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interface is killing me.
With a rusty screwdriver

A few ideas for this: if your looking to avoid a grind why not make each level have a challenge mode where you can redo it with certain limits like do the first level with only one unit to get three keystones but you only get one shot at that to make it an honest challenge or something like that or an endurance mode where the enemy units get progressively more difficult as a way to test strats, level units, and if you add a checkpoint system of sorts where if you get to say the 5th "wave" of mobs in the afore mentioned endurance mode you get a reward of honor/keystones then that would get rid of the need to "grind" the actual game levels though it may make some people be able to overpower their units people would probably make people stop complaining about not being able to redo lvls.
very solid game here, even with these limits it gave me a few hours of entertainment and if you find this helpful at all then i'm happy i was helpful.

no replays = less fun

This is definitely the best new game that I have seen in a long time. As has been highlighted, there are quite a few glitches, but I still give it 5*. Can't wait to play it once the glitches have been ironed out.

I absolutely love this game. The mechanics are wonderful, the upgrade system, everything. That said, the difficulty ramp cost it a star. It seems like you intended for there to be multiple methods and strategies to clear the field, but I've found that it feels more like all the options are just a puzzle to figure out the one way things work the best, and if you don't find that exact combo (and I reiterate, it feels like there's only one real combo out of many options that will work) between managing your honor and your keystones, you WILL NOT be able to clear the field. The AI mode needs tweaking; it seems alright, but my heroes will let enemies just walk by them and escape sometimes instead of redirecting their attention to weaker units closer to their goal; they also, with absolutely no exception, refuse to acknowledge Tellers of Visions until ALL other units have been cleared. I would go manual, but the game design makes manual control nasty, complicated, and completely impractical; virtually useless. They should all be set to permanent AI mode, and acknowledge manual commands as overriding their AI, then, once the command has been completed, return to what they were doing. Clicking on a unit should NOT automatically turn off their AI. I also found a game-killing glitch in which sometimes when you start a wave, the screen loads the field, and nothing else. If this happens and you're forced to return to the main menu, and reload your game, you have to redo the previous wave, and all stats are reset to that at the beginning of that wave.

I also personally felt that you should be able to return to previous waves if you want to grind for honor, rather than just returning for missed keystones with no honor gain. I know that might make the game too easy in some people's eyes, but I felt like the player should have the choice; it would balance out a lot of the difficulty in maintaining a team that otherwise eventually breaks down at some point. It gives the player room for error; if they made a few bad decisions starting new or after a few experiments, they don't have to start a whole new game from wave one and throw away all of their progress.

In summary, great idea, and great game, but it has what I believe a few really, really heavy flaws. It says something though that they have to be that heavy in order to take away just one star, though.