I found Tournament of Kings to be the most intimidating and yet the most addictive entry... The whole thing is one huge map, and when you first start it feels like it is just a bit too much, but that first impression quickly goes away as you start getting into the meat of combat and exploring the other mechanics... the core thing is to save often since you can save at the start of every turn, because sometimes I felt into the "1 more turn" trap, and when I noticed my last save was like 30 turns ago.

The  combat mechanics are classic SRPG fare, but the small addition from more Grand Strategy or 4x games are great, like having to visit specific places to get gold or learn skills, it add a lot to the feeling of exploration of the map. The same with triggering special events and recruiting extra units.

The pacing is specifically well designed, since it flows really well as you go from encounter to encouter, one key thing is that combat and bosses nod you into the mindset of dividing your troops to make better use of your turns. This is clear from the skill set of bosses, no point in taking sword guys to fight a boss with 40% chance to block swords, right? And on the other, it takes around 3 attacks to take down any enemy or for enemies to kill your guys so you don't want to engage with a lot of enemies at the same time and also don't need 10 guys to bait at kill them one by one, it feels really well balanced in this regard.

The special events add small reward to explore beyond the main objective of capturing castles, and also allow to do stuff while you get enough glory to face the final boss.

Now the final zone had a different take, it was closer to classic SRPG map in that is was more maze like and encounters more packed together, and even a little gimmick here and there, it was a nice challenge to test the might of the army I had build along the game... not so much the boss itself, that for me it was a bit of a RNG test to make a couple of skills trigger and he miss one attack to be able to take him down in two turns. It also could have been trivialized if I had put the right skills on someone, something to try in another run.

Now, about the art and music, the main song is really good, good enough to not get tiresome after like 12 hours of playtime, there are other songs used in different moments, but the main theme your gonna hear a loot, so is good that it is good. Also the whole character art is custom and gives the game a more unique feel, and makes the characters stand that out more even if some don't have any dialogue or event.

Now there are some small issues, while Sprint Potions exist to give a unit extra Mv, is not that much and they are fairly rare, so taking specific units to specific places when backtracking can be a bit tiresome... I feel that having Sprint as a command that gives +2 or +3 Mv but doesn't allow to do anything else would be a good adition to aliviate the issue of backtracking, or maybe a special way to move units from one castle to another in a automatic manner, like a convoy or another vehicle.

Another similar addition could be changing the characters description when they join, green units use their description to tell you how much leadership you need to recruit them... maybe changing that to clues about their special events when they join would be a nice way to use that space, and also reduce the guess work for some events.

All in all, I really enjoyed played through this, it basically eat away a whole weekend and I didn't notice. The game is really solid and is good experience, the score system may give it some replay value to push for a high score or lower turn count, but it is also a long journey and there are some small nitpicks that slow down the experience, like a bit of lag because the amount of enemies or the constant checking of enemy stats to see if an area is appropiate to challenge or not.

So is a game that one really should give a try.