Terrinoth Heroes of Descent Review: Confident Tactical RPG With Fun, Straightforward Combat

Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is the first video game adaptation of Fantasy Flight Games' beloved Descent tabletop universe, developed by Artefacts Studio and published by New Tales. It's a cooperative tactical RPG built around dungeon crawling, turn-based combat, and the kind of fantasy storytelling that's powered Descent's board game runs for nearly two decades. After spending significant time with the game's first act across multiple party compositions, both solo and in co-op, here's where it lands.

Just a note: this review is going up about a week after the game's been released. You can thank the Summer Game Fest for that.

The first thing that struck me about Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is its art direction. The tactical fantasy RPG space has been dominated by either grimdark D&D-adjacent realism or the cleaner-but-derivative look of countless CRPGs trying to ride Baldur's Gate 3's coattails. Terrinoth doesn't do either. The game leans into a painterly, slightly whimsical aesthetic that feels closer to a storybook than a battlefield, and that decision works in its favor. The environments have personality, the character art reads cleanly even on smaller displays, and the overall vibe sets it apart from a crowded genre.

Combat Is Where the Game Comes Alive

Combat is, without question, the strongest part of Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent. The initiative-based turn structure gives every character multiple actions per turn, which means each combat round becomes a genuine puzzle of resource management. Add the dimension of letting other characters with adjacent turns come first, or completely switching up who goes first at the cost of an action point, and the game's combat gets a lot of depth on the side of sequencing actions. With the cast of characters being so wildly different when it comes to skillsets, the gameplay really opens itself up on the tactical front.

The Synergy Skill is the standout mechanic. Chain together abilities between party members, and you trigger a powerful skill that can turn the tide around or finish off enemies far more cleanly. It's the kind of feature you don't see often in isometric tactical RPGs, and it adds a layer of party-composition strategy that makes building your team feel meaningful. By the end of the first act, I was actively building my party based on how fun doing their Synergy Skills is, and they become highlights of my sessions as they become capstones to my scenarios as the action crescendos.

Speaking of party composition, the eight signature heroes offer genuinely distinct play styles. My personal favorite is Kharaz. His ranged taunt fire-spitting ability is borderline broken in the best way possible - get the attention of almost anyone who pushes past your front line without even having to move Kharaz from his position. Pulling enemies into a kill zone while your damage dealers pick them off feels exactly as satisfying as it sounds, and Kharaz quickly became the anchor of my preferred party. As mentioned above, you can do multiple actions on your turn, and Kharaz's fire-spitting taunt ability is among those that you can spam in a single turn. It not only protects your squishy heroes from enemies, but it also deals a respectable amount of damage.

Whether you build around tanks, ranged specialists, or hybrid characters, each hero brings tools that genuinely change how a fight plays out. Veshi is your typical undead-hating cleric, and her skillset reflects that clearly. Myria is your rogue stereotype, dancing across the battlefield and earning AP by cleanly killing off enemies. The game surely has at least one hero who will resonate with you, playstyle-wise.

Combat is intense, challenging, and rewards thoughtful play. It's the part of the game I kept coming back to.

The Story Is There, But the Heroes Aren't Really In It

Unfortunately, as interesting as the heroes are, the overarching campaign story is generic fantasy fare, dark forces rising, a forgotten relic that must not fall into the wrong hands, the usual setup. That's fine on its own and is largely consistent with the source material, for better or for worse. The bigger structural problem is that the heroes feel like they're observers in their own story rather than active participants.

Events happen to the heroes more than the heroes drive events. This is somewhat of a necessity for a game that lets you pick any hero to bring to each scenario. Their individual backstories don't weave meaningfully into the larger plot, and the campaign rarely gives them moments where their personal stakes intersect with the world's. This isn't Baldur's Gate, so don't expect your characters to suddenly become more involved with the story because of a random NPC being their former lover or you come across an artifact that they've been secretly coveting. The dynamic dialogues that adapt to your party composition are a nice touch, but they're flavor on top of a structure that doesn't fully invest in its own heroes.

Voice acting is a mixed bag. Some scenes genuinely land emotionally, helped by solid performances from the cast, but there are also stretches where the direction or script feels cringeworthy, which by itself is also endearing. The full English voice acting is appreciated, especially for a mid-budget tactical RPG, but the writing itself doesn't always meet the performances halfway.

For RPG die-hards, the inability to create your own character will also be a sticking point. It's not a requirement for the genre, but many players like being able to express themselves through their personalized heroes. The eight pre-made heroes are well-designed, but if you're someone who lives for character creation and personal stat-tuning, you won't find that here.

Exploration Isn't As Fun As Advertised

Combat is the game's selling point, and it outshines the exploration so much that it feels like filler just so that you can have breathing room between fight scenes. Character movement outside of combat feels slow and occasionally janky, with squares not always responding as cleanly as you'd want. The grappling hook traversal is a genuinely fun addition, with a satisfying weight and rhythm to it, but it can't carry the rest of the exploration experience on its own.

Locations are largely linear, and there really isn't any strong point to incentivize sticking your nose into every crevice of Terrinoth. There's a laid-out path for the player to move through, and if you want to just play through the combat, then you'll do best to just move along the most obvious paths.

Environmental puzzles are there, but they're not very compelling. They're repetitive, rarely challenging, and feel more like content fodder than meaningful design.

In-combat environmental strategy is similarly thin. The game gives you exploding barrels and high ground, but you can't move objects around the battlefield the way you can in Baldur's Gate 3 or Divinity: Original Sin 2. The environments are static backdrops with a few pre-placed interactables, which makes positioning the only meaningful environmental lever. It works, but it's a limitation that becomes more noticeable the more time you spend in the game. Given the game's depth and intent, it's really not that big of a deal, but it's still worth mentioning for those who are looking for a deeper combat experience.

I may also not have just seen the more powerful artefacts in the game, but most items you find are also more incremental than transformative. Most loot adjusts your stats rather than expanding what your character can actually do. Picking up a new weapon makes you hit harder; it doesn't unlock new tools or playstyles. For a game with this much tactical depth in its combat system, the gear progression feels conservative by comparison.

One-Shot Scenarios Feel Less Intimidating

Structurally, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent organizes its content into self-contained, one-night missions across four chapters and five acts, and this is one of the smartest design choices in the game. It makes the campaign easy to pick up and put down, ideal for players whose schedules don't allow for marathon CRPG sessions. You can wrap up a dungeon, save, and come back days later without losing your sense of where you are in the story.

You don't really see this kind of design in the majority of CRPGs out there. CRPGs usually require a lot of your time and attention. They demand you to immerse yourself and get your head into the worlds that they are set in, uncompromising when it comes to the effort required for you to consume them. That makes the genre very intimidating and hard to get into. Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent upends that and is more inviting: come and join for a round or two, forget about it for a while, and it would still be easy to hop right back in and play right where you left off.

This design philosophy also makes multiplayer significantly more accessible. The ability to drop in and out of sessions means co-op campaigns don't require the kind of scheduling commitment that often kills group RPG runs. That said, longtime Descent tabletop fans might find the one-shot approach a departure from the board game's traditional all-night dungeon sessions. It's a translation choice that works for the video game medium but loses something of the original's marathon spirit.

The decision to streamline shopping and equipment management into menu-based screens rather than in-world hubs is another mixed bag. It's efficient, especially for multiplayer, where party members can prep asynchronously between sessions, but it does remove a layer of immersion that some players will miss. For a game that's already light on world-building texture, cutting the shopkeeper interactions feels like a small loss.

Multiplayer Has Real Promise, But Real Bugs

The multiplayer drop-in, drop-out functionality is one of the best ideas in the game. Friends can join mid-dungeon, players can leave and return without breaking the session, and the whole system is designed to make co-op feel less like a commitment and more like an open invitation.

The execution, however, is rough at launch. We experienced disconnects without notice, frustrating rejoin issues that we couldn't reliably diagnose, and general multiplayer instability that turned what should have been our most fun sessions into frustrating ones. The bones of a great co-op CRPG are here, but the technical implementation needs patches before the multiplayer experience matches the ambition.

There have been a few patches that were dedicated to the multiplayer experience, so it's worth checking those out before deciding to buy the game for you and your homies.

Accessibility and Audience

We played through the first act on both PC and PS5 to test how each platform handles the game. The controller support on PS5 is genuinely solid, which isn't always the case for tactical RPGs, but I still preferred playing with keyboard and mouse. The precision of mouse-driven targeting, especially for grid-based ability placement, gives PC players a meaningful comfort advantage. If you're choosing a platform, both are valid, but PC is the more comfortable home for a game this dependent on precise tile selection.

Another thing worth mentioning: Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is one of the most accessible CRPGs I've ever played. The linear-leaning skill trees keep build decisions from feeling overwhelming while still allowing for meaningful customization. The streamlined inventory and equipment systems remove the worst of the genre's tedium. The combat tutorialization is generous without being condescending. This is, in many ways, a "baby's first CRPG", and I mean that as a compliment. It's the kind of game you can recommend to friends who've been intimidated by the genre's reputation, because it puts what's usually the most fun part, combat, front and center without burying it under spreadsheet-level systems. Just don't let an actual baby play this, though; the ESRB wouldn't like that.

That accessibility is also why some of the multiplayer rough edges sting more than they should. A game designed to welcome newer players into the genre needs its co-op systems to work reliably, because broken multiplayer is what will turn curious players away.

Verdict

Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is a confident, well-crafted tactical RPG that knows exactly what it wants to be. The combat is genuinely excellent, the art direction is a refreshing change of pace in a crowded genre, the Synergy system is a standout mechanic that serves as a combat encounter highlight, and the one-shot mission structure makes the game's significant content actually approachable. It's the rare CRPG that respects both the player's time and the genre's depth and chooses to put all of its chips in its most fun component: the combat.

But the rough edges are also real. The story doesn't invest in its own heroes the way other CRPGs would, exploration feels like filler, and the multiplayer needs patches to deliver on its ambition. At $34.99 on PC via Steam, with the same price on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, it's a fair ask for what's on offer.

If you've been waiting for an accessible tactical RPG that prioritizes combat over complexity, or if you're a Descent tabletop fan curious to see your favorite universe in video game form for the first time, this game delivers a satisfying package that will keep you coming back for more. If combat is your favorite aspect of turn-based CRPGs, then Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is perfect for you.

Score: 7.5/10

GameDaily received review copies of Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent on PC and PS5 from Warming Up on behalf of New Tales for this review.

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This story was originally published June 14, 2026 at 3:50 PM.