Pit People Review

In Pit People, you are forced to deliver your tactics around huge doses of ridiculousness and chaos, utilizing a roster of unfit and unorthodox magical characters. Combine the likes of unicorns, cupcakes, gnomes, and electrobots in order to somehow outsmart your opponent in a fun, deep and engaging tactical madness experience! How much randomness is too much randomness? Find out in Pit People!

INTRODUCTION

Pit People is the new game from The Behemoth, the developers that brought us Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theatre. 
In this fast-paced, turn-based, co-op adventure you'll quest and explore, find awesome loot, customize your fighters, and recruit strange species. Rally your troops and steel your wits if you hope to survive a hostile world filled with sinister robots, deadly vampires and brutally adorable cupcake people!
The full release game now contains a SIngle Player Story Mode that can also be played on a 2 Player Co-op Mode (both locally or online), local and online 2vs2 Arenas and Insane and Permadeath Modes.
Pit People's full release version is available on Steam for $19.99.

STORY

It wouldn't be a game from The Behemoth if the story was about a handsome knight on a quest to save a princess in distress from a dragon that keeps her locked in a faraway castle. Not on their watch. 

This game is, of course, about a giant space bear that crashes violently into the Earth's surface, generating all sorts of a natural catastrophe as well as a lot of green goo (space bear's blood) rain. And this is just the beginning.
We quickly meet our dark and sarcastic narrator telling the story of a humble blueberry farmer named Horatio. He describes how Horatio and his little son were minding their own business when they got attacked by a group of bandits trying to kill them so they could rob their belongings. 
In fact, the evil and inpatient narrator soon announces ahead of time that Horatio dies. 
Not resigned with this outcome, Horatio defies the narrator and pushes on the bandits, eventually achieving an unlikely victory, aided by a last minute giant green goo raindrop on top of the bandits. Angry with this defiance, the narrator reveals himself as being the giant space bear, stepping on top of Horatio's home where his son was, apparently smashing him with it. 
Narrator's Plot Smash
Frustrated by the outcome of this event, and later founding out that his son is still alive and being held captive by the giant space bear/narrator, Horatio swore to seek revenge.
Through his journey, he meets several interesting character to add to the oddness of the story: An aggressive and fearless princess, a cyclope in search for a second mythical eye, a cupcake with the knack for being kidnapped and a female conqueror that crashes into a beach nearby and promptly claims the all the surrounding lands in name of Spain.
Of course, all of this oddness, both in the story, character rooster and even in the unfolding of events serves the purpose of supporting a big comedy theme that drives the game from the get-go, very Bethemoth-wise. I must say this kind of extreme randomness struck me as funny, especially in the cutscenes that are simply a delight to enjoy. On the other hand, the in-game jokes and dialogs and not so spot on and sometimes leave a certain feeling of cringe for the awkward jokes.
Apply cold water directly on the burned surface
The campaign revolves around exploring a world map in a caravan, finding different interest point and mobs along the way and picking up sequential missions in the hometown. You can do some occasional sidequests, but nothing changes or adds anything to the linear succession of small quests and cutscenes that make up the main story.

In sum, it feels like a short but heavily humor-packed story in some top quality cinematics but not so cleverly written dialog and in-game humor.

GAMEPLAY

The fundamental gameplay of Pit People consists of a tactical battle between two different parties of characters, each one containing different types of characters with specific traits that affect their role in a battle. These battles take place in hexagonal grids, in which the characters position and attack each other.
So far so good, but what's the catch in the gameplay? Because its The Behemoth, has to have a catch, right? You are right, it has. In fact, it has several.
The most significant twist is how you decide which enemy character your character attacks – you don't! In a chaotic fashion, each character attacks one random adjacent enemy after they move.
This creates an interesting layer of strategy to how you approach combat – after a few matches, you start realizing the importance of positioning in order to minimize the randomness effect and therefore better influence the outcome of battle – if you make sure your character ends his movement with only one enemy adjacent, you are sure that is the one that is going to be attacked!
Pit Chaos
Adding to this peculiar positioning perk, the game is packed with different and bizarre types of characters with specific roles: Traditional healers, artillery, and tanks translate directly to cupcakes scooping their own meat to heal, unicorns shooting their horns to do splash damage and Troll Moms with regen abilities. And much much more, believe me.
Not only that, but you have the option to capture the last enemy of each encounter if you have a net wielder in the party- this incites a pokemon-style collector dynamic that allows you to expand and further customize your party.
But the randomness does not stop, and here is where things get funny – There is a huge element of customization in Pit People. Each type of character has several different weapons, armor, helmets and shields – some with different status, other just visually different.
How does a lady hat looks on a Troll Mom? Or a cyclops wilding a giant jalapeño while wearing a scuba diving mask? Now you can try it out!
Dress to impress
The big issue I see here, and especially because each enemy you encounter comes equipped with random equipment, is that there is no way to distinguish a different kind of equipment in the game – is that enemy's traffic cone in his head considered a helmet or a hat? 

It plays an important role since some kind of weapons are less / more effective against certain types of armor, ex: maces are more effective against helmets than swords. I would expect that by the launch version there was an option to view the enemy stats or at least armor types in battle.
Outside of combat, you have your typical hometown with a market and a list of quests you can accept besides the main story. You navigate through the world in a caravan on the world map, kind of a throwback to the old Final Fantasy.

Overall, a colorful and chaotically comical tactical challenge. Have I mentioned the random enemy drops, that enter the battlefield being transported by helium balloons?

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO

All the theme of the game comes together thanks to a sharp and strong graphic design, already a Behemoth trademark. You can almost guess the developer by the art style since is very similar to the previous games.
Every model is very cartoonish and distinct and the cinematics is a pleasant bonus to the experience and emersion.
Classic live stream bullying
The soundtrack is vivid and funky. I have to confess that the main theme was getting on my nerves in the first hours but after some gameplay I found myself enjoying that strange funk beat. The voice acting of the cinematics' narrator is truly on point. Besides that, every other audio line is characters' imperceptible blabbers while the text of their speech is running in the text – even so, not bad for random gibberish.

CONCLUSION

Pit People is a tactical holocaust. It has ten times more randomness that the recommended for a tactical game, not only in the way it unfolds but also in the way the whole game was designed to be played. It would not have been bearable if it wasn't for the giant doses of humor that hold all these ridiculousness together.

There seems to not be a lot of depth to the game besides the way you build and equip your part and, even with all the character types available, it seems a bit limited at a certain point it the game.
Nonetheless, it delivers some moments of great fun and engagement and even some Co-op / online potential.

Overall, Pit People is an interesting title for Tactical RPG lovers whose theme will certainly take you out of your zone of comfort while you wonder who will your unicorn dressed with phoenix wings decide to shoot next turn – the Pixie with a mustache or the chocolate Cupcake.

PROS CONS
 + Peculiar and Smart Humor… most of the times  – Short on the story mode
 + Distinct visual matching the games' theme  – Lacking more tutorial help
 + Excellent Narrator voice acting  – Battles need more diversity besides pure randomness
 + Fun multiplayer battles  – Battles too slow-paced
6.5
Fair

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