreas, becoming a playable choice. This visual approach is complemented by a soundtrack of medieval-inspired music that matches the vibe without ever really standing out.

The visuals are clearly authentic to their medieval sources, but they also work well in a modern context. As well as being suitably odd, each unit has a distinctive visual appearance that is combined with team colours to make the battlefield easy to read.  Environments are also well designed, and the flat plane means that there is never any issue with visibility. That being said, the UI does feel a little cluttered on console, but that is mostly a personal preference, as I didn’t notice it as much when playing the PC version. Much of the game is centred around menus and icons so a certain amount of visual clutter is inevitable.

Having played the earlier release on PC (albeit on Steam Deck), I was intrigued to see how well the gameplay held up on console, and I’m pleased