One of the most brutal frustrations in the world is the realisation that you have completely borked a meal with an overdose of salt. You taste a stew while it's on the stove and it's near-perfect: deftly spiced, neither too rich nor too light, and with the perfect levels of sweetness and acidity. It just needs a little salt, you think. And so you sprinkle in what you swear in the moment is a pinch, set it proudly on the table, and kerblammo: it tastes like it's been strained through a pirate's rancid beard.
The Last Spell is a superb turn-based tactical defence game, overburdened with too much salt. Or rather, with the precursor element from which salt is derived: extreme difficulty. This is not a "game is too difficult" sulk for the same reason that I continue to use salt in cooking. The Last Spell is a game about desperate last stands. It needs to be difficult and its systems have been designed around that fact. But the calibration is just a little off, and where it should trigger satisfaction and compulsion, it more often prompts exhaustion.