I don't play a whole lot of turn-based games - the only two I can think of instantly are Heroes of Might and Magic III and Divinity: Original Sin - but I had a blast playing Children of Zodiarcs. The game is simple to get used to and you can have fun easily even without going all hardcore into "strategy". However, it can still get quite deep if you want to play it on a more advanced level.
I'll try to mention the essentials of the game mechanics briefly here, in case someone wants to get an idea what the game is like. First, the "deck of cards" essentially represents a hero's set of abilities. It's just instead of having a fixed bar of abilities, now you take a number of random abilities from all the abilities your characters have attained before a fight. Instead of having "cooldown", you have to draw cards to continue using abilities. There is no "basic attack", so the cards really are everything you have. Each team member has their unique set of cards. As they level up, they will gradually acquire new cards, while old cards will be improved.
Next is the "dice roll". Once you have selected a card to use, you have to roll all the dice that are currently equipped on the character (and possibly some others, depending on buffs/debuffs on them). The dice roll determines the effects of the action. It will affect the magnitude of the ability, trigger its special effects, as well as provide other effects not related to the card (healing, drawing additional cards, other buffs/debuffs). There are several types of dice and they have different symbol combinations. As your characters level up, they can equip more dice, and the effects on the dice also become stronger, thus the effectiveness of their actions is improved.
Basically that's about it. The game explains its mechanics quite thoroughly. Here, one problem is, you can know your own abilities pretty well, but not so well when it comes to enemies'. Enemies have different abilities from yours, and they have quite a few too. After playing for a bit, you have a rough idea these guys can do this and that, but sometimes you might wish you know *exactly* what ability does what: how much damage they do, what special effects they do, and their area of effect. This is especially important when you are in a tough fight or a tight situation. There are times when a few points of damage or a slight change in position makes all the difference. It would definitely help if the game had a record of all the hostile abilities that you have encountered.
And since you roll dice to decide the effects of your actions, Lady Luck will be your boss here. You can get pretty nice rolls, but you will also get really, really bad rolls. Personally, I find that I am less frustrated if I don't just look at the maximum damage I can possibly deal in one move, but instead look at the average or expected value of the roll, and adjust my tactics from there. You do exactly the same thing, same moves, but you can get vastly different outcomes. Such is the nature of the game. Again, this becomes more of a big deal in tough fights, where even small differences are important. It might be hard to avoid getting frustrated occasionally, even if you are prepared. The game does allow you to save during a fight, however, so if you ever feel afraid of making a major decision, simply save the game before moving on. That being said, the game offers you the thrill of making "risky moves", which is actually a pretty cool thing, if you look at it from the "high risk, high reward" angle. Imagine betting everything on one roll of the dice, hoping one particular symbol will show up. If it does, you win the fight. If it doesn't, you hit that reload button. Just keep in mind, before you throw those dice, that "this might happen or it might not", and be prepared for the worst, then you should be fine.
The fact that your characters can only move *before* using a card, and not vice versa, put great restriction on combat, and might take some getting used to. But most likely this is to prevent the "hit and run" tactic - which is a good point. During fights, obstacles in the area (houses, or elevation) don't offer as much cover as they *look* like they should. But you get used to this after the first few fights. The way you or the enemies land ranged attacks might look weird, but it's really no big deal. Also, it would have been nice if you could select party members by clicking on their portraits or hitting shortcut keys. Lastly, I somewhat wish the team composition were a bit better balanced. I don't want to give away unnecessary details, so I'll just say that, at some point in the game, spellcasters become a huge pain to deal with. I played on Normal and could beat most fights, including Elite ones, first try, without anyone dying. But there was one particular Elite Skirmish which was simply impossible for me to beat until fairly later when I got some new cards and new special effects.
There are optional fights that pop up randomly at locations you have passed through. You can do these over and over to "farm" for level and dice. They offer practice and help make the story missions easier.
Generally, I find game balance and difficulty progression nicely done. The further you progress, the more important positioning and "combos" become. You might want to pay more attention to the various effects of the cards, as well as the faces of all the dice you are rolling. You can modify the dice equipped on your characters as well, to increase the likelihood of certain outcomes. By sacrificing the dice that you don't use, you can change up to three symbols of any dice on your characters, as many times as you want. There's also the idea of tweaking your characters' decks of cards and equipped dice for specific fights, if you ever want to do that.
Aside from gameplay mechanics, I find both the story and the art quite lovely. The whole story is not all that complicated, and the presentation is simple, but they definitely show finesse. The music is really charming too. The characters have well-defined personalities, albeit a bit one-dimensional, and they are easy to sympathize with. And for its scope, the game's got quite some unexpected twists.
Given its budget, you can't really expect an epic saga with advanced character development and fully voiced dialogs, amazing environment with trees swaying in the wind, but then that's not what this game is about. Considering what it tries to accomplish, this game is solid. The game could use some improvement here and there, but I'd say the devs did a fine job with what they were given.