I don't quite now how to explain what genre this game is in, but it doesn't really matter; the game play is not the worst part of the game (although it's close).

In combat, you character automatically attacks and the player only inputs special attacks which are on a cool down and limited to a resource gauge. At latter level, you can find equipment or skills that makes this gauge fill moderately faster, but it's not unusual to rapidly exhaust your ability to use these abilities. There are also additional super attacks linked to a separate gauge and a different resource that are basically useless. Leveling any of these abilities rarely improves the special attacks in meaningful ways.

The game features baffling design decisions such as the ability to replay missions, but limited ability to skip the cutscenes associated with the missions. You need to grind the missions in order to level up and earn more resources, but watching the same cut scenes rapidly become boring. Leveling is boring and anti-climatic since you aren't rewarded with new weapons or attacks - new attacks are tied to weapons, but each weapon has specific attacks it can use. You could theoretically get the best weapon in the game and it not have the skill that suits your playstyle.

The base is large, but usually empty and featureless except for very specific occasions when you can recruit new characters which makes it easy to miss these characters unless you run the whole base after each mission which is usually fruitless. There is also no way to automatically run.

Finally, the ending is abrupt, and while there is some foreshadowing about the "twist", the absolutely terribly wooden voice acting (in English) fails to convey any emotion or clarity.

Sincerely I like Diofield Chronicle a lot because it is a real-time strategy RPG, like an RTS/RPG hybrid, which gives it a unique genre. When it comes to the story, it has one of the best plot twists I have seen in a game, and it promises an excellent premise for a sequel if we do get a sequel.

Gameplay wise is pretty good; you have units in a similar style to Fire Emblem, and those units have an archetype that they fit into: Blue units are tanks or assassins, Red are vanguards/warriors, Purple are mages, and Green are archers. Each of them with its uses as you manage their cooldowns and positioning on the battlefield.

Fighting in real-time with your troops is interesting, and there are levels when it is exciting to navigate the areas and debate whether to keep a unified front or split your squad. Sadly I found the combat easy, and I would have preferred a bit of a challenge. It also needs to improve on the same problem most games of the genre have; as you acquire new characters, older characters that you got at the start fall off. You have to replace your units with better ones, and while this does give each unit an identity to be highlighted, it makes weaker units feel terrible to play, and your favorites might not make the cut in your active squadron.

Taking characters to their best set, like legendary weapons and gear, is satisfactory, making progression enjoyable. Graphically it doesn't have great models for the characters, but levels and abilities are visually appealing. The art design and character design are where the game shines, giving a touch sense of Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics.

If you enjoy turn-based combat and strategy games such as Fire Emblem, Command and Conquer, and anime, you might want to give this title a shot. It is a great game that could use a sequel to improve its base.

Finally finished The Diofield Chronicle at 34 hours doing everything I could do in the game. I really wanted to like this game a lot. I was really impressed with the demo and the first chapter. The real-time SRPG blend was fresh and promising and it was really ambitious with its political scope and ensemble of characters. But unfortunately, the game just turn out to be a big disappointment since ultimately, The Diofield Chronicle is just a game with plenty of great ideas with bad executions.

The gameplay is the game's strongest suit. You command 4 units while you can assign another character to each unit to switch them out. Making it a total of 8 characters available to use in each battle. Each character falls into one of 4 main types. Melee, ranged, cavalry, and mage. Each main type is spilt into subtypes based on the weapon types such as range units can be either archery or gun units.

Furthermore the game allows a lot of upgrading, from weapon trees, and each weapon has different abilities the unit can use. There are also skill points you can spend to upgrade abilities such as status effect lasting longer and abilities doing more damage.

Plus you can apply skill points to each character to give them permanent boosts such as higher stat increases and doing more damage to certain types of enemy units. Not to mention you can also upgrade summons to assist you in battle such as increasing the range of Bahamut's attacks.

There is a lot of depth in upgrading your units for the real-time SRPG. It's a very nice idea that blends standard SRPG in games such as Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics while allowing free movement and the game is active at all times unless you pause the game to perform commands for your characters such as movement and attacking.

However, while the gameplay was entertaining up to the midpoint of the game. In the end, due to the various options the game gives you to get stronger and the abundant amount of quests the game supplies you for resources, especially if you complete each one of them with speed and none of your units get incapacitated. Ultimately, I found the game to be terribly off-balance.

By the ending points of The Diofield Chronicle, I found myself to be too strong, so strong that I eliminated any sense of challenge, and quite frankly, the game has gotten much more boring to play since nobody ever poses a true threat to my units. Not to mention certain abilities at this point of the game can one-shot enemies with ease.

This led to my biggest complaint about the game, the story. The Diofield Chronicle is a very messy and out-of-focus tale about the power struggle between the kingdom and the empire fighting for control of the Diofield island.

So the group of the main characters, The Blue Foxes, get dispatched everywhere around the island to deal with problems from rescuing church members to dealing with riots and demi-humans to pushing back the empire.

Initially, I noticed each main quest was directly unrelated to the previous quest but I believed the game was going for an episodic approach when each main quest was self contain enough, and eventually it will build up to something grand and everything will be neatly connected near the end of the game.

But the problem is there is plenty of plot points that remain unresolved by the time the credits roll. From the church to the Jade research to the personal philosophies of characters. It just felt very half-baked and not fully explored to its fullest potential. It just made the game's storytelling into a chunk of sloppy grand ambition that never feels truly satisfying.

One of my biggest criticism is the ending of the game. I won't spoil what happens but it was just very unsatisfying and the explanation for the huge twist at the very end just felt shoehorned with no build-up. Not to mention it was very hard to care for the final boss at all since he just appears out of thin air with nobody mentioning him at all until the final chapter.

Characters just overall felt flat and one-dimensional and not a single character develops in a positive matter. It's extremely hard for me to not love and care for a single character by the time I put down the controller for a game but The Diofield Chronicle achieves that extremely hard feat.

I felt like the game just went from a quantity-over-quality approach to the character. You will have more characters in The Blue Foxes that you know what to do with them from a gameplay perspective. And each character has thier own side quest to try to flesh them out, but it just feels like it wasn't enough. It's almost like they needed more interaction and involvement with the game's overall story. Plus some characters' side quests are incomplete with thier storylines.

Plus, it's a very common complaint that the main characters are generally unlikeable and I can understand that. It's not uncommon for main characters like Andrias to be cold and aloof. However, he just remains like that for the entirety of the game with no sign of changing. Then you have the bloodthirsty noblewoman Waltaquin who only cares for death and destruction and Freddrick, while started off as reasonable, ended up developing in a negative sense. And you have Iscarion, who remained level-headed despite his conflicting political views.

I won't spoil huge details of how the main characters panned out throughout the game and the different perspectives of each main character made the game interesting with how they approached different scenarios. But sadly, the lack of any character development or substantial writing just hurt how the overall story was laid out, especially after chapter 5.

The Diofield Chronice had a lot of promise with a lot of bright ideas. It introduces a setting with a lot of political clashes and conflict and the real-time SRPG is a fun concept on paper. However I just feel like the game ran out of money and time during development to truly realize these ideas to thier full potential and in the end, we just got a very abrupt ending with almost no build-up to that conclusion. It's almost like the game needed to be an extra 20-25 hours longer to flesh out thier promising ideas.

My final verdict is, if you want to play the game for its gameplay then go ahead, it's still generally good despite how unbalanced and overly easy it can get. The real-time SRPG is still a fresh concept but quite frankly, if you gonna play this for the story, then it just going to be a rushed disappointment in various ways and I can easily recommend other SRPGs that tell a much better political grand epic. The Diofield Chronicle makes Fire Emblem Three Houses a very coherent and focused story in comparison.

Quick Review

I got the Platinum in just about 21 hours. The game had many interesting ideas in its story and gameplay, but feels lacking in its execution.

I enjoyed the heavy political warfare story and liked that it was relatively down to earth mostly. There's no secret gods that we need to eventually beat and it's relatively light on the supernatural side of things too. There's a lot of events covered and many are interesting, but I felt that the game breezes through them too quickly. Not enough time is spent on fleshing out the events to make them more meaningful. Pacing is incredibly quick with a lot of time jumps too.

Story is mostly straightforward and easy to understand so that's nice. The strongest part of the story is basically the ending which was very surprising.

Gameplay is pretty easy on Normal. I didn't try Hard, but apparently it's not much more difficult. Your characters get strong pretty quickly as you unlock their abilities, make/purchase better weapons with better skills and start upgrading such skills in the skill tree. On the other end, enemies and stage difficulties don't keep pace. They just get a bump in stats, but not much changes mechanically for them other than seeing more enemies with multiple health bars, but that's not much of an issue at that point where I can blitz through many enemies. You can pretty much spam skills at this point.

I did liked the customization and while I disliked how skills are tied to weapons, I got used to them by the end probably because the best skills are attached to the best weapons. As for the Adjutant system, I wished their passives are also shared instead of just skills. The combination of passives can make things really interesting even if it would break the system more.

I still think the battle party is smaller than I'd liked with just four characters for a strategy/tactical game. It promotes acting as one single team instead of dividing them up to attack different locations. After a while, the four basic classes does feel lacking in variety even if there's two different set of weapon skills per classes.

With all of that said, I did enjoyed the gameplay. It's pretty fast pace for a tactical game and putting it on 1.5x speed makes it intense at times. I'm just glad that a form of Growlanser's combat lives on to this day.

I liked the characters overall, but most don't get any real development or contribute much to the story. It's even worse for the 3 optional characters who don't even speak in cutscenes except for the side missions where they get the focus.

I don't regret paying full price for this at all, but I suspect many people will. Hopefully, a sequel is made because the game had many interesting ideas and the ending had a sequel hook.

Diofield Chronicle:

Setzkastenoptik.
Alles wirkt steril, nur um dann künstlich verwaschen zu werden. Konnte ich bei keinem Pixelspiel wie 3Dot Heroes oder Octopath Traveler leiden, weil es beide Dinge nicht erfüllt.
Es ist weder retro, noch schön. Es ist nichts von beidem.

Die Charaktere haben kaum Hintergrundinformationen oder Emotionen.
Selbst ein Wikipediaeintrag fühlt sich gegen die Dialoge von Diofield Chronicle an wie eine Seifenoper.

Viel zu leicht.
Es ist kein wirkliches Stragegiespiel. dieselben Dinge funktionieren das ganze Spiel über, man hat nur 4 Einheiten und die Level sind schlauchig. Alles Dinge, die einem Strategiespiel widersprechen. Spielt es mindestens auf schwer. Selbst auf dem neugepatchten "sehr schwierigen Modus" war es immer noch eins der leichteren Spiele.

Gespräche nicht überspringbar.
Da man auf höherem Schwierigkeitsgrad ggf. eine Mission noch einmal spielen muss, ist das mehr als nervig.

Der Cursor wird auf Gegner gezogen, das Problem ist, dass man oftmals direkt neben einen Gegner gegen möchte und das ist oft hakelig.
Manchmal wird der Cursor durch das "Autoaiming" auf Untergrund o.Ä. gezogen und man kann an diesem Punkt dann überhaupt gar nichts anklicken, selbst den Gegner nicht.
Passiert nicht ständig, aber nervt. Das Spiel pausiert im Befehlsmodus, warum braucht man da eine "Zielhilfe"?

Es gibt keinen Anreiz andere Einheiten zu nutzen, als die besten die man hat. Manche Einheiten haben ggf. einen 1,2 Multiplikator gegen bestimmte Einheitenarten.. aber wenn sie nur halb so viel Schaden machen, bringt mir das wirklich gar nichts.

Wenn ein Gegner stirbt, schreit er JEDES MAL! einen Satz.
Jede Fraktion hat hier denselben Satz. Kein Scherz. Wenn ihr gegen das Imperium kämpft, werde ich 20x hören: "LOOONG LIIIVE THE EMPIREEEE!" In voller Lautstärker, immer wenn ein Gegner stirbt. Warum sollte das auch nicht nerven.

Die meisten Charakterskills lassen sich nur mit 10 Fertigkeitspunkten freischalten. Nun kriegt man aber nur einen Fertigkeitspunkt pro Level.
Wie viele Level muss man also rumsitzen ohne auch nur einen Skill freizuschalten? .. genau. Ein paar Skills sind von 1 auf 3 auf 10 gestaffelt. Warum nicht bei allen?
Man hat am Ende des Spiels nichts mehr zu tun.

Außer sich eben dieses anzutun. Das Ende.. war unglaublich schlecht. Es erklärt keine einzige Handlung des Spiels, es stellt eher alle in Frage. Wie unfassbar lieblos.

DioField Chronicle made me a slut for RTwP. Truly I am down bad for it.

This is some of the most fun gameplay I have experienced in a long time. Maybe it's because I primarily play games with turn-based combat, which has historically been my favorite. RTwP is a niche genre and I'm surprised I haven't encountered it sooner (except maybe for Final Fantasy XII albeit it was clunky). It's likely due to the fact I'm primarily a console gamer. Everything about the mechanics in DC felt deliberate, intentional, and carefully thought out before implementation.

It felt refreshing in so many different ways and dare I say RTwP is almost superior to tb because it gets the best of both worlds - as an isometric SRPG, it feels much less grindy than tb combat, every battle is unique, and it functions like a gameboard but with more freedom since the player isn't confined to a single tile or square on the board. As someone who isn't super into RTS, this is the perfect solution for me. Lowkey kinda mad I'm late to the party.

Much to my surprise, graphics look lovely on the switch with no lag or embarassing frame rate, and it plays comfortably with a controller too. Obviously mouse and keyboard is superior for the genre but regretably I don't yet have a pc.

As far as gameplay goes, there was never a single dull moment. It never felt like a chore. I actually 100% the game; I completed every mission within its timeframe and every mission without any allies dying. Both of these tasks yield the necessary resources required for skill tree advancement. I maxed out all of the skill trees and started NG+ on hard.

I have two main complaints with this game, but imo these can be looked past. Narratively, the story does fall a bit short. Maybe because it's confusing a lot of the time, felt overly convoluted, and because the ending was both unexpected and unsatisfying. Perhaps a combination of these factors but at least the voice acting was pleasant. My second gripe is that the game is too easy for people experienced in strategy games. Even though this was my first RTwP, I was able to get the hang of it immediately. I would say that experienced players of strategy games in general should consider starting on hard difficulty for their first playthrough, since NG+ unlocks extra hard difficulty. The only distinction in the difficulty levels is how much damage you receive, nothing else. Also, MC is kinda unlikeable and arrogant but whatever.

In the end, this is a really solid game. 10/10 for gameplay, perhaps 5/10 for story, and 4/10 for character depth.

I used to be such a massive Squaresoft fan growing up. From the PS3 era though they lost that sparkle for me. There are occasional flashes showing that atmosphere and wonder that once pulled my heart strings but they are fleeting glimpse's of beauty in a dying landscape. The DioField Chronicle is one such example of this in one package. The fact is I should have liked this more than I do, I wanted to like this more than I do. I can see what it is trying to do and parts of it are excellent but it doesn't reach the heights I feel it should.

Let's break this down into a two fold list.

What The Diofield Chronicle does right:

The character artwork is frankly, stunning. I mean just look at the box art here. It feels like a pencil drawing filled in with water colour paint only done crisper digitally. I love the art design for every character in the game, it gives me real Vagrant Story / Final Fantasy XII / Ivalice vibes to it. The voice acting equally shares a similar slightly British Shakespearean tone to it those games did and I think the casting for each character is absolutely spot on. In rare times when lines like "Faith may shine a light on the soul, but the church is in no place to hold the lantern" are said in this atmosphere is when The Diofield Chronicle shines brightest.

What The Diofield Chronicles does wrong:

Though I like the voice actors themselves the game feels like it has little direction so a lot of the performances end up feeling a little flat. Coinciding with that, lines like the above mentioned are sadly few and far between. Character motivations are often completely bizarre or passive aggressive during scenes. One character is just so blatantly evil that they may as well have had her twiddling a 1930's moustache laughing manically yet there is no explanation why and all interactions around it are just so unbelievable. Some of the characters also just feel very one dimensional or have personality switches at odd times it felt. Just no consistency. The story itself starts fairly interesting but the plot points never actually connect to form a cohesive whole. Many aspects brought up as if they would have greater impact never get resolved or mentioned in a way that feels like they are taken seriously. I started to lose interest fast in a lot of the characters and the story which just felt too long to go anywhere and ended on such a frustrating whimper leaving a very bitter taste in my mouth. Honestly the game feels too long and yet rushed at the same time in the way it tells it's story.

The combat whilst interesting at first soon becomes a chore. It's a SRPG that you control only 4 units for each battle with a support character for each character allowing access to their skills. It's semi real time directing these characters in an exaggerated isometric view killing humans and monsters on each map. Each character has skills based on their type gained from the weapon they have equipped and some placement and summons aside that is pretty much it. While some combat systems evolve or throw enemies or scenarios to keep it fresh and interesting that never happens to Diofield. Each battle feels the same, most of the maps are reused repeatedly and halfway through the game you've really seen everything there is. The game does feature a decent sized character roster but when two archers are identical in skills and stats due to equipment there really is no need to change who you are using at any point either strategically or for variety. I changed two character just because I preferred their art design but otherwise never used most of the party available because once you get a good balance or strategy there is simply no incentive. The last couple of chapters I was really just fed up of the combat due to this.

All that said though I didn't hate my time with it, I just didn't like it that much either. I appreciate SquareEnix investing and experimenting with a mid budget title like this and certain aspects of it were genuinely good, it's just it really could have been so much better. Overall just a disappointment.

+ Stunning art.
+ I love the voice casting and atmosphere.

- The story, dialogue and character development are poorly written.
- The combat lacks variety, swapping characters is mostly pointless and becomes a rote experience.

The DioField Chronicle feels like the definition of a C-tier game. The story is not very interesting and told in a way that makes it even less compelling, often just showing maps and arrows of movement around the map. The gameplay is fun enough, with an RTS-like strategy RPG core, but it's trivially broken such that it's incredibly easy. I was using the same strategy from hour one to the credits, and even the final boss went down in something like 30 seconds. Progression is also weird, with skills being tied to weapons and a skill tree to upgrade said skills -- so there's no point in upgrading any skills that aren't on the best weapons. All in all, not a very compelling game, though it is quite pretty looking.

Boring and repetitive combat. Rushed, disjointed and very fast paced story. Ending also feels rushed, like they ran out of budget in the middle of development so they just, CUT! Go to credit! It also seems like they're doing a sequel bait.

Characters are mostly boring and uninteresting, the worst offender is your main character Andrias, he might seem cool and collected, but throughout the story you will realize that’s all he is. Many characters tried to point out that he is also kind and caring, but in his own way, however that doesn’t help when, whenever anyone points it out, Andrias will just deflect it and end the conversation and he goes back to being cool, even borderline cold to his friend.

Fredret has a very bad development, where he seems wise at first, but then at the final chapter he is suddenly a raging bull that just wants to kill everything. This change happens almost instantly, the penultimate chapter he seems wise and planning, and once the final chapters kicks in, his IQ drops to 0.

Waltaquin is also like this, she is the only interesting character at first, and then at some point she just… changes. I mean, there is a hint for this change, not as bad as the first two I mentioned, but it still feels very instant.

The other character, like Iscarion, Tremina and any other, might as well be a background character. They chime in cutscene a little bit, helps with the plan, but doesn’t really grow.

All this happens because of how the story is told. They tried to do the second half of Fire Emblem Three Houses, where after each battle there will be a narration explaining the gist of what’s happening in the world. Except DioField does it the whole game. Making the story feel very fast paced. Not to mention, a lot of the important story beat is being told by the narrator, instead of the characters talking to each other, reducing any potential emotional feeling or surprise you might have. The change in personality that I talked about previously also happens here, in the narration, so does when an important character leaves your party, important people dying, etc.

As for the combat, it’s boring. It’s supposed to be an RTS, Real Time STRATEGY. But all the strategy you need is to target 1 enemy until it dies and dodge the occasional AoE. Oh and Andrias is really OP, he can probably solo the entire battle with the right equipment and item. There’s no creativity in your objective, it splits into two, defending barricades, or eliminating enemies. But defending barricades also means eliminating every enemy, so… yeah.
I played on hard and there’s really no challenge at all.

One last thing, the skills. This part is also very basic, each class (class, yes, not character) usually has like 5 or 6 skills for the entire game. What skill you have is decided on what equipment you have equipped, that’s not much of a problem. The problem is that a lot of the difference in the skill is just its damage, AoE size, and what status effect it gives. Sometimes a skill can move you forward or backward, but that’s it. Again, no creativity. There’s also healing skills, but that’s also pretty standard.
Heck, Andrias first ever skill, Assassination will be the only one you will be using for him 80% of the time because it is just too powerful.

Oh wait, there’s also summons, useful early game, forgotten halfway. Bahamut and Goldhorne(?) is the first 2 that you get, you don’t need anything else.

Starts out so incredibly strong. The gameplay isn’t deep, but it’s fun and really unique when you first begin playing. Finished the demo, couldn’t wait to play the full game. Booted it up and quickly realized I had seen everything the game had to offer in the demo.

Spam Assassinate, Sanctuary, and Meteor Fall. Win game. Enemies don’t change. Battle conditions don’t change. Skills don’t change.

One thing that does change are the characters. They grow and their opinions change based on the events around them. It feels quite ”mature” and I did really enjoy this aspect of the game.

Maybe pick it up when it’s like $15. Disappointing because the potential is there. It’s clear as day. They just didn’t capitalize on it.

The DioField Chronicle

Está bien, se puede hacer un poco complicado seguir el hilo con tantos nombres y como se cuenta...

Algunas cosas de la trama molan y el gameplay también, si hacen otro deberían acabar de pulir unas cosas tanto gameplay como trama.

(7/10)

Un 2º ojito...