World's End Chapter 1 Awesome. I turned Teveron into a tank, giving him both of the defense skills, bolt cutter, and retaliatory attack, and some bitching armor. I basically had him tirelessly stalk bosses, all rapist-like, with his constantly staring blankly forward and persistently chopping at them while they helplessly flail at the guy who just won't die.
Best skills in my opinion (in descending order of awesomeness per character):
Teveron: Bolt Cutter-vital for tanking, with this, he can tank like Ivan and Vadim just can't.
Mockery- same as above.
Berate- Good for fleeing to a more defendable spot or for chasing down those damn archers.
Brashness, suspicion & paranoia- for superior tankage
Retaliatory strike?-I liked it when it worked, but melee enemies usually don't target Teveron much for some reason, so not much mileage out of it.
Ysabel-
Limb Breaker- Fantastic for defense. Spam it early, spam it often. Best part is that enemies run away while stunned, sometimes taking them out of the fight for longer than 2 rounds.
Hostility- A must, since as a ranged attacker, she's a decent part of your team's damage output.
Ivan- Avoidance- Ivan is pretty damn squishy for a front-liner. This is a must.
Smoke Attack- Unreliable, but it debuffs enemies pretty damn hard.
Vadim- Kidney Punch- Basically a much weaker limb breaker, still worth it.
Thick Skull- Same as Ivan, Vadim's a pussy compared to Teveron, so this is necessary.
Casimir- Healing dart- essential, especially if you stick him in the back lines where he can't attack enemies, (which you usually should because he is fragile as all hell)
Slow dart- fantastic for weakening the most dangerous enemies so you can run from them.
Veteran Apothecary- eh, it's okay, I picked it because the healing dart was a bit lacking as is and it makes slow dart more reliable.
Oksana- Heal- See healing dart for Casimir. Oksana's an okay front-liner, but she's way more useful as a healer.
Purify- SP-cheaper, longer ranged and more inclusive than the detox dart. Fuck the detox dart.
Skills I didn't use but look interesting:
Stasis dart: Probably better than the slow dart for crowd control, at least when used on melee enemies. Just step out of their attack range and it's all good for two turns.
Haste: Might be good for helping Teveron chase down and hack those pesky archers to pieces.
Generally, you can't go wrong with the passive +defense +offense for your attackers and the +SP ones for Casimir and Oksana.
Actual Review:
Good points were the environmental/physics system. Love the use of elevation and moving objects around. Great writing, especially dialogue, interesting setting, good variety of skills, enemies, etc. I had to use a lot of chokepoints, taking the high ground, crowd control and sometimes even trying to manuevre enemies into hitting each other or being too close to attack, which is a step up from most flash strategy games.
Could use work: Enemy balance. I found that while I could make Teveron a beast, by late-game everyone who was not him took metric craploads of damage in general, even with up to date equipment, and it was frankly a hassle chasing archers down while they whittled away at you, especially if you can't devote Teveron to using Berate. Give archers lower movement or something like an attack of opportunity to penalize them from fleeing from melee so often. Also, the active +damage skills like overhead smash and triple fist were basically worthless next to support/stun skills. Overly expensive active skills like Celestial Drive, Disembowelment are things that probably won't ever see the light of day either. Last thing- the game could use some grindeable areas, even if it's only a few optional once-only missions, because unless you play almost perfectly, you are usually short on cash and skill points and so the last few missions become absolutely brutal.
Overall: I want moar! MOAR. :)