Born of Bread helped to kick my year off with a wholesome turnbased rpg.

Kill Knight absolutely changed my brain's chemistry.

Dungeons of Hinterberg gave me that drive to 100% it.

And Digimon Time Stranger just feeds my love for Digimon (yes this is cheating since I just started it lol).

There's no way to control your party other than "strategy" that doesn't really seem to work all that much anyway. I just keep them on the default and it's worked out fine all game.

I've tried everything on hand and nothing seems to work, it feels like a fight specifically to screw the player over.

It's not really a story spoiler, but the tower fight against the big bird boss is what I'm referring to.

Once you get to the 2nd phase and onward, there's tornadoes rotating around the middle of the field. And your party members will just continually walk through them taking unnecessary damage.

Specifically, late game got annoying because the devs made some of the harder fights "hard" based on positioning.

The ai for your party members isn't all that good when it comes to staying out of harms way, even if you change their strategy.

Recently I've really cherished demos on Steam, and it definitely increases the likelihood I'll get the game if I like it.
But the time I purchase said game is based more on pricing and if I have enough disposable income at the time, no matter how much I really want it.