That's why several bosses practically play keep-away from the Daughters after taking on damage. If you chain together multiple rounds of attacks like that, the bosses just melt. If the Soulslinger uses that skill and then shoots, the Blademaster's attack triggers, and then that attack will trigger the Soulslinger's attack. For example, the Blademaster and Soulslinger classes have a reaction skill to attack a nearby enemy every time the enemy takes damage. This also plays into how you can effectively beat bosses in the game by chaining together reaction skills. Using them wisely is the only way to succeed. That might sound like a lot, but when you consider that a boss attack does considerably more damage, each use of an interruption saves significantly more health than it costs. Most interruption actions cost around 10% of a Daughter's health.

Any action that takes health is absurdly powerful and often saves more health in the long run if used at the appropriate time. It takes some getting used to, but health is a resource that's best used for actions, not survival. Since health is difficult to recover, you might be loathe to use skills that cost health. Taking any but the weakest hits generally means you screwed up somewhere. Obviously, this is for emergencies only, but it shows that the game's focus is to not limp across the finish line but to win with as little damage as possible. This will replenish the Daughter's health and give them a new trait based on the class of the sacrificed Daughter. The only way to recover a Daughter's health is to sacrifice another daughter of an equal or higher level. Unlike XCOM, your Daughters don't recover health between missions, either. As in XCOM, Othercide has a form of permadeath, so any Daughters who die are lost to you - for a while.

You can escape from most missions, but depending on the mission, you'll either lose out on rewards or lose the Daughters that you sent on the mission. Fortunately, you have plenty of time to prepare. Each day brings you closer to fighting the boss of the current area, which generally involves a battle against an extremely powerful foe that dwarfs anything else in the level. Stages play out in the standard 'Kill all the enemies before they can kill you' or 'Reach the target point' varieties. When enemies use Delayed Actions, you'll want to interrupt them with special attacks or kill them before the actions are triggered. Delayed actions can be activated on one turn and then triggered on another - or triggered multiple times in a row. In addition to the aforementioned Burst status, you'll encounter moves that can delay someone's turn or speed it up. Manipulating this bar is a big part of the gameplay. You can see both friendly and enemy turns on the time bar at the bottom of the screen. The game also features positioning, so attacking an enemy from the side or behind significantly increases the damage they take.

This means you have 50 AP on most turns but need to avoid 'Bursting' unless necessary. Once you get below 50 AP, you enter a Burst state, which means your next turn takes twice as long to arrive. Each character has an AP bar that begins at 100 and goes down as you move or use attacks, with each attack having an AP cost. From there, the gameplay feels familiar, aside from the lack of cover and defense. You choose your Daughters before battle, deploy them, and then you must achieve success in various objectives, such as Hunt, Rescue or Survive. Othercide can be best described as an XCOM-style tactical game. You can choose any combination of the classes, and it's sometimes easier to run two Soulslingers and a Blademaster instead of one of each type. Part of the way through the game, you unlock the Scythedancer class, which excels at shredding enemy armor and dealing AoE attacks. The Shieldbearer is the tank class, with the most health and armor, and it can move or slow enemies. The Soulslinger is a gun-wielding class that's classified as support, with both damage-dealing attacks and the ability to buff allies. The Blademaster is a melee class that deals the most damage and can be upgraded to better single-target or AoE damage while also gaining mobility. To begin with, you'll create characters that are divided into three different job classes. Othercide is a strategy game where you build up a team and send them on missions.

Othercide classes