The Behemoth is well known for combining its distinctive style with recognizable gaming tropes and somehow, through this alchemy, discovering and exposing the pure heart of whatever genre is displayed. Alien Hominidbrought the run-and-gun genre's manic paranoia to the surface by flipping the script of hero and villain, while Castle Crashers smartly exposed the side-scrolling beat 'em up's stupidity by introducing RPG elements to elevate the knowledge, even if still it grouped into the genre's familiar trappings. After which there's BattleBlock Theater, in which the Behemoth's sense of humor and storytelling finally appeared to come into its very own to service what's, I'm convinced, one of the best 2D platformers ever made.
Pit People is The Behemoth's undertake the tactical RPG genre, and while it might not live up to the highest highs of BattleBlock Theater, it definitely delivers on the promises of The Behemoth's previous successes and may attract players that do not even particularly take care of tactical RPGs, like myself, whilst satisfying long-time fans of the genre who may be hankering for a fresh, whimsical variation.
Pit People tells the story of a humble blueberry farmer named Horatio and the mission to retrieve his son from the giant space bear who caused a worldwide cataclysm after crashing into Horatio's home planet. On the way, Horatio teams up with a ragtag group of adventurers, princesses, and cupcakes, each with varying degrees of stakes in Horatio's quest. The whole journey is narrated by said space bear, who have a gigantic chip on his shoulder and mocks players and narrative gaming conventions at every submit wherein is going to be familiar and pleasing to anybody who played BattleBlock Theater and reveled in its narrator's constant verbal harassments.
The story and voice acting lives as much as the reputation the Behemoth makes by itself. Using the self-serious idea behind post-apocalyptic narratives and turning it on its head, Pit People's story and world are thoroughly entertaining, and also the text-based dialogue is sharp as well as funnier when it is delivered in Pit People's gibberish language. The only character who actually says real worlds, the bear, is voiced to sardonic perfection once again by Will Stamper, whose angry ramblings and antisocial insults are music to my ears. And talking about, Pit People's actual music is really as bouncy and memorable as always.
The main story is brief but sweet. It ought to just take you about 6 hours to accomplish, but within that time span you'll have taken on numerous different challenges that service the game's somewhat simplistic combat system. As the first few story quests basically teach you Pit People's core micro- and macro-mechanics, later quests will task you with avoiding devastating, environmental hazards and even with sneaking the right path through a high-security compound during a solo stealth mission utilizing the game's hexagonal, turn-based movement system. Almost every main story quest goes beyond Pit People's core objective, which would be to kill every enemy in each fight, by creating unique stages and obstacles to overcome-while also laying waste to enemy forces. Not every quest's gimmick pays off; most notably, the final mission is more chaotic and repetitive of computer must be, and results in what is considered an anti-boss battle. But, typically, each quest presents a distinctive challenge that builds off of Pit People's deceptively simple combat system. I just wish it lasted a little longer.
Fortunately, Pit People provides a lot of additional content beyond the main quest. There are side quests with occasionally unique objectives (like defending one character or specifically capturing another) which will net you rewards like gold, helmets (the only real form of armor), and new weapons. A number of these side quests may have multiple parts of increasing difficulty, expanding the world's mythology and introducing new characters in smaller vignettes inside the main narrative. The dwelling of those quests never reaches the complexity of a few of the main story quests, but it is serviceable to keep the experience going and giving players a good excuse to help keep playing.
Besides side quests, Pit People's world map gives players plenty to complete by means of random skirmishes. Enemies are available everywhere, and that's where one of the game's most fascinating mechanics is necessary: capturing enemies and turning them into friendly units.
Pit People has almost 20 different classes in the form of different species found throughout the game's world. Humans are the most flexible, his or her abilities are strictly determined by the gear they're carrying, but the other personalities in the game get access to more specific abilities, strengths, and weaknesses that make them worth exploring. There are walking, talking mushrooms that emanate a cloud of poison gas, fluttering pixies that summon a burning explosive attack, electrobots that can hit multiple enemies with one zap of electricity, and much more.
Each of those character types have specific weaknesses, too. The pixies, for instance, are weak towards the electrobots' electrical attacks, and hair trolls are weak to the pixies' fire attacks. The electrobots, meanwhile, can only be healed by gnomes, not the standard cupcake unit that may heal almost every other character type. Composing teams out of an apparently infinite combination of personalities to see how they work together is one of Pit People's most interesting and rewarding mechanics.
In order to use these character types, you'll have to capture a personality and bring them back to the town that acts as your home base, and in order to capture these characters, you'll have to cut their teams until they're the final enemy standing. As you travel around the globe map and encounter enemies, you are able to capture specific enemies by killing the remainder of their crew and tossing a cage at them. In order to do that, however, your human (or cyclops) characters must have the web equipped, which takes up space normally reserved for a shield or ranged weapon. Not only does this capture mechanic provide hours of replayability and give completionists something to live for, but it is one other way that Pit People forces players to carefully consider their teams' compositions in a constant risk-reward metagame.
Building your team is nearly more fun than the actual combat. That's not to say it's bad, but there is a particular degree of simplicity and predictability in how battles will play out. Pit People's gameplay is fairly straightforward tactical RPG fare with one big twist: you don't necessarily get to determine which enemies your characters attack inside a given turn. Instead of targeting specific enemies, Pit People's combat is proximal in nature. Move your character next to an enemy (or in your character's specific attack range), and your character will attack that enemy. However, in case your character is positioned next to multiple enemies, you do not get to decide which specific enemy your character attacks. In fact, based on your positioning, friendly characters might catch some of the collateral damage of your personal attack, as is sometimes the situation having a pixie's explosive attack or perhaps an electrobot's ranged shock.
This results in you mostly relying on just one strategy throughout the entire game, a method that Pit People will literally tell you to use during among the first battles hanging around: isolating a specific target and ganging up on them. The more characters you have targeting a specific enemy, the quicker they'll go down, and also the quicker they go down, the less enemies you will find to do attacks you. Which means planning an offensive strategy around cutting enemies removed from their teammates, resulting in some nifty cat-and-mouse maneuvering during battles. This strategy means how you consider your defense too, as it is best to keep friendly characters close to each other in order to minimize the chances of a single character getting mobbed and trapped by enemies.
It's satisfying, but it could possibly get repetitive, and also, since battles play out in pretty much the same way regardless of who you're fighting, experimenting with different character combinations is really the best way to locate some feeling of variation inside the gameplay, especially since leveling up your characters only leads to them getting a new bar of health insurance and lacks normal stat boosts you'd expect within an RPG. You can play in Insane Mode, which makes battles harder, and switch on permadeath for many added stakes, but generally the combat remains the same throughout the entire game.
Otherwise, Pit People is a straightforward game, that isn't necessarily a bad thing for any player much like me who came for The Behemoth's humor and art style and stayed for that enjoyable tactical RPG mechanics. However, veterans from the genre might become bored using the game. Fortunately for these players, almost always there is the Pit, where players can either take on waves of AI enemies or get together with a friend to fight another duo in Pit People's PvP multiplayer mode. Oh, did I forget to say that you could take part in the entire game cooperatively as well? Yes, there's a ton to complete in Pit People, and fans of The Behemoth or fans of tactical RPGs looking for a twist around the genre will find plenty to love.
