Gubat Banwa is a bold and colorful tactical RPG, set in a fantasy world inspired by the 16th and 17th century Philippines. You are a Kadungganan, an elite warrior with an awesome martial arts style, embroiled in larger than life drama. You fight for glory, for ideology, and for your datu (the local nobility).

So the good news is that this setting is holy-fucking-amazeballs cool! You can ride a giant rainbow rooster into battle, turn your soul into a sword, or unlock the necromantic power of flowers. When it's time for drama, one of the two modes of the game, you test your convictions and become enmeshed in a web of debts. And when you switch to tactical violence, everything plays out in a grid-bases system reminiscent of D&D 4e or Final Fantasy Tactics.

This is where I get a little skeptical. Admittedly, I have Opinions about tactical RPGs and my preferred design goals might not align with those of the authors, but on a read the tactical system strikes me as complicated and fiddly and perhaps not terribly deep. There's 10 damage types, dozens of conditions, and interlocking systems of keyword based combos. I like crunchy systems, and this one is hard enough to break teeth. There's stuff I like: no attack rolls, the tactical use of space and movement with charge attacks that hit all enemies in a line, minimum ranges for ranged attacks, the "precise" keyword which lets you roll multiple dice and take the higher, but there is a lot going on, and I worry that the sum is less than the whole of the parts.

"Not terribly deep" is a harsh criticism, and I'd like to justify it a little. Deepness can come two elements. The first is in tactical positioning and use of resources. There should rarely be an obvious best move, and you position vis a vis allies, enemies, and terrain should dictate the battle. Powers in Gubat Banwa are mostly at will, and powers within a Disciple/Class seem to form a closed set of abilities within the theme of the class. In terms of build, you get your Discipline, and as you level you can choose to learn 4 Teachings of increasing difficulty, 3 with 2 Techniks/Powers and a single Enlightenment Art which can dramatically shift the battle. Each teaching has 3 levels of Mastery to learn. But you can't really mix and match across Disciplines, and finding a broken Technik and Mastery combo (there are many) and beelining for it is a failure state in character design.

This is a maximalist game. It's very much tied to one specific vision and it's not your grandad's dungeon fantasy. But if you're up for it, there's a lot here.