Detectivefail
2023
I’ve waited several years for Phantom Brigade and after being on Epic Store early access for quite some time now. The game has finally launched in steam on version 1.0. So I had to play it. This means retaking the capital city or clearing every province. I only completed the former since the latter takes up way too much time. And is it worth the wait? Well…
Maybe. It has some things to be concerned about.
First, the game is set in a sandbox fictional world where you control a group of mechs who can use a prototype device to see a bit into the future and “predict” what the enemy will do for the next five seconds. In those five seconds, you may position your mech squad to run, dash, shield, or attack the enemy within that time frame. Once you’re sure of your commands, you can lock in your planning phase and let the real-time kick in and watch as your mechs go toe to toe against hostile enemies. If your enemies are still alive, you’ll have to plan for the next five seconds on the timeline and continue inputting your planning phase before executing. This will repeat until all enemy hostiles are eliminated.
This is the main hook of the combat of Phantom Brigade and honestly, it is satisfying going into combat and watching those moves play out. Especially, when I had to face off multiple enemies against a small squad. Making my chances for victory slim, but with careful planning, positioning, and knowledge of what my weapons could do and how far my mechs could move. Anything is possible to achieve victory.
I’d say it took me between one to three hours before I got the hang of things and once I had unlocked 4 mechs in my squad. You don’t unlock a full squad off the bat. You need to unlock it from the upgrade menu in the overworld. Once I had a full squad, I became more confident in conquering new territories.
Or as the game likes to call it, provinces. At the start, you and your crew hold no provinces at the start. And as you look at the world map. You can see quite a lot of enemy territory. Each with their levels marking how dangerous they are and the capital.
It may look easy at first glance to retake a province, but you’ll need to contest the area first. Where you'll need the Homeguard to help. Think of them as allies. From there a meter of your forces and the enemies is displayed. Winning battles in the contested area or taking a key objective like cities, outposts, patrols and more will reduce the enemy meter. Do enough battles, and soon enough you can take back the province from enemy hands.
This is the rinse and repeat of Phantom Brigade and one of the key points of my following critique of the game.
First, taking provinces, I enjoyed in the beginning to mid-game until I got bored of doing the same thing again. And again. And again. I became fatigued as my pilots do since nearly every battle became samey after retaking a province. Sure, there are other features the game has, like enemy patrols and different units defending caches and key locations, which do a bit to randomize the back-and-forth battles.
But there just isn’t enough of a main hook to appeal to me more. And granted I admit I'm more of a story player, instead of gameplay first. However, I still enjoy games on the opposite side. And this game hits some of those notes well. Except it could be better.
Second, it would’ve been nice to replay the whole battle. Yes, there is a replay feature, but that only works after 1 turn. So if a battle took an ‘x’ amount of turns the player has the option to see the whole mission play out in real-time without any interruptions. Kinda like how Super Meat Boy does it.
Third, inject some story narrative in me to care more about ‘player-driven stories.’ This is ripped straight from the steam description. And I find it a bit misleading. Since, the game shows random events happening on the world map which can make the player choose various decisions from helping the townspeople, investigating, and even espionage outcomes like holding a captive. But, outside of the overlying objective of retaking the capital or retaking all provinces. There just isn’t enough within the contents of the game to make the player relate more to those objectives.
Fourth, there is no pilot progression at all. So taking your pilots into continuous battles will not yield them any bonus skills or hidden passive they’ll unlock later on. They’ll lose health if they sustain enough damage in combat and you can recruit more pilots. But that’s it. The only thing they’re good for is being substituted if my pilot has low health after repeated engagements with the enemy. Make pilots matter.
Fifth, the battles in provinces use the same dialog for beginning intro into battles and good lord does it get tiresome to see again and again? I didn’t skip any of the intro battles for each of them to see some variation and to be frank very few changes. Some more flavorful text injected would’ve helped liven up battles a bit. Like: “Hey rebels are holding out here. Take them out,” “There was a drunk party and a lot of enemy pilots are in mechs doing crazy stunts. Take advantage of that and eliminate them," This mission will be a bit difficult, and honestly I recommend you don't enter this battle and retreat. But if you are insane, by all means, go ahead and fight this near unwinnable battle.” You can go further and extend this by adding witty, sarcastic, grumpy, cheerful, and more voices here. Just about anything will do to liven up text in intro battles.
Sixth. Please diversify main objectives in battles. Instead of fighting, have my squad sneak around the map to obtain the cache supplies. Hold out against waves of enemies and escort missions. Additional random elements like helicopters, bigger tanks, very huge mechs or super tiny mechs, implemented to prevent it from being copy paste. Heck, you can even add optional objectives like going into battles with only melee and shields. Win using only missile weapons or sniper etc.
And that’s it. I could say more, but I'll withhold the laundry list. But, I hope you all get the picture with my six points.
Excusing my critique, I would like to say there is a great deal of customization here I enjoyed a great deal. You can set up your mechs with a variety of weapons and body parts. It’s not quite as extensive as Armored Core, but for folks coming from Battletech and Into the Breach, you’ll notice a bit of similarity between the two. Xcom as well. It’s pretty cool after a battle to see what parts you can salvage from the enemy mechs and then using those new parts and weapons to outfit my squad is a great feeling.
To my absolute delight, destructible environments like buildings and destroyable parts for your mechs and enemies add a strategic layer to combat. Since you can see enemies' projectiles and where they’ll hit in the timeline. You can manipulate their a.i. For them to hit buildings or a small cliff in the environment. Thereby saving your unit if they don’t have shields and allowing your squad to mop up the ai’s grave mistake. Once I realized the enemies couldn’t do anything more advanced than following through with their actions, the game became easier.
And this was after I had lowered the difficulty already.
Speaking of difficulties. I have to give the developers praise for making a good list of options available to tweak how hard or easy the game can be. And it is worth editing for any players having trouble with enemies dealing too much damage or your squad overheating due to using their weapons too much.
The music is good. Don’t have any complaints about that, if anything the soundtrack complements the battles, overworld, briefings, and more. It’s subtle and doesn’t detract from the experience.
Overall, I’d say Phantom Brigade is something I’d recommend for those interested in mech games, without a story narrative and purely for gameplay first and a sandbox experience. And even then I hesitate because of the price. So you may be better off waiting to buy the game on a sale. However, it does feature a lot of hours to sink into if you enjoy the gameplay loop of battles, salvage, customizing your mech squad, and retaking provinces. Then this game might be for you.
6/10
Maybe. It has some things to be concerned about.
First, the game is set in a sandbox fictional world where you control a group of mechs who can use a prototype device to see a bit into the future and “predict” what the enemy will do for the next five seconds. In those five seconds, you may position your mech squad to run, dash, shield, or attack the enemy within that time frame. Once you’re sure of your commands, you can lock in your planning phase and let the real-time kick in and watch as your mechs go toe to toe against hostile enemies. If your enemies are still alive, you’ll have to plan for the next five seconds on the timeline and continue inputting your planning phase before executing. This will repeat until all enemy hostiles are eliminated.
This is the main hook of the combat of Phantom Brigade and honestly, it is satisfying going into combat and watching those moves play out. Especially, when I had to face off multiple enemies against a small squad. Making my chances for victory slim, but with careful planning, positioning, and knowledge of what my weapons could do and how far my mechs could move. Anything is possible to achieve victory.
I’d say it took me between one to three hours before I got the hang of things and once I had unlocked 4 mechs in my squad. You don’t unlock a full squad off the bat. You need to unlock it from the upgrade menu in the overworld. Once I had a full squad, I became more confident in conquering new territories.
Or as the game likes to call it, provinces. At the start, you and your crew hold no provinces at the start. And as you look at the world map. You can see quite a lot of enemy territory. Each with their levels marking how dangerous they are and the capital.
It may look easy at first glance to retake a province, but you’ll need to contest the area first. Where you'll need the Homeguard to help. Think of them as allies. From there a meter of your forces and the enemies is displayed. Winning battles in the contested area or taking a key objective like cities, outposts, patrols and more will reduce the enemy meter. Do enough battles, and soon enough you can take back the province from enemy hands.
This is the rinse and repeat of Phantom Brigade and one of the key points of my following critique of the game.
First, taking provinces, I enjoyed in the beginning to mid-game until I got bored of doing the same thing again. And again. And again. I became fatigued as my pilots do since nearly every battle became samey after retaking a province. Sure, there are other features the game has, like enemy patrols and different units defending caches and key locations, which do a bit to randomize the back-and-forth battles.
But there just isn’t enough of a main hook to appeal to me more. And granted I admit I'm more of a story player, instead of gameplay first. However, I still enjoy games on the opposite side. And this game hits some of those notes well. Except it could be better.
Second, it would’ve been nice to replay the whole battle. Yes, there is a replay feature, but that only works after 1 turn. So if a battle took an ‘x’ amount of turns the player has the option to see the whole mission play out in real-time without any interruptions. Kinda like how Super Meat Boy does it.
Third, inject some story narrative in me to care more about ‘player-driven stories.’ This is ripped straight from the steam description. And I find it a bit misleading. Since, the game shows random events happening on the world map which can make the player choose various decisions from helping the townspeople, investigating, and even espionage outcomes like holding a captive. But, outside of the overlying objective of retaking the capital or retaking all provinces. There just isn’t enough within the contents of the game to make the player relate more to those objectives.
Fourth, there is no pilot progression at all. So taking your pilots into continuous battles will not yield them any bonus skills or hidden passive they’ll unlock later on. They’ll lose health if they sustain enough damage in combat and you can recruit more pilots. But that’s it. The only thing they’re good for is being substituted if my pilot has low health after repeated engagements with the enemy. Make pilots matter.
Fifth, the battles in provinces use the same dialog for beginning intro into battles and good lord does it get tiresome to see again and again? I didn’t skip any of the intro battles for each of them to see some variation and to be frank very few changes. Some more flavorful text injected would’ve helped liven up battles a bit. Like: “Hey rebels are holding out here. Take them out,” “There was a drunk party and a lot of enemy pilots are in mechs doing crazy stunts. Take advantage of that and eliminate them," This mission will be a bit difficult, and honestly I recommend you don't enter this battle and retreat. But if you are insane, by all means, go ahead and fight this near unwinnable battle.” You can go further and extend this by adding witty, sarcastic, grumpy, cheerful, and more voices here. Just about anything will do to liven up text in intro battles.
Sixth. Please diversify main objectives in battles. Instead of fighting, have my squad sneak around the map to obtain the cache supplies. Hold out against waves of enemies and escort missions. Additional random elements like helicopters, bigger tanks, very huge mechs or super tiny mechs, implemented to prevent it from being copy paste. Heck, you can even add optional objectives like going into battles with only melee and shields. Win using only missile weapons or sniper etc.
And that’s it. I could say more, but I'll withhold the laundry list. But, I hope you all get the picture with my six points.
Excusing my critique, I would like to say there is a great deal of customization here I enjoyed a great deal. You can set up your mechs with a variety of weapons and body parts. It’s not quite as extensive as Armored Core, but for folks coming from Battletech and Into the Breach, you’ll notice a bit of similarity between the two. Xcom as well. It’s pretty cool after a battle to see what parts you can salvage from the enemy mechs and then using those new parts and weapons to outfit my squad is a great feeling.
To my absolute delight, destructible environments like buildings and destroyable parts for your mechs and enemies add a strategic layer to combat. Since you can see enemies' projectiles and where they’ll hit in the timeline. You can manipulate their a.i. For them to hit buildings or a small cliff in the environment. Thereby saving your unit if they don’t have shields and allowing your squad to mop up the ai’s grave mistake. Once I realized the enemies couldn’t do anything more advanced than following through with their actions, the game became easier.
And this was after I had lowered the difficulty already.
Speaking of difficulties. I have to give the developers praise for making a good list of options available to tweak how hard or easy the game can be. And it is worth editing for any players having trouble with enemies dealing too much damage or your squad overheating due to using their weapons too much.
The music is good. Don’t have any complaints about that, if anything the soundtrack complements the battles, overworld, briefings, and more. It’s subtle and doesn’t detract from the experience.
Overall, I’d say Phantom Brigade is something I’d recommend for those interested in mech games, without a story narrative and purely for gameplay first and a sandbox experience. And even then I hesitate because of the price. So you may be better off waiting to buy the game on a sale. However, it does feature a lot of hours to sink into if you enjoy the gameplay loop of battles, salvage, customizing your mech squad, and retaking provinces. Then this game might be for you.
6/10
2023
This review of Fire Emblem Engage is going to be a bit unorthodox compared to how I usually structure my reviews. Particularly, because I don’t want to make this review longer than intended. I’ll dive into the main criticisms I have for the game then head into what the game does well.
For starters, the game does not have a lot of room to experiment with classes. And by this I mean there is a high cost at 2.5k to buy a master and second seals, to change into other classes. However, if you buy the DLC then. These seals among other items and armory items are 30% off. I find the high cost to experiment more with classes to be a detriment. There are A LOT of classes to choose from and I would’ve liked the ease to switch between any of them. The cost for either is simply too high. At 2.5k each the game simply doesn’t throw enough money at you to buy seals at your leisure. Granted the game does give you free seals sometimes when you open chests or finish a chapter, but you cannot count on either of these instances when both options are not available upon completing a chapter. Sure you can get bonus money from receiving military funds from each nation. But using them on donations seems a far better investment. By donating to a country you can see a higher gold yield in fighting skirmishes there. So your return on investment is pretty good. Although, this isn't balanced well, because you can be out of money to buy other materials you may need to upgrade weapons, buy items, healing items like vulnaries or staves first. And then what are you left with in the end? Zero money.
This leads me to another point. If the high cost is an issue then surely the game has a solution or band-aid for it right? You’re right. Except you need to pay the expansion pass for the first wave in granting you a silver card which reduces all prices in item and armory shops by 30%. Which comes out to 1750 seal price each. Which is better than having to pay 2.5k. But, the fact you have to buy the DLC to access the silver card is not a band-aid solution. It enforces a policy of buying into the expansion pass to reduce the shop prices by 30% and granting you other emblems, stat boosting items, and more. And sure some might see it as a worthy investment since you get more than you wanted as a whole package with DLC waves too. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t excuse the fact the silver card is an item exclusive to the DLC. And as far as I know you cannot obtain a silver card in the base game.
My suggestions to tweak this would be to lower seals to 1750 or lower and increase gold rewards. Whether by completing in-game story chapters or skirmishes to give a flat rate. Sure you can go up against skirmishes that drop gold. But what about normal skirmishes? In my playthrough, I had to rely on a certain character due to her skill granting me a chance for bonus gold. An increase in gold rewards and a decrease in pricing for seals would be nice. Perhaps in a patch? Well let's wait and see. Moving on.
Inheriting sp skills are too expensive for some skills. It takes 1-3k skill points to build enough for one unit and even then you may only get to inherit 1 skill right at the endgame. Sure you could pay a small amount of sp for skills below 1000 or below 3000. However, other skills can cost 4-5k. Yes, there are ways to increase sp points by using emblem skills like Great Sacrifice, and other skills. Yet, the cost in higher tier skills is simply too much. How can I experiment with my classes when the skills I want cost too much? An easy way to remedy this could’ve been lowering sp skills and increasing sp gain to offset this weird imbalance between heavily priced sp skills and a low gain to increase sp points.
The story is subpar and has a lot of lows. When I mean the story is subpar and has a lot of lows I mean it. The game primarily holds the player into a fantasy world too entrenched in the nostalgia-bait nature of previous titles in the series from FE1->FE3H. Sure it's a new world with new characters and with their history. With stakes and consequences that do occur in the game. Nonetheless, The story relies too heavily on the divine dragon to solve every single problem throughout Elyos. I found the formula and other structures which I won’t go into too much detail about due to spoilers. Copy and paste throughout. And this is repeated again and again as you travel to each new area until you make a full circle back to your starting location once again in Elyos.
Granted there are moments I’ll give the story where I was surprised and didn’t expect, but having silly solutions you can see a mile away from teasing you early on, simply doesn’t work. When I look at a plot, especially in an early game, there will come a point where too many cards are shown where the next plot device such as villains/antagonists and revelations nearly becomes transparent to the naked eye. And while some may favor this approach like I do. The execution here leaves much to be desired.
As if I'm being held by the hand. Or fed breadcrumbs to a door where I can see what will happen next. I’m not all-knowing however, and I can’t predict everything, but I kid you not when you have a mysterious hooded person + another unknown character in the next following scene that doesn’t show a great amount of subtlety(And this is displayed pretty early on). There are also I would say two points during the endgame where I was shaking my head by introducing a trope I love, but poorly executed in a vain attempt to come back to the roots of where we started. And another issue where the problem could not be resolved without the divine dragon once again coming to save the day or figure out the solution to said problem/s.
Some suggested improvements I could think of off the top of my head I'll say later on the review.
World-building is too simple. And doesn’t engage the player enough. Overworld map structure is indicative of this. When I mean world-building is too simple. I mean how the world of Elyos when looking at the map is just lazy writing in general. It's constructed as a circle and we get an early exposition of how the world came to be and the emblems. Another game that had a different shape was "Triangle strategy." For you guessed it triangle in the overworld map. Which upon looking at the overworld also conforms under a triangle. I had the same critique for that game but for different reasons. But that’s a story for another day. Back to Engage, we don’t get enough on the world’s politics if any. We don’t get much character background or relationship between each nation’s leaders and their current agenda beyond the early exposition again. When a leader is mentioned they are quickly forgotten for the sake of the plot and of course the main character's party to move on. I wanted to know more about Brodia’s lifestyle. Uh, any information on Firene’s king? Or another nation’s leader’s missing spouse or wife? Why aren’t pets used more in the lore? You just adopt then that's it? History of the emblems and more is given in the game, but what about any instances of emblem usage in the past? Like, show me past battles where so-so nations fought for an emblem. There is always discussion or mention of events a thousand years ago. What about flashbacks and more? Like seeing how Brodia attacks Elusia. Or Solm and Firene’s relationship? No deities? No unnatural events upsetting gods? Oh wait, never mind we need to worship the divine dragon. Who cares about all that other stuff? Let us pray to the divine dragon.
The game plays way too safe with copy-paste formulas. Not going to say exactly what they are in case of spoilers. But there is a rinse-and-repeat formula as you delve deeper into chapters. And I already said what I needed to say earlier in the story section. Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more with more risks to the story and sequence of events that follow. As I continued on to each new nation, it quickly became apparent what will happen next. In a rinse-and-repeat fashion.
Recruits you come across throughout the game. Don’t test the main character enough. Due to their divinity. Should’ve deconstructed the divinity aspect. Made them have more flaws. Make them struggle and keep them from being so perfect. This ties back to the divine dragon solving everyone’s problems. I can remember moments in the game where the main character will falter, but guys don’t worry the power of friendship will make them overcome their failings so they can give us ideas and we just follow him/her. Don’t question it. He/she is the divine dragon! He/she can do it! We just need to follow them! We’ll beat everyone with him by our side! OH MY GOD, IT'S THE DIVINE DRAGON! FORGIVE MY CANDOR PLEASE. Oh, divine dragon? Please help us. Good lord, there is too much of this reverence and worship of the very ground he/she walks. This isn’t exactly what is said in the game, merely paraphrased.
Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more if we didn’t worship the guy/lady and focused more on each character’s flaws. Give me someone who hates the divine dragon in our party, who will constantly butt heads. Heck, a rival or other divine dragon that is too casual and selfish and everything, not the main character. To be a foil. Make our new allies test the main character constantly. Leave our party, gather support against his idea to go with their idea. Give me moments when our divine dragon isn’t so divine. Despair in these scenes. Show the consequences of his flaws more. Make party members desert them or anything to make the divine dragon more than a goody-two-shoes out to save every nation and recruit everyone to their cause. I could list more, but I think you all get the picture. It’s like the developers stuck everything positive and can do no wrong with the main character, gave very slight flaws that could be easily overcome and BAM he/she can do it and solve your problem.
This is where the story, plot, and more start to fall apart and where the crevices become even larger to see the shallowness. All of the above tied together demonstrate a game where the main character is interconnected and used in such a way where they will solve numerous issues as you progress through the story. Again and again, we come upon a new solution from the one and only holy divine dragon!!! And sure I get the game is geared to be less so serious and more lighthearted compared to their predecessors. But its repetitive and overused. And honestly fails to capture my interest. Since I already know what will happen next. And because of my suspension of disbelief, being blasted into space.
Less incentive to see more support conversations. In part due to a lack of options in the hub. One meal? Come on… There are so many support conversations. And very little activities to create more bonding moments with my allies to unlock a new support rank. Sure I could grind endless skirmishes to get support conversations easily by auto-battling, but that’s not as efficient as manual control on every unit. And sure I could get quick supports with my main character and everyone else using gifts I could buy and find. But what about support conversations from one of my units to another? There is no quick way to see that. This could’ve been easily remedied if meal times were more than one time activities, every time you visited the Somniel after a battle. The fact you can only do one meal with two other units in your army is crazy. You have a lot of support logs for each unit.
I want to see what everyone has to offer. If the developers were worried about stat buffs you get from 1 meal, then make every consecutive meal after that give no bonuses. Heck, give me meal tickets based on how I do after each battle to spend in the cafe. That way I don’t use precious meat/vegetable ingredients if you want. Meal tickets for wiping every unit. Meal tickets for grabbing all chests, meal tickets for not losing any unit while on a map, meal tickets for recruiting all units possible on a map, etc. I could list at the top of my head. The real meat of the game is in the supports and I dearly loved watching the ones I wanted to see. So it’s a shame you can’t spend more time with your fellow allies with one meal. Arena doesn’t even help matters since it's randomized and you can only do 3 battles. And here’s the kicker: sometimes the selected unit you want to train with will select a unit to train against where they have no support conversations with. Good lord...
Spoilers abound for past FE characters from their respective games in paralogues. Some spoil more than others. I did not appreciate a big spoiler drop without any warning after ch 3 story battle, in my honest opinion. There is a point, especially in a post-chapter 3 battle where a character from an earlier titles spoils something from their respective game. I haven’t personally played that Fire Emblem entry. So I was incredibly frustrated. Since I was already careful, not playing the mobile game, I actively avoided reading in the wiki, and the internet on spoilers of past games. Only for the newest game to blurt it out. Unforgivable. Especially in a story cutscene. I was looking forward to playing that specific game in the near future in a blind playthrough. So my feelings were soured by this.
Some paralogues spoil some events from their respective games. Via dialogue. Since I haven’t even played every title in the series it’s unreasonable to assume every newcomer will play every game. Especially since some old games can only be played via fan translations and the rest via emulation or buying in their respective digital stores. To be transparent. I have not played FE4, FE5, Marth games, Fates, or Valentia. The rest I have played.
For the paralogues I think that are safe they are FE7 and FE3H.
Paralogues somewhat spoilery? I feel this can depend on the person if they don’t mind or do mind certain aspects. But the paralogues are FE6 & FE8.
For paralogues that do spoil some important elements from their games, they are FE Awakening and FE9 - FE10.
I understand Engage has main characters from past titles and will utilize them to some degree within the game. However I did not expect huge spoiler bombs. All I ask is a simple indicator or warning on the screen to let me know about information related to their respective games and if they have anything concerning their plot, character, or more. And prepare myself to avoid those important pertinent details. Fire Emblem Engage gives no warnings about this. For titles I haven’t played, I did not play their respective paralogues in fear of something spoiling me of their plots, story, important details in regards to their character, etc. I’d rather find out what happens in their respective games.
Granted some do not mind spoilers. This is fine. On the other hand, some are more sensitive to that type of information. Like me. Case in point, Players who like to dive into games completely blind and semi-blind players who do not mind certain aspects of a game to know.
OST for music isn’t a high bar here. The music in the game isn’t all that memorable outside of perhaps a handful of tracks. There are too many melodies or tunes that I find didn’t mesh well with the scenes or tried too hard to be epic and moving with the orchestral instruments. But it fails to capture me in the spirit during the game.
2 early game characters did not endear me at all. Why? Fan-club and their devotion to the divine dragon. They were watching the main character wake up and talk to him/her is a red flag. The fact you get these two characters right at the beginning of the game did not help matters at all. I didn’t want to label them as fanboy and fangirl of the divine dragon since I didn’t see their supports yet… But when I did and granted, I didn’t see all the support logs and I’m sure they have other qualities outside of a fan club for the divine dragon. But seeing these conversations where they’re trying to garner more fans for the Divine Dragon fan club shows how there is a weird devoted fan aspect to the main character. This also extends to mostly every character I've met/recruited in the game so far to worship them to varying degrees.
Which is kinda disturbing to a degree. These matters don’t help at all when the game includes wake-up events when you sleep at the Somniel where characters will go into your room where the main character sleeps and talk your ear off. It's more divine dragon worship, sometimes it's about prayers, sometimes it's about them and sometimes conversations will continue on and on back to how to serve the divine dragon. As if the man/woman is something to be gawked at with conversations in an art museum. I found this aspect of the game creepy and honestly the game could’ve done without it. This is also me watching as many as I could to find any redeeming factors and I can only say it's better here by a small margin than in FE3H tea events. Since they can talk about their lives. And you learn more about the character a bit. But the fact they talk to him/her and pray while they're sleeping only to wake up to no one's surprise why. Each time is frankly weird and again not right. Let them sleep for goodness sake, man. I wouldn’t want someone to talk my ear off when I’m trying to sleep…
Don’t like how the DLC/NSO seems geared to incentivize consumers to pay for membership/DLC. For the DLC if you buy it now you get stat items, 30% off in item/ armor shops, emblem rings and more in the coming waves along with story content. NSO online features two modes you cannot play without going online, seeing deployment rankings, and other stuff you couldn’t use without being online. And while this can be remedied using a 7 day free trial of NSO. What if you already did use the 7-day free trial on an earlier game?
This ties back into the classes. But this time I’ll focus on NSO. Since you had to pay or use a limited 7-day free trial to access online components like coop with another partner and challenge maps in relay trials, Battle against other players on edited maps in outrealm trials, profile cards you can’t send unless you’re online and deployment rankings, so if you want to access these features. You better cough up the money to Nintendo. Certainly, they have a right to manage how they price their downloadable content and pricing their online functionality. It just grinds my gears to see content that could’ve been available for others, being withheld until you cough up money for the company. Especially for online features. Can you imagine if Nintendo only allowed you to use your amiibos for a game. Only if you are currently an NSO subscriber? I love Nintendo, but sometimes some of their decisions leave me shaking my head at times. Anyway, moving on
Villains are flat garnering weak sympathy to think of them as human when they’re not. To expand on this, some scenes showcase the villains and demonstrate their power to a decent degree. However, without going into too specific detail. The execution of their villainous ways leaves much to be desired. I could not help but feel their actions in some maps can be terrifying. But on other maps leave me puzzled since they can do this extent using their power, so why don’t they do it again? This ties back into the plot and how the divine dragon will overcome everything if we listen to them.
I also did not like one villain who kept being a broken record saying the first letter “F” with the last letter “Y” in nearly all the scenes when they would come up. Come on man, don’t guilt trip me with that word. It does not work at all. And it is incredibly repetitive to continue using that word as if the player will miraculously forgive every single one of your atrocities. Granted not all villains fit this mold and I found some more than others who rise above this occasion. However, it does not excuse the fact the villains could’ve been more compelling. I get the point the developers were trying to make with the characters, but it just seems short. Give us scenes making them more human. Give me scenes showing the struggle and demonstrate their villainous ways without remorse. That's all I have to say for my critique of the game. Now let's move onto what the game does well to offset the boatload of criticism i've talked about so far.
The game is a wonderful return to classic Fire Emblem revitalizing the weapon triangle with a "break" system in place. Making enemies feel challenging even on normal. The overworld is gorgeous and I had fun using the free camera to inspect the whole world and see what nooks and crannies our main party could potentially travel to.
A large number of recruits even towards the endgame are fleshed out with full support conversation logs you can see. Out of my whole playthrough, I only completed 1 character support conversation. The rest I was only to get a small-decent chunk for my army alone.
Love the no durability of weapons. So I can keep on using them without fear of them breaking down on me. Except for staves of course, those you will need to buy again.
The voice acting is pretty good. A good majority of the cast has a decent amount of range throughout the game and I didn’t find any bad voice acting at all.
The emblems are really powerful and I love using them throughout my playthrough. Never gets old attaching a lord or not lord on a unit and letting them go attack a decent army against them. Only for my unit to emerge wounded, but still okay. There are various powers in each emblem and I used each of them to their fullest effect throughout my playthrough.
I had fun splitting my armies and designating whichever unit needs an emblem more. And a lot of maps give you the option to split your armies two ways or three ways. The combat is enjoyable to try out different strategies. Thankfully there’s quite a bit of good map design here to give players much freedom to do what they want. Especially when you have resources on that map that could turn the tide of battles like cannons or ballista. Some maps have interesting gimmicks, so those were pretty cool to play in.
I am impressed at the level of polish here, not just in animations and support conversation scenes. But the cutscenes, stills, artwork and opening. The background and colors used throughout the game are vivid and varied. And I have no complaints in seeing every color of the rainbow here. I also had no slowdown, bugs, glitches, or crashes throughout my playthrough and pretty much every battle and more were smooth.
For what it’s worth. I did enjoy some good story beats as I progressed through the game, and there were a couple of surprises I didn’t expect. Some paralogues, at least the ones I finished, were a very nice touch in seeing my old favorites come back to life(in Emblem form) and fighting on their maps from their respective games filled my nostalgia with great joy.
I feel the game is worthy of playing, if you’re still hungry for more Fire Emblem. And despite my long critique of the game above.
I hope my review still gets you to buy the game. My intention is never to gatekeep it. But merely to inform others what I feel could’ve been done better, with evidence, and move on from there. And while Fire Emblem Engage is an all right experience for me. Other’s out there rate the game higher than me and that's fine. That's their experience of what the game means to them and that’s fair. I have loved the series since starting with Awakening, and while I haven’t played the rest in the franchise, it is still a favorite of mine in the turn-based genre. I’m just disappointed at the potential this game could’ve been and held solid throughout. And while I still have those feelings, it does not discourage me from telling every soul I can to buy games in the franchise to keep it afloat. And I encourage anyone who has bought Fire Emblem Engage, to play to the end(if you can). Make your own voice heard on what your experience is for Engage. And type out your thoughts. Doesn’t even have to be as long as this. Short impressions are perfectly acceptable.
Anyway, that’s enough for me. This review got too long for my liking. But I feel I needed to type out what I wanted to say.
7/10
Edited: Due to 1.2 version adding more recreational activities. Thereby allowing you to boost supports between units. So I did a strikethrough on those sections in my review.
For starters, the game does not have a lot of room to experiment with classes. And by this I mean there is a high cost at 2.5k to buy a master and second seals, to change into other classes. However, if you buy the DLC then. These seals among other items and armory items are 30% off. I find the high cost to experiment more with classes to be a detriment. There are A LOT of classes to choose from and I would’ve liked the ease to switch between any of them. The cost for either is simply too high. At 2.5k each the game simply doesn’t throw enough money at you to buy seals at your leisure. Granted the game does give you free seals sometimes when you open chests or finish a chapter, but you cannot count on either of these instances when both options are not available upon completing a chapter. Sure you can get bonus money from receiving military funds from each nation. But using them on donations seems a far better investment. By donating to a country you can see a higher gold yield in fighting skirmishes there. So your return on investment is pretty good. Although, this isn't balanced well, because you can be out of money to buy other materials you may need to upgrade weapons, buy items, healing items like vulnaries or staves first. And then what are you left with in the end? Zero money.
This leads me to another point. If the high cost is an issue then surely the game has a solution or band-aid for it right? You’re right. Except you need to pay the expansion pass for the first wave in granting you a silver card which reduces all prices in item and armory shops by 30%. Which comes out to 1750 seal price each. Which is better than having to pay 2.5k. But, the fact you have to buy the DLC to access the silver card is not a band-aid solution. It enforces a policy of buying into the expansion pass to reduce the shop prices by 30% and granting you other emblems, stat boosting items, and more. And sure some might see it as a worthy investment since you get more than you wanted as a whole package with DLC waves too. Be that as it may, it still doesn’t excuse the fact the silver card is an item exclusive to the DLC. And as far as I know you cannot obtain a silver card in the base game.
My suggestions to tweak this would be to lower seals to 1750 or lower and increase gold rewards. Whether by completing in-game story chapters or skirmishes to give a flat rate. Sure you can go up against skirmishes that drop gold. But what about normal skirmishes? In my playthrough, I had to rely on a certain character due to her skill granting me a chance for bonus gold. An increase in gold rewards and a decrease in pricing for seals would be nice. Perhaps in a patch? Well let's wait and see. Moving on.
Inheriting sp skills are too expensive for some skills. It takes 1-3k skill points to build enough for one unit and even then you may only get to inherit 1 skill right at the endgame. Sure you could pay a small amount of sp for skills below 1000 or below 3000. However, other skills can cost 4-5k. Yes, there are ways to increase sp points by using emblem skills like Great Sacrifice, and other skills. Yet, the cost in higher tier skills is simply too much. How can I experiment with my classes when the skills I want cost too much? An easy way to remedy this could’ve been lowering sp skills and increasing sp gain to offset this weird imbalance between heavily priced sp skills and a low gain to increase sp points.
The story is subpar and has a lot of lows. When I mean the story is subpar and has a lot of lows I mean it. The game primarily holds the player into a fantasy world too entrenched in the nostalgia-bait nature of previous titles in the series from FE1->FE3H. Sure it's a new world with new characters and with their history. With stakes and consequences that do occur in the game. Nonetheless, The story relies too heavily on the divine dragon to solve every single problem throughout Elyos. I found the formula and other structures which I won’t go into too much detail about due to spoilers. Copy and paste throughout. And this is repeated again and again as you travel to each new area until you make a full circle back to your starting location once again in Elyos.
Granted there are moments I’ll give the story where I was surprised and didn’t expect, but having silly solutions you can see a mile away from teasing you early on, simply doesn’t work. When I look at a plot, especially in an early game, there will come a point where too many cards are shown where the next plot device such as villains/antagonists and revelations nearly becomes transparent to the naked eye. And while some may favor this approach like I do. The execution here leaves much to be desired.
As if I'm being held by the hand. Or fed breadcrumbs to a door where I can see what will happen next. I’m not all-knowing however, and I can’t predict everything, but I kid you not when you have a mysterious hooded person + another unknown character in the next following scene that doesn’t show a great amount of subtlety(And this is displayed pretty early on). There are also I would say two points during the endgame where I was shaking my head by introducing a trope I love, but poorly executed in a vain attempt to come back to the roots of where we started. And another issue where the problem could not be resolved without the divine dragon once again coming to save the day or figure out the solution to said problem/s.
Some suggested improvements I could think of off the top of my head I'll say later on the review.
World-building is too simple. And doesn’t engage the player enough. Overworld map structure is indicative of this. When I mean world-building is too simple. I mean how the world of Elyos when looking at the map is just lazy writing in general. It's constructed as a circle and we get an early exposition of how the world came to be and the emblems. Another game that had a different shape was "Triangle strategy." For you guessed it triangle in the overworld map. Which upon looking at the overworld also conforms under a triangle. I had the same critique for that game but for different reasons. But that’s a story for another day. Back to Engage, we don’t get enough on the world’s politics if any. We don’t get much character background or relationship between each nation’s leaders and their current agenda beyond the early exposition again. When a leader is mentioned they are quickly forgotten for the sake of the plot and of course the main character's party to move on. I wanted to know more about Brodia’s lifestyle. Uh, any information on Firene’s king? Or another nation’s leader’s missing spouse or wife? Why aren’t pets used more in the lore? You just adopt then that's it? History of the emblems and more is given in the game, but what about any instances of emblem usage in the past? Like, show me past battles where so-so nations fought for an emblem. There is always discussion or mention of events a thousand years ago. What about flashbacks and more? Like seeing how Brodia attacks Elusia. Or Solm and Firene’s relationship? No deities? No unnatural events upsetting gods? Oh wait, never mind we need to worship the divine dragon. Who cares about all that other stuff? Let us pray to the divine dragon.
The game plays way too safe with copy-paste formulas. Not going to say exactly what they are in case of spoilers. But there is a rinse-and-repeat formula as you delve deeper into chapters. And I already said what I needed to say earlier in the story section. Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more with more risks to the story and sequence of events that follow. As I continued on to each new nation, it quickly became apparent what will happen next. In a rinse-and-repeat fashion.
Recruits you come across throughout the game. Don’t test the main character enough. Due to their divinity. Should’ve deconstructed the divinity aspect. Made them have more flaws. Make them struggle and keep them from being so perfect. This ties back to the divine dragon solving everyone’s problems. I can remember moments in the game where the main character will falter, but guys don’t worry the power of friendship will make them overcome their failings so they can give us ideas and we just follow him/her. Don’t question it. He/she is the divine dragon! He/she can do it! We just need to follow them! We’ll beat everyone with him by our side! OH MY GOD, IT'S THE DIVINE DRAGON! FORGIVE MY CANDOR PLEASE. Oh, divine dragon? Please help us. Good lord, there is too much of this reverence and worship of the very ground he/she walks. This isn’t exactly what is said in the game, merely paraphrased.
Honestly, the game would have benefited a lot more if we didn’t worship the guy/lady and focused more on each character’s flaws. Give me someone who hates the divine dragon in our party, who will constantly butt heads. Heck, a rival or other divine dragon that is too casual and selfish and everything, not the main character. To be a foil. Make our new allies test the main character constantly. Leave our party, gather support against his idea to go with their idea. Give me moments when our divine dragon isn’t so divine. Despair in these scenes. Show the consequences of his flaws more. Make party members desert them or anything to make the divine dragon more than a goody-two-shoes out to save every nation and recruit everyone to their cause. I could list more, but I think you all get the picture. It’s like the developers stuck everything positive and can do no wrong with the main character, gave very slight flaws that could be easily overcome and BAM he/she can do it and solve your problem.
This is where the story, plot, and more start to fall apart and where the crevices become even larger to see the shallowness. All of the above tied together demonstrate a game where the main character is interconnected and used in such a way where they will solve numerous issues as you progress through the story. Again and again, we come upon a new solution from the one and only holy divine dragon!!! And sure I get the game is geared to be less so serious and more lighthearted compared to their predecessors. But its repetitive and overused. And honestly fails to capture my interest. Since I already know what will happen next. And because of my suspension of disbelief, being blasted into space.
Spoilers abound for past FE characters from their respective games in paralogues. Some spoil more than others. I did not appreciate a big spoiler drop without any warning after ch 3 story battle, in my honest opinion. There is a point, especially in a post-chapter 3 battle where a character from an earlier titles spoils something from their respective game. I haven’t personally played that Fire Emblem entry. So I was incredibly frustrated. Since I was already careful, not playing the mobile game, I actively avoided reading in the wiki, and the internet on spoilers of past games. Only for the newest game to blurt it out. Unforgivable. Especially in a story cutscene. I was looking forward to playing that specific game in the near future in a blind playthrough. So my feelings were soured by this.
Some paralogues spoil some events from their respective games. Via dialogue. Since I haven’t even played every title in the series it’s unreasonable to assume every newcomer will play every game. Especially since some old games can only be played via fan translations and the rest via emulation or buying in their respective digital stores. To be transparent. I have not played FE4, FE5, Marth games, Fates, or Valentia. The rest I have played.
For the paralogues I think that are safe they are FE7 and FE3H.
Paralogues somewhat spoilery? I feel this can depend on the person if they don’t mind or do mind certain aspects. But the paralogues are FE6 & FE8.
For paralogues that do spoil some important elements from their games, they are FE Awakening and FE9 - FE10.
I understand Engage has main characters from past titles and will utilize them to some degree within the game. However I did not expect huge spoiler bombs. All I ask is a simple indicator or warning on the screen to let me know about information related to their respective games and if they have anything concerning their plot, character, or more. And prepare myself to avoid those important pertinent details. Fire Emblem Engage gives no warnings about this. For titles I haven’t played, I did not play their respective paralogues in fear of something spoiling me of their plots, story, important details in regards to their character, etc. I’d rather find out what happens in their respective games.
Granted some do not mind spoilers. This is fine. On the other hand, some are more sensitive to that type of information. Like me. Case in point, Players who like to dive into games completely blind and semi-blind players who do not mind certain aspects of a game to know.
OST for music isn’t a high bar here. The music in the game isn’t all that memorable outside of perhaps a handful of tracks. There are too many melodies or tunes that I find didn’t mesh well with the scenes or tried too hard to be epic and moving with the orchestral instruments. But it fails to capture me in the spirit during the game.
2 early game characters did not endear me at all. Why? Fan-club and their devotion to the divine dragon. They were watching the main character wake up and talk to him/her is a red flag. The fact you get these two characters right at the beginning of the game did not help matters at all. I didn’t want to label them as fanboy and fangirl of the divine dragon since I didn’t see their supports yet… But when I did and granted, I didn’t see all the support logs and I’m sure they have other qualities outside of a fan club for the divine dragon. But seeing these conversations where they’re trying to garner more fans for the Divine Dragon fan club shows how there is a weird devoted fan aspect to the main character. This also extends to mostly every character I've met/recruited in the game so far to worship them to varying degrees.
Which is kinda disturbing to a degree. These matters don’t help at all when the game includes wake-up events when you sleep at the Somniel where characters will go into your room where the main character sleeps and talk your ear off. It's more divine dragon worship, sometimes it's about prayers, sometimes it's about them and sometimes conversations will continue on and on back to how to serve the divine dragon. As if the man/woman is something to be gawked at with conversations in an art museum. I found this aspect of the game creepy and honestly the game could’ve done without it. This is also me watching as many as I could to find any redeeming factors and I can only say it's better here by a small margin than in FE3H tea events. Since they can talk about their lives. And you learn more about the character a bit. But the fact they talk to him/her and pray while they're sleeping only to wake up to no one's surprise why. Each time is frankly weird and again not right. Let them sleep for goodness sake, man. I wouldn’t want someone to talk my ear off when I’m trying to sleep…
Don’t like how the DLC/NSO seems geared to incentivize consumers to pay for membership/DLC. For the DLC if you buy it now you get stat items, 30% off in item/ armor shops, emblem rings and more in the coming waves along with story content. NSO online features two modes you cannot play without going online, seeing deployment rankings, and other stuff you couldn’t use without being online. And while this can be remedied using a 7 day free trial of NSO. What if you already did use the 7-day free trial on an earlier game?
This ties back into the classes. But this time I’ll focus on NSO. Since you had to pay or use a limited 7-day free trial to access online components like coop with another partner and challenge maps in relay trials, Battle against other players on edited maps in outrealm trials, profile cards you can’t send unless you’re online and deployment rankings, so if you want to access these features. You better cough up the money to Nintendo. Certainly, they have a right to manage how they price their downloadable content and pricing their online functionality. It just grinds my gears to see content that could’ve been available for others, being withheld until you cough up money for the company. Especially for online features. Can you imagine if Nintendo only allowed you to use your amiibos for a game. Only if you are currently an NSO subscriber? I love Nintendo, but sometimes some of their decisions leave me shaking my head at times. Anyway, moving on
Villains are flat garnering weak sympathy to think of them as human when they’re not. To expand on this, some scenes showcase the villains and demonstrate their power to a decent degree. However, without going into too specific detail. The execution of their villainous ways leaves much to be desired. I could not help but feel their actions in some maps can be terrifying. But on other maps leave me puzzled since they can do this extent using their power, so why don’t they do it again? This ties back into the plot and how the divine dragon will overcome everything if we listen to them.
I also did not like one villain who kept being a broken record saying the first letter “F” with the last letter “Y” in nearly all the scenes when they would come up. Come on man, don’t guilt trip me with that word. It does not work at all. And it is incredibly repetitive to continue using that word as if the player will miraculously forgive every single one of your atrocities. Granted not all villains fit this mold and I found some more than others who rise above this occasion. However, it does not excuse the fact the villains could’ve been more compelling. I get the point the developers were trying to make with the characters, but it just seems short. Give us scenes making them more human. Give me scenes showing the struggle and demonstrate their villainous ways without remorse. That's all I have to say for my critique of the game. Now let's move onto what the game does well to offset the boatload of criticism i've talked about so far.
The game is a wonderful return to classic Fire Emblem revitalizing the weapon triangle with a "break" system in place. Making enemies feel challenging even on normal. The overworld is gorgeous and I had fun using the free camera to inspect the whole world and see what nooks and crannies our main party could potentially travel to.
A large number of recruits even towards the endgame are fleshed out with full support conversation logs you can see. Out of my whole playthrough, I only completed 1 character support conversation. The rest I was only to get a small-decent chunk for my army alone.
Love the no durability of weapons. So I can keep on using them without fear of them breaking down on me. Except for staves of course, those you will need to buy again.
The voice acting is pretty good. A good majority of the cast has a decent amount of range throughout the game and I didn’t find any bad voice acting at all.
The emblems are really powerful and I love using them throughout my playthrough. Never gets old attaching a lord or not lord on a unit and letting them go attack a decent army against them. Only for my unit to emerge wounded, but still okay. There are various powers in each emblem and I used each of them to their fullest effect throughout my playthrough.
I had fun splitting my armies and designating whichever unit needs an emblem more. And a lot of maps give you the option to split your armies two ways or three ways. The combat is enjoyable to try out different strategies. Thankfully there’s quite a bit of good map design here to give players much freedom to do what they want. Especially when you have resources on that map that could turn the tide of battles like cannons or ballista. Some maps have interesting gimmicks, so those were pretty cool to play in.
I am impressed at the level of polish here, not just in animations and support conversation scenes. But the cutscenes, stills, artwork and opening. The background and colors used throughout the game are vivid and varied. And I have no complaints in seeing every color of the rainbow here. I also had no slowdown, bugs, glitches, or crashes throughout my playthrough and pretty much every battle and more were smooth.
For what it’s worth. I did enjoy some good story beats as I progressed through the game, and there were a couple of surprises I didn’t expect. Some paralogues, at least the ones I finished, were a very nice touch in seeing my old favorites come back to life(in Emblem form) and fighting on their maps from their respective games filled my nostalgia with great joy.
I feel the game is worthy of playing, if you’re still hungry for more Fire Emblem. And despite my long critique of the game above.
I hope my review still gets you to buy the game. My intention is never to gatekeep it. But merely to inform others what I feel could’ve been done better, with evidence, and move on from there. And while Fire Emblem Engage is an all right experience for me. Other’s out there rate the game higher than me and that's fine. That's their experience of what the game means to them and that’s fair. I have loved the series since starting with Awakening, and while I haven’t played the rest in the franchise, it is still a favorite of mine in the turn-based genre. I’m just disappointed at the potential this game could’ve been and held solid throughout. And while I still have those feelings, it does not discourage me from telling every soul I can to buy games in the franchise to keep it afloat. And I encourage anyone who has bought Fire Emblem Engage, to play to the end(if you can). Make your own voice heard on what your experience is for Engage. And type out your thoughts. Doesn’t even have to be as long as this. Short impressions are perfectly acceptable.
Anyway, that’s enough for me. This review got too long for my liking. But I feel I needed to type out what I wanted to say.
7/10
Edited: Due to 1.2 version adding more recreational activities. Thereby allowing you to boost supports between units. So I did a strikethrough on those sections in my review.
Front Mission Evolved is weird. Started well, but a bevy of issues kept the game’s momentum from realizing its full potential. Despite some good ideas here.
For starters. I like the Wanzer(mechs you pilot) combat. Kinda like Armored Core(AC). Except you’re mainly fighting on ground level compared to sometimes flighty combat in the AC series. Which surprised me quite a bit. But good lord there are so many things wrong here.
The characters... I wish I could say they're good... Nope. They're garbage and hold no likeability. And granted I didn't expect a great character out the gate, but I still would've liked a character who actually develops or at least in some form retain a bit of interesting personality. And I still didn't see it by the time endgame rolled around. Extremely predictable too as you progress through each Act. Of which there are five, but there are multiple missions within. Acts can take about an hour to complete more or less. Boss battles are pretty good here. Like a puzzled way to beat them and each one is different from the last. Sometimes those battles will be unfair, but re-customizing your Wanzer setup can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
The levels are alright. Early on you mainly fight on street levels. As you progress in each act they’ll take you to new mission levels where the setting changes depending on the biome. So you won’t be fighting Wanzers every day. Level designs are linear, with some leeway to collect collectibles. When you start on-foot sections those are small and have samey corridors too. There is a bit of an arcadey feeling here in that you can go replenish your Wanzer’s ammo and health. I kinda like this feature, since it allows the player to keep the momentum going. And I felt there were enough of them around to manage most levels.
I did not expect some new gameplay elements such as helicopter sections where you blast enemies to smithereens, which is also a nice way to earn income repeatedly if you’re short on cash.
And weirdly enough there are segments to fight on foot... Fighting outside your mech and having to duck behind boxes to eliminate enemies. Is… not good. Feels very janky for movement and combat making the experience not fun. On foot, enemies have basic a.i. Pop out of cover to shoot. Cover back to reload and repeat. You can use different weapons like a bazooka, SMG, shotgun, and more, but I didn’t feel the need since your setup is already powerful enough and enemies can be taken down in several shots. Honestly, the on-foot segments feel like the developers couldn’t realize the identity of the game and decided to mash different elements that feel half-baked. Can’t even try the multiplayer features since the online servers are down as far as I know. These half-measures make the single-player portion suffer and as a result, make the whole game have an identity crisis at times. I feel the developers should’ve stuck with Wanzer combat for every level and laid off on the on-foot combat and multiplayer to flesh out the single-player portion more since it does have some interesting boss fights and Wanzer customization where you can outfit your mech with different parts or weapons.
While not as intricate as Armored Core customization. I still like the developers' attempts for a lite outfit change here to equip different weapons and body parts. I just didn’t like some mission requirements where I had to equip different leg parts to start a mission. Feels forced and not very enjoyable since I wanted to outfit my Wanzer on a two-leg setup instead of a crab leg setup or the hover setup. In my opinion, removing the leg requirements would’ve allowed the player more freedom and thus made those particular missions more enjoyable than having to adjust how to use those leg setups.
The story is nothing to write home about except explosions with bigger explosions, however, I did appreciate how it held a narrative to follow from beginning to end... A narrative very thinly holding my interest. Despite the initial hook of the son trying to find his father. By endgame, all I cared about was whether the ending would redeem any of the critiques I have of the game. And sadly even that aspect failed.
There are so many things wrong here. But the Wanzer combat I feel the developers by Double Helix Games almost nails the feel of AC, but not quite there. Boss fights are interesting challenges. And Wanzer customization is the only nice things I could say about the game. And while I wish a lot of features in the game could’ve been cut and improved. The overall package feels like a janky-filled mess. I'd only recommend it for those who want to try more mecha games and for those who got the game on a solid deal.
6/10
For starters. I like the Wanzer(mechs you pilot) combat. Kinda like Armored Core(AC). Except you’re mainly fighting on ground level compared to sometimes flighty combat in the AC series. Which surprised me quite a bit. But good lord there are so many things wrong here.
The characters... I wish I could say they're good... Nope. They're garbage and hold no likeability. And granted I didn't expect a great character out the gate, but I still would've liked a character who actually develops or at least in some form retain a bit of interesting personality. And I still didn't see it by the time endgame rolled around. Extremely predictable too as you progress through each Act. Of which there are five, but there are multiple missions within. Acts can take about an hour to complete more or less. Boss battles are pretty good here. Like a puzzled way to beat them and each one is different from the last. Sometimes those battles will be unfair, but re-customizing your Wanzer setup can mean the difference between victory and defeat.
The levels are alright. Early on you mainly fight on street levels. As you progress in each act they’ll take you to new mission levels where the setting changes depending on the biome. So you won’t be fighting Wanzers every day. Level designs are linear, with some leeway to collect collectibles. When you start on-foot sections those are small and have samey corridors too. There is a bit of an arcadey feeling here in that you can go replenish your Wanzer’s ammo and health. I kinda like this feature, since it allows the player to keep the momentum going. And I felt there were enough of them around to manage most levels.
I did not expect some new gameplay elements such as helicopter sections where you blast enemies to smithereens, which is also a nice way to earn income repeatedly if you’re short on cash.
And weirdly enough there are segments to fight on foot... Fighting outside your mech and having to duck behind boxes to eliminate enemies. Is… not good. Feels very janky for movement and combat making the experience not fun. On foot, enemies have basic a.i. Pop out of cover to shoot. Cover back to reload and repeat. You can use different weapons like a bazooka, SMG, shotgun, and more, but I didn’t feel the need since your setup is already powerful enough and enemies can be taken down in several shots. Honestly, the on-foot segments feel like the developers couldn’t realize the identity of the game and decided to mash different elements that feel half-baked. Can’t even try the multiplayer features since the online servers are down as far as I know. These half-measures make the single-player portion suffer and as a result, make the whole game have an identity crisis at times. I feel the developers should’ve stuck with Wanzer combat for every level and laid off on the on-foot combat and multiplayer to flesh out the single-player portion more since it does have some interesting boss fights and Wanzer customization where you can outfit your mech with different parts or weapons.
While not as intricate as Armored Core customization. I still like the developers' attempts for a lite outfit change here to equip different weapons and body parts. I just didn’t like some mission requirements where I had to equip different leg parts to start a mission. Feels forced and not very enjoyable since I wanted to outfit my Wanzer on a two-leg setup instead of a crab leg setup or the hover setup. In my opinion, removing the leg requirements would’ve allowed the player more freedom and thus made those particular missions more enjoyable than having to adjust how to use those leg setups.
The story is nothing to write home about except explosions with bigger explosions, however, I did appreciate how it held a narrative to follow from beginning to end... A narrative very thinly holding my interest. Despite the initial hook of the son trying to find his father. By endgame, all I cared about was whether the ending would redeem any of the critiques I have of the game. And sadly even that aspect failed.
There are so many things wrong here. But the Wanzer combat I feel the developers by Double Helix Games almost nails the feel of AC, but not quite there. Boss fights are interesting challenges. And Wanzer customization is the only nice things I could say about the game. And while I wish a lot of features in the game could’ve been cut and improved. The overall package feels like a janky-filled mess. I'd only recommend it for those who want to try more mecha games and for those who got the game on a solid deal.
6/10
2023
Is Atomic Heart worth your time? Let's find out.
The gunplay, crafting, and powers. Are a good mix to the gameplay providing a fresh and nice progression as you continue to become stronger. I only have mixed feelings about the role-playing progression, because it seemed like I spent a chunk of my time looting containers and enemies to upgrade my character’s abilities or my weapons. I believe a regular experience system with levels could’ve been a better alternative, but since the developers decided on a scavenge for loot, crafting & upgrading your character abilities or weapons via materials you find around the world. It is a decent attempt. I was thinking they could add reward tickets or some other equivalent to let you upgrade your weapons and character abilities. As an extra feature in the game to supplement the scavenging aspect. Like a reward system.
Moving on. I wish the game had extra vehicles because the open world felt huge and not enough vehicles to find. And when you do use a vehicle the durability is a bit low. It can take a decent amount of hits, but in my opinion, the degradation of the durability after hitting enemies feels too high. I had to avoid hitting robots to make it to my destination. And lord help me if I see a small group blocking the only path forward. I’ll have to run out of my burning vehicle after running them over. I hope the developers can fix the durability and make them withstand a bit more hits. Perhaps a 50-75% increase in toughness and I’d be satisfied and place extra vehicles around the world so you don't need to run so much. Since it feels uncommon to find one.
I kinda wish there was a quest log or at the very least, a logbook of summarized events that occurred to refresh the player on what happened so far. You can see clearly on the top left corner of your current quest, but looking through the menus, I don’t see a section for summarized events. And this is also me paying attention to the story’s narrative. The addition of a quest log or logbook could've helped players comprehend the plot a bit more. So I can see other players getting confused in the middle part of your playthrough. The beginning and final act are fine.
The game plays great when it's linear with fitting levels, but the open-world nature could use some work. I still enjoyed my time with the world of Atomic Heart. But I felt there needed to be a fast travel system in place to go back to old locations instead of driving back. Since I saw barely any drivable vehicles. Aside from that, there’s plenty of good Atomic Heart does well.
Had plenty of "Prey" the 2017 game inspiration, and gunplay with powers. Same with Fallout on alternate history. So the world-building aspect, I think, is done decently well. There are cartoons and small animations detailing custom game-overs and modded weapon demonstrations. Using a cartoonish style. Which made me appreciate the little bits.
Speaking of the level design, there are plenty of puzzles here integrated pretty well. Not so much to be a chore, but enough for you to go off the beaten path if you so desire. What I love here, rather than other games that try to half-heartedly implement puzzles by using the same one again. There is no copy-paste. You have plenty of variety to look forward to and they don’t consume much time to finish. If anything, the mini-puzzles can be completed in less than 10 seconds or less. The game goes further by including extra unique puzzles and more to complete in the optional dungeons. I won’t say any specific examples, because I feel it's best to discover them on your own. And boy I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. I should add each puzzle I completed in the story sections didn’t reach the lengths of scratching my head constantly. All of them seem to be reasonably well-designed to not be so hard. But also not too simple.
I do have to give special praise to the optimization here. The game runs almost like a dream on my old pc with a GTX 970 card. So playing on 60 fps and getting barely dips to 30 fps during very intense action moments is a major plus in my books. Graphics options are also extensive, so you can tweak them to your preference.
Your AI glove companion Charles is pretty cool. Growing alongside P-3. And you will encounter moments in which it’ll ask you questions and you can respond to Charles with dialogue options. Honestly, my playthrough without Charles would’ve made the game boring as hell without his candid commentary and challenging P-3 at times to question the moral quandary and critical thought. This doesn’t occur commonly, but when it does oh boy does the dialogue shine.
However, the inverse of that. Are moments where I dislike the main character whenever he speaks and doesn’t consider the advice Charles gives him and will act like a stubborn jerk to what Charles advises. And this occurs frequently from the beginning to the middle of the game. And I feel the interaction between the two may make newcomers quit early on. Be that as it may, I strongly encourage anyone willing to put up with those interactions to bear with it. Because the journey and ultimately what happens in the ending is worth seeing through the first hours of a dysfunctional relationship between P-3 and Charles. Into something more. Whether or not it’s good in the end or bad. I’ll leave it up to the player. But in my case, I found their moments from the middle to the endgame worth playing through.
The beginning and endgame have an amazing presentation and do a suitable job of making you become invested in the world and the events to come. And find what layers they’re hiding beyond the objective of finding Petrov. Nonetheless, the middle of the game could lose player interest since there aren't a lot of moments that could impress players to a degree where they’ll become further invested in the story. It comes to a lull so to speak. But, I think the final act does redeem the slow middle act to refocus the player back to the main plot.
In my 17-hour playthrough with Atomic Heart, and after the end credits are rolling I think the game has a lot of charm, personality and heart. There is passion in nearly every corner from how terminals give you a nugget of lore about the world, to the not-so-dead NPCs giving you context on the facility’s day to day before chaos struck. Has over and above simple antagonist. Yes, there is stuff that could be tweaked in regards to the beginning hours of P-3 and Charles, increasing vehicle durability, and expanded car limit. A proper quest log to not lose players in the narrative. And some minor bugs here and there which the developers are already fixing.
And finally, the story I feel is in the middle of satisfactory and excellent. It’s enough to hold your interest, but I found the world, characters, and subtle political commentary more fascinating. There are moral quandary questions and candid commentary from Charles which I particularly enjoy listening to when they ask deep questions and thankfully the P-3 embraces these questions with answers I found acceptable to move him from a one-note character into a proper protagonist undergoing development. And the A.I. Charles, too.
In the end, I believe Atomic Heart is worth your time. Especially for those interested in an alternate history of the 1955 Soviet Union with robots gone awry. And a jerk of a protagonist with a great A.I. companion along for the ride. Fantastic gunplay with powers against robots and more enemies I didn’t expect. An optimized game capable of running almost flawlessly on a low to a mid-tier computer I think. Level design is great when it is linear, not so much in the open-world aspect, but still passable to me. Excellent variety of puzzles and integrated well. Rock-solid Russian soundtrack with decent voice acting for the English voice actors.
So if you like any of that. Perhaps Atomic Heart might interest you.
8/10
The gunplay, crafting, and powers. Are a good mix to the gameplay providing a fresh and nice progression as you continue to become stronger. I only have mixed feelings about the role-playing progression, because it seemed like I spent a chunk of my time looting containers and enemies to upgrade my character’s abilities or my weapons. I believe a regular experience system with levels could’ve been a better alternative, but since the developers decided on a scavenge for loot, crafting & upgrading your character abilities or weapons via materials you find around the world. It is a decent attempt. I was thinking they could add reward tickets or some other equivalent to let you upgrade your weapons and character abilities. As an extra feature in the game to supplement the scavenging aspect. Like a reward system.
Moving on. I wish the game had extra vehicles because the open world felt huge and not enough vehicles to find. And when you do use a vehicle the durability is a bit low. It can take a decent amount of hits, but in my opinion, the degradation of the durability after hitting enemies feels too high. I had to avoid hitting robots to make it to my destination. And lord help me if I see a small group blocking the only path forward. I’ll have to run out of my burning vehicle after running them over. I hope the developers can fix the durability and make them withstand a bit more hits. Perhaps a 50-75% increase in toughness and I’d be satisfied and place extra vehicles around the world so you don't need to run so much. Since it feels uncommon to find one.
I kinda wish there was a quest log or at the very least, a logbook of summarized events that occurred to refresh the player on what happened so far. You can see clearly on the top left corner of your current quest, but looking through the menus, I don’t see a section for summarized events. And this is also me paying attention to the story’s narrative. The addition of a quest log or logbook could've helped players comprehend the plot a bit more. So I can see other players getting confused in the middle part of your playthrough. The beginning and final act are fine.
The game plays great when it's linear with fitting levels, but the open-world nature could use some work. I still enjoyed my time with the world of Atomic Heart. But I felt there needed to be a fast travel system in place to go back to old locations instead of driving back. Since I saw barely any drivable vehicles. Aside from that, there’s plenty of good Atomic Heart does well.
Had plenty of "Prey" the 2017 game inspiration, and gunplay with powers. Same with Fallout on alternate history. So the world-building aspect, I think, is done decently well. There are cartoons and small animations detailing custom game-overs and modded weapon demonstrations. Using a cartoonish style. Which made me appreciate the little bits.
Speaking of the level design, there are plenty of puzzles here integrated pretty well. Not so much to be a chore, but enough for you to go off the beaten path if you so desire. What I love here, rather than other games that try to half-heartedly implement puzzles by using the same one again. There is no copy-paste. You have plenty of variety to look forward to and they don’t consume much time to finish. If anything, the mini-puzzles can be completed in less than 10 seconds or less. The game goes further by including extra unique puzzles and more to complete in the optional dungeons. I won’t say any specific examples, because I feel it's best to discover them on your own. And boy I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did. I should add each puzzle I completed in the story sections didn’t reach the lengths of scratching my head constantly. All of them seem to be reasonably well-designed to not be so hard. But also not too simple.
I do have to give special praise to the optimization here. The game runs almost like a dream on my old pc with a GTX 970 card. So playing on 60 fps and getting barely dips to 30 fps during very intense action moments is a major plus in my books. Graphics options are also extensive, so you can tweak them to your preference.
Your AI glove companion Charles is pretty cool. Growing alongside P-3. And you will encounter moments in which it’ll ask you questions and you can respond to Charles with dialogue options. Honestly, my playthrough without Charles would’ve made the game boring as hell without his candid commentary and challenging P-3 at times to question the moral quandary and critical thought. This doesn’t occur commonly, but when it does oh boy does the dialogue shine.
However, the inverse of that. Are moments where I dislike the main character whenever he speaks and doesn’t consider the advice Charles gives him and will act like a stubborn jerk to what Charles advises. And this occurs frequently from the beginning to the middle of the game. And I feel the interaction between the two may make newcomers quit early on. Be that as it may, I strongly encourage anyone willing to put up with those interactions to bear with it. Because the journey and ultimately what happens in the ending is worth seeing through the first hours of a dysfunctional relationship between P-3 and Charles. Into something more. Whether or not it’s good in the end or bad. I’ll leave it up to the player. But in my case, I found their moments from the middle to the endgame worth playing through.
The beginning and endgame have an amazing presentation and do a suitable job of making you become invested in the world and the events to come. And find what layers they’re hiding beyond the objective of finding Petrov. Nonetheless, the middle of the game could lose player interest since there aren't a lot of moments that could impress players to a degree where they’ll become further invested in the story. It comes to a lull so to speak. But, I think the final act does redeem the slow middle act to refocus the player back to the main plot.
In my 17-hour playthrough with Atomic Heart, and after the end credits are rolling I think the game has a lot of charm, personality and heart. There is passion in nearly every corner from how terminals give you a nugget of lore about the world, to the not-so-dead NPCs giving you context on the facility’s day to day before chaos struck. Has over and above simple antagonist. Yes, there is stuff that could be tweaked in regards to the beginning hours of P-3 and Charles, increasing vehicle durability, and expanded car limit. A proper quest log to not lose players in the narrative. And some minor bugs here and there which the developers are already fixing.
And finally, the story I feel is in the middle of satisfactory and excellent. It’s enough to hold your interest, but I found the world, characters, and subtle political commentary more fascinating. There are moral quandary questions and candid commentary from Charles which I particularly enjoy listening to when they ask deep questions and thankfully the P-3 embraces these questions with answers I found acceptable to move him from a one-note character into a proper protagonist undergoing development. And the A.I. Charles, too.
In the end, I believe Atomic Heart is worth your time. Especially for those interested in an alternate history of the 1955 Soviet Union with robots gone awry. And a jerk of a protagonist with a great A.I. companion along for the ride. Fantastic gunplay with powers against robots and more enemies I didn’t expect. An optimized game capable of running almost flawlessly on a low to a mid-tier computer I think. Level design is great when it is linear, not so much in the open-world aspect, but still passable to me. Excellent variety of puzzles and integrated well. Rock-solid Russian soundtrack with decent voice acting for the English voice actors.
So if you like any of that. Perhaps Atomic Heart might interest you.
8/10
2012
Playing this entry after I played Armored Core For Answer is such a wild feeling. Since, I officially started the series with Armored Core 2 and have enjoyed all of the entries up to For Answer. Well… except Nine-Breaker, but that’s a story for another day. And so when I started to play Armored Core V. I wondered if I would enjoy this entry too. And is it worth playing for newcomers?
And the answer is very mixed…
First off, your mech is bulky and can’t fly high to the sky anymore like in past entries and the game maintains a mech altitude closer to the ground. If you want to go at a higher altitude you need to wall boost your way, by repeatedly jumping onto buildings.
Certainly, you can customize your AC with light parts, light load, and a big generator with a low-consumption booster. In becoming more mobile. But it's just not the same as the previous titles due to the other added features which I'll go into.
Controlling your AC, especially at the start, feels clunky and slow throughout the game. I even completed all the story and optional order missions and still felt that to some extent. I did update my build more than several times to see any difference or if my feelings would shift.
And upon reflection, they adjusted once I tried to see these new developments under different lenses and thematically I think it does work to some extent. Combat feels a bit more personal since you’re mostly fighting in cities and other open areas in a wasteland. But mostly the former than the latter. And it feels better winning close encounters with an AC than battling them from far away.
However, there are just too many changes here I did not like. Such as the implementation of online modes. But I can’t even access the online features since the servers are down which is a shame. I think there are some workarounds to it for pc and emulation, but I’m not sure on that front.
Moving on. Making scan mode mandatory to recover energy at a faster rate, seeing objective routes and the inability to attack is a weird compromise to make the gameplay more tactical. But I ultimately felt it was bothersome and distracted me from fighting. Even when I could activate and deactivate it at a moment's notice. The mechanic seems a bit weird to use and while I appreciate some moments for it. I just didn't like utilizing the feature throughout my playthrough.
I also didn’t like the multiple resistances here you have to remember. Its too complicated playing rock, paper, scissors, further confusing newcomers and perhaps veterans like me in wondering why my weapons aren’t effective. So it sucks when you’re already on a mission and can’t complete it because you don’t have the right weapon to be more effective in damaging the enemy. Sure you have workshop sites to change parts, but good luck changing that when you're facing off an enemy AC and can't find a workshop site available. And you can't enter a site if enemies are nearby. So these new elements are more of a chore.
Aside from these mixed feelings, I do have with the game. I do appreciate some other new changes like sorties. Which allows the player to restart from a saved checkpoint within story missions. This is a feature I super love and makes redoing missions less of a frustration and more of an easier way to retry attempts.
In addition to that, I love how you can go to multiple workshop sites in the game to replenish ammo, modify parts and recover your health. For a small price. It goes up as I consecutively use more workshop sites while in story missions. So it's very nice to diversify your build midway through a mission instead of having to do that each time before you head into battle.
The soundtrack is fire and demonstrates mechanized warfare for Armored Core standards to a T. Where fights are a bit more visceral and up close. And tracks becoming triumphant but also somber. Fitting for the game’s storyline to be so grimdark, dangerous, and full of chaos.
And the order missions are good, sometimes dropping lore bits and more since these missions take place after the main story. So you have 83 missions to dig into. All with different mission parameters ranging from defeating enemy ACs, destroying all enemy units, completing the mission within a time limit, and more.
Story is decent. Being serviceable and I like the villains here since they ooze personality.
So in the end is Armored Core V worth playing still?
A bit of a yes, a bit of a no. There are too many modifications this entry does which I didn’t appreciate at the end which makes combat a bit of a mess to enjoy and doesn’t leave a good first impression I think.
I still enjoyed my time with the game to some extent. I just wish the multiple resistances, scan mode, and online feature being implemented so heavily are tweaked or removed. Resistances just remove that. Or keep it simple to one not multiple. For scan mode. Make it so you can attack and tweak the overlay a bit to allow that or remove it and allow route markers to happen naturally. And allow some online modes playable with ai.
If you’re looking for another Armored Core entry by Fromsoftware to sink your teeth into since you already played the past entries, then I give a shaky thumbs up for this entry. And for newcomers I am hesitant to recommend this entry and would point you to Armored Core 4 or Armored Core: For Answer. Heck, I would even go so far as to recommend past PS2 titles like Armored Core 2, 3, or Nexus instead.
6/10
And the answer is very mixed…
First off, your mech is bulky and can’t fly high to the sky anymore like in past entries and the game maintains a mech altitude closer to the ground. If you want to go at a higher altitude you need to wall boost your way, by repeatedly jumping onto buildings.
Certainly, you can customize your AC with light parts, light load, and a big generator with a low-consumption booster. In becoming more mobile. But it's just not the same as the previous titles due to the other added features which I'll go into.
Controlling your AC, especially at the start, feels clunky and slow throughout the game. I even completed all the story and optional order missions and still felt that to some extent. I did update my build more than several times to see any difference or if my feelings would shift.
And upon reflection, they adjusted once I tried to see these new developments under different lenses and thematically I think it does work to some extent. Combat feels a bit more personal since you’re mostly fighting in cities and other open areas in a wasteland. But mostly the former than the latter. And it feels better winning close encounters with an AC than battling them from far away.
However, there are just too many changes here I did not like. Such as the implementation of online modes. But I can’t even access the online features since the servers are down which is a shame. I think there are some workarounds to it for pc and emulation, but I’m not sure on that front.
Moving on. Making scan mode mandatory to recover energy at a faster rate, seeing objective routes and the inability to attack is a weird compromise to make the gameplay more tactical. But I ultimately felt it was bothersome and distracted me from fighting. Even when I could activate and deactivate it at a moment's notice. The mechanic seems a bit weird to use and while I appreciate some moments for it. I just didn't like utilizing the feature throughout my playthrough.
I also didn’t like the multiple resistances here you have to remember. Its too complicated playing rock, paper, scissors, further confusing newcomers and perhaps veterans like me in wondering why my weapons aren’t effective. So it sucks when you’re already on a mission and can’t complete it because you don’t have the right weapon to be more effective in damaging the enemy. Sure you have workshop sites to change parts, but good luck changing that when you're facing off an enemy AC and can't find a workshop site available. And you can't enter a site if enemies are nearby. So these new elements are more of a chore.
Aside from these mixed feelings, I do have with the game. I do appreciate some other new changes like sorties. Which allows the player to restart from a saved checkpoint within story missions. This is a feature I super love and makes redoing missions less of a frustration and more of an easier way to retry attempts.
In addition to that, I love how you can go to multiple workshop sites in the game to replenish ammo, modify parts and recover your health. For a small price. It goes up as I consecutively use more workshop sites while in story missions. So it's very nice to diversify your build midway through a mission instead of having to do that each time before you head into battle.
The soundtrack is fire and demonstrates mechanized warfare for Armored Core standards to a T. Where fights are a bit more visceral and up close. And tracks becoming triumphant but also somber. Fitting for the game’s storyline to be so grimdark, dangerous, and full of chaos.
And the order missions are good, sometimes dropping lore bits and more since these missions take place after the main story. So you have 83 missions to dig into. All with different mission parameters ranging from defeating enemy ACs, destroying all enemy units, completing the mission within a time limit, and more.
Story is decent. Being serviceable and I like the villains here since they ooze personality.
So in the end is Armored Core V worth playing still?
A bit of a yes, a bit of a no. There are too many modifications this entry does which I didn’t appreciate at the end which makes combat a bit of a mess to enjoy and doesn’t leave a good first impression I think.
I still enjoyed my time with the game to some extent. I just wish the multiple resistances, scan mode, and online feature being implemented so heavily are tweaked or removed. Resistances just remove that. Or keep it simple to one not multiple. For scan mode. Make it so you can attack and tweak the overlay a bit to allow that or remove it and allow route markers to happen naturally. And allow some online modes playable with ai.
If you’re looking for another Armored Core entry by Fromsoftware to sink your teeth into since you already played the past entries, then I give a shaky thumbs up for this entry. And for newcomers I am hesitant to recommend this entry and would point you to Armored Core 4 or Armored Core: For Answer. Heck, I would even go so far as to recommend past PS2 titles like Armored Core 2, 3, or Nexus instead.
6/10
I never thought I would return to 3 Hopes after completing 1 route. Since I was so burned out after finishing one path. But here I am after completing the other two and I have to say, 3 Hopes is a welcome return to the continent of Fodlan, seeing familiar and new faces among the Three Houses crowd.
Battling enemies in the usual turn-based engagements? Nope! 3 Hopes operates as a hack-and-slash RPG. More specifically, the musuo-like kind. You also control a new protagonist. Shez. A run-of-the-mill mercenary with strange abilities. It will be up to you to choose which house to ally with. Like in the previous game, 3 Hopes also features 3 main routes to play through. This review was only possible after I finished all three routes. Since I felt making a review when I had only beaten one path, didn't sit well with me.
Anyway, let's begin.
Gameplay is a major shift from the turn-based nature of Fire Emblem. Here, you'll be fighting in a musuo-like gameplay of hack and slash. Elements from the franchise are integrated relatively well. Using terminology from the series and implementing different unit classes having a variety of different professions from lancer, ax, sword, bow, brawler, and mage. Each main weapon class leads to different classes and different abilities. There is even an element of base-building for your base camp. Which provides a nice way to upgrade your equipment. The game is pretty much what if Fire Emblem is a hack-and-slash? A weird thought, but strangely enough it works here, to some extent.
For the most part, I love the change in gameplay to an action hack-and-slash compared to a turn-based game. You get right into the thick of things by decimating countless mobs and eliminating your enemies up close and personally. Didn’t feel bored utilizing different abilities and units to keep the battles fresh. There is impact and it never gets old commanding your allied units for an all-out offensive. The feeling is euphoric and it is awesome watching your army mow down the baddies right alongside you.
However, the same objectives and S-rank requirements got old real quick since you cannot innovate much to keep the battles fresh constantly. Sidequests & paralogues, in particular, do try to reinvent the wheel in some way. Yet, they still conform back to the old formula of killing ‘x’ units within a time limit, Defeat ‘x’ unit, oh wait extra reinforcements, oh here complete this side-mission while you go into battle. Artillery firing at your units? Please eliminate. Enemy forces calling for reinforcements? Stop them from executing an action. Here are some new reinforcements to add to the battle for you to tackle and defend your bases. Oh, you thought the main story quest ends? No way! Here’s another enemy you have to defeat. This formula becomes tiresome to complete again and again. And when you thought you killed an enemy. Psyche. I'm going to retreat until the plot forces me to die. Sure there are several approaches in store for you like escorts, special-type monsters, conquering key strongholds to move closer to your map, etc. But it is not enough.
I feel the game could’ve been more innovative to keep the combat formula from being dull. It's fine in the beginning and middle acts, but once you do a lot of missions, the combat gets stale. And trust me, I’ve finished all paralogues in one route, every single thing I could fight on the map, extra sidequests, extra limited-time quests to completion. Skipped several in the end, due to realizing they offer no real benefit to me. But for the most part, I'd say 95-98% of all missions I completed for the Black Eagle route.
I skipped the filler battles in the other routes using a vanguard whistle which is an absolute godsend. You don’t need to fight every battle. Using the whistle allows the player to auto-complete the battle on the world map. Thereby, skipping the process instantly. Why the heck wasn’t this item available in your first route? Honestly would’ve helped lessen the tedium and rinse-and-repeat battles.
Granted I get it is a Musou Fire Emblem. So I can’t expect great expectations. But it would’ve been nice to have a stellar musou-like game that knocks all areas out of the ballpark. And for me, I feel the element of reusing the same objectives, some maps, and enemies being the same could have been done better. Two specific enemies, in particular, are reused more than several times. This becomes especially egregious when reinforcements are the same enemy types with no real distinct features to differentiate them. Same enemy combat class again and again.
Artificial intelligence, for comrades at least, is decent but could be better. Many times during a battle, I had to micromanage units to attack an enemy then once they were done. My ally will sit in that same spot. Even when I have them set to attack. Orders would’ve been nice for them to follow through. For example, after defeating an enemy, move to a nearby enemy commander. If a player-controlled unit falls below 50% health, tell the healer to heal them. Prioritize map objectives over killing a single enemy.
Continuing on with S rank requirements I feel there is a missed opportunity to do extra. Like erasing the whole concept of s-rank. And only set different requirements such as: Manage 500 hits. Use ‘x’ warrior specials. Cannot use a single healing item during battle. No dodging. No switching to a different unit. Female/Male characters only. Use a single unit only. Use certain classes only. Fight with only disadvantaged units. And so much more I could list. Heck, the handicap battles you fight in each chapter, the developers could’ve taken handicap battles and implemented some of those handicaps for S-rank requirements. Instead, we are left with killing “xxx’ units by ‘x’ time while taking “xx%” damage.
One thing that I immensely enjoyed was strategies. At the end of a chapter, you will have to face the final chapter battle and it is here and only in this battle can you implement strategies. Various parameters can weaken the enemy, from giving your army reinforcements, allies to heal, units to protect, or special units to advance on the enemy, magic bombardment, special formations, and unique types I won’t get into because that's spoiler territory. But suffice it to say, I was very satisfied with how the developers implemented strategies to work in favor to spice up every final story battle in a chapter. These parameters you can activate greatly turn the tide of battle and can lead to one of Fire Emblem’s aspects of making a unit join you. Some strategies can even be unlocked by completing filler battles on the world map. So it pays to finish everything on a map to unlock more strategies.
Support conversations are such a relief, and a delight to see the Three Houses cast again. Which expands and greatly answers some lingering questions I had in the past game. And while this entry is contained in an alternate timeline. Pretty much all support conversations I’ve seen are an extension of what occurred in Three Houses or some cases provide much-needed context into a character’s background or relationship with other characters. It's one of the biggest backbones the game has to offer. And I laughed so hard in one conversation. Amused in some, puzzled in others, gained much-needed insight into the relationships and backgrounds of characters I rarely use, and broke a smile during moments of wholesome and endearing moments. The game also had plenty of quality-of-life enhancements like fast traveling to any unit, location, and building making it easy to get to the unit you need. Along with seeing current support levels with any unit during any activity requiring the two of them. This feature is a godsend in particular due to not needing to go back and check which unit is currently at a certain rank and then back to the food hall in FE3H.
My playthrough lasted over 93 hours and to be frank without the support conversations, I feel that number could’ve been cut by more than half if I didn’t pay attention to grinding for these conversations between my units as much as I possibly can. A buddy of mine took over 130 hours to complete all paths in the game. So your times may vary depending on how much or little you do in your base.
Storywise. Each route felt distinct enough with cool cutscenes, sweet character development with each house leader, and more. And each path had enough content to interest you further. However, each route did use a bit of copy-paste formula. Leaving me a sense of samey vibes a bit. But this occurred mainly in the middle ground of each path. The game makes up for this by displaying scenes you wouldn't otherwise see in each route. So if a major event is glossed over in one route, you will see the full extent in another route. Which makes comparisons between each path easier to conjure the bigger picture. While I do have some reservations about each route, the final act is a pay-off, I looked forward to. Could it have been better? Certainly, but the game accomplishes this in a manner I find good enough.
Overall, I feel 3 Hopes is a decent FE spin-off game. Could be better regarding objectives, AI, map design and a bit on the plot of each route. Nonetheless, the excellent support conversations, adequate base-building, and character conversations hold the game up strong. The soundtrack is fantastic and I love the new arrangements and new tracks. Especially the leitmotif dropping here and there. I feel the game does justice in some ways to three houses in that if you’re looking for more of the world of Fodlan you’ll find that here. Some plot points which were left unanswered there are answered here. So. If you’re looking for more Fire Emblem Three Houses content. And don’t mind the shift to action rpg hack and slash. Look no further than Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. I hope you’ll like it just as I did. And if not, well that’s fine too.
8/10
Battling enemies in the usual turn-based engagements? Nope! 3 Hopes operates as a hack-and-slash RPG. More specifically, the musuo-like kind. You also control a new protagonist. Shez. A run-of-the-mill mercenary with strange abilities. It will be up to you to choose which house to ally with. Like in the previous game, 3 Hopes also features 3 main routes to play through. This review was only possible after I finished all three routes. Since I felt making a review when I had only beaten one path, didn't sit well with me.
Anyway, let's begin.
Gameplay is a major shift from the turn-based nature of Fire Emblem. Here, you'll be fighting in a musuo-like gameplay of hack and slash. Elements from the franchise are integrated relatively well. Using terminology from the series and implementing different unit classes having a variety of different professions from lancer, ax, sword, bow, brawler, and mage. Each main weapon class leads to different classes and different abilities. There is even an element of base-building for your base camp. Which provides a nice way to upgrade your equipment. The game is pretty much what if Fire Emblem is a hack-and-slash? A weird thought, but strangely enough it works here, to some extent.
For the most part, I love the change in gameplay to an action hack-and-slash compared to a turn-based game. You get right into the thick of things by decimating countless mobs and eliminating your enemies up close and personally. Didn’t feel bored utilizing different abilities and units to keep the battles fresh. There is impact and it never gets old commanding your allied units for an all-out offensive. The feeling is euphoric and it is awesome watching your army mow down the baddies right alongside you.
However, the same objectives and S-rank requirements got old real quick since you cannot innovate much to keep the battles fresh constantly. Sidequests & paralogues, in particular, do try to reinvent the wheel in some way. Yet, they still conform back to the old formula of killing ‘x’ units within a time limit, Defeat ‘x’ unit, oh wait extra reinforcements, oh here complete this side-mission while you go into battle. Artillery firing at your units? Please eliminate. Enemy forces calling for reinforcements? Stop them from executing an action. Here are some new reinforcements to add to the battle for you to tackle and defend your bases. Oh, you thought the main story quest ends? No way! Here’s another enemy you have to defeat. This formula becomes tiresome to complete again and again. And when you thought you killed an enemy. Psyche. I'm going to retreat until the plot forces me to die. Sure there are several approaches in store for you like escorts, special-type monsters, conquering key strongholds to move closer to your map, etc. But it is not enough.
I feel the game could’ve been more innovative to keep the combat formula from being dull. It's fine in the beginning and middle acts, but once you do a lot of missions, the combat gets stale. And trust me, I’ve finished all paralogues in one route, every single thing I could fight on the map, extra sidequests, extra limited-time quests to completion. Skipped several in the end, due to realizing they offer no real benefit to me. But for the most part, I'd say 95-98% of all missions I completed for the Black Eagle route.
I skipped the filler battles in the other routes using a vanguard whistle which is an absolute godsend. You don’t need to fight every battle. Using the whistle allows the player to auto-complete the battle on the world map. Thereby, skipping the process instantly. Why the heck wasn’t this item available in your first route? Honestly would’ve helped lessen the tedium and rinse-and-repeat battles.
Granted I get it is a Musou Fire Emblem. So I can’t expect great expectations. But it would’ve been nice to have a stellar musou-like game that knocks all areas out of the ballpark. And for me, I feel the element of reusing the same objectives, some maps, and enemies being the same could have been done better. Two specific enemies, in particular, are reused more than several times. This becomes especially egregious when reinforcements are the same enemy types with no real distinct features to differentiate them. Same enemy combat class again and again.
Artificial intelligence, for comrades at least, is decent but could be better. Many times during a battle, I had to micromanage units to attack an enemy then once they were done. My ally will sit in that same spot. Even when I have them set to attack. Orders would’ve been nice for them to follow through. For example, after defeating an enemy, move to a nearby enemy commander. If a player-controlled unit falls below 50% health, tell the healer to heal them. Prioritize map objectives over killing a single enemy.
Continuing on with S rank requirements I feel there is a missed opportunity to do extra. Like erasing the whole concept of s-rank. And only set different requirements such as: Manage 500 hits. Use ‘x’ warrior specials. Cannot use a single healing item during battle. No dodging. No switching to a different unit. Female/Male characters only. Use a single unit only. Use certain classes only. Fight with only disadvantaged units. And so much more I could list. Heck, the handicap battles you fight in each chapter, the developers could’ve taken handicap battles and implemented some of those handicaps for S-rank requirements. Instead, we are left with killing “xxx’ units by ‘x’ time while taking “xx%” damage.
One thing that I immensely enjoyed was strategies. At the end of a chapter, you will have to face the final chapter battle and it is here and only in this battle can you implement strategies. Various parameters can weaken the enemy, from giving your army reinforcements, allies to heal, units to protect, or special units to advance on the enemy, magic bombardment, special formations, and unique types I won’t get into because that's spoiler territory. But suffice it to say, I was very satisfied with how the developers implemented strategies to work in favor to spice up every final story battle in a chapter. These parameters you can activate greatly turn the tide of battle and can lead to one of Fire Emblem’s aspects of making a unit join you. Some strategies can even be unlocked by completing filler battles on the world map. So it pays to finish everything on a map to unlock more strategies.
Support conversations are such a relief, and a delight to see the Three Houses cast again. Which expands and greatly answers some lingering questions I had in the past game. And while this entry is contained in an alternate timeline. Pretty much all support conversations I’ve seen are an extension of what occurred in Three Houses or some cases provide much-needed context into a character’s background or relationship with other characters. It's one of the biggest backbones the game has to offer. And I laughed so hard in one conversation. Amused in some, puzzled in others, gained much-needed insight into the relationships and backgrounds of characters I rarely use, and broke a smile during moments of wholesome and endearing moments. The game also had plenty of quality-of-life enhancements like fast traveling to any unit, location, and building making it easy to get to the unit you need. Along with seeing current support levels with any unit during any activity requiring the two of them. This feature is a godsend in particular due to not needing to go back and check which unit is currently at a certain rank and then back to the food hall in FE3H.
My playthrough lasted over 93 hours and to be frank without the support conversations, I feel that number could’ve been cut by more than half if I didn’t pay attention to grinding for these conversations between my units as much as I possibly can. A buddy of mine took over 130 hours to complete all paths in the game. So your times may vary depending on how much or little you do in your base.
Storywise. Each route felt distinct enough with cool cutscenes, sweet character development with each house leader, and more. And each path had enough content to interest you further. However, each route did use a bit of copy-paste formula. Leaving me a sense of samey vibes a bit. But this occurred mainly in the middle ground of each path. The game makes up for this by displaying scenes you wouldn't otherwise see in each route. So if a major event is glossed over in one route, you will see the full extent in another route. Which makes comparisons between each path easier to conjure the bigger picture. While I do have some reservations about each route, the final act is a pay-off, I looked forward to. Could it have been better? Certainly, but the game accomplishes this in a manner I find good enough.
Overall, I feel 3 Hopes is a decent FE spin-off game. Could be better regarding objectives, AI, map design and a bit on the plot of each route. Nonetheless, the excellent support conversations, adequate base-building, and character conversations hold the game up strong. The soundtrack is fantastic and I love the new arrangements and new tracks. Especially the leitmotif dropping here and there. I feel the game does justice in some ways to three houses in that if you’re looking for more of the world of Fodlan you’ll find that here. Some plot points which were left unanswered there are answered here. So. If you’re looking for more Fire Emblem Three Houses content. And don’t mind the shift to action rpg hack and slash. Look no further than Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. I hope you’ll like it just as I did. And if not, well that’s fine too.
8/10
Purify the Blight
Story
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights starts with you the player controlling a young female priestess. Lily, who unfortunately has no memories of the events prior. And yet she embarks on a mission to purify the kingdom of Land’s End where all of the inhabitants have been turned into Blighted.
It is a tough task to ask of one so young, but she’s not alone in her journey. A stalwart knight spirit joins her in the beginning, to fight the battles she can’t. The duo isn’t all alone, however. As you progress in the game you will gain the ability to bind more spirits to your cause and help Lily as she purifies the land.
Stay Back, Let the Spirits Handle it
Gameplay
Gameplay in Ender Lilies follows in a 2D Metroidvania Action RPG structure. So you go off into this world with your knight. Defeat bosses, Gain new allies and abilities which can help you backtrack to old areas and overcome obstacles in locations you couldn’t access before.
Inaccessible areas you can’t access are easy to identify with the map system. So you don’t need to worry about remembering the exact place you couldn’t go to previously. I found it very refreshing to go back to previous locations and clean up the area properly. There is even a nifty feature where the map will be colored to let players know there are no more items left in the area.
The flow of combat is satisfying in that you don’t personally fight. You fight by having your spirits that accompany you do the work. Primarily offensive abilities. Your knight will slash enemies with his sword. Another can bash enemies away with a great hammer, one useful spirit can even continuously swing her wrecking ball to smash enemies. It should be noted there are a great many spirits to equip throughout the game. Not just the main bosses. Lesser spirits you may come across can give you their aid in battle. So there’s no shortage of spirits to choose from.
Some abilities you earn from bosses can be used indefinitely while others have a limited amount. You can raise the limit by equipping certain relics which can increase the number of spirits used.
Speaking of relics. There are a bunch to find in the game and each of them can change your status in a myriad of ways. Some are basic like increasing health, attack, and movement. But others like prayer usage increase, a new sp gauge, more experience, among others are really useful. I played around using different kinds of relics. So if you’re having trouble beating a boss, perhaps changing your relic setup might be needed.
There is no penalty for dying. So you don’t need to worry about losing your currency to upgrade spirits.
Finding Hope in a Melancholy World
Final thoughts
Didn’t experience any bugs or crashes throughout my 16-hour playthrough to see everything the game has to offer.
On the criticisms I could say for the game. There’s not much, to be frank. The gameplay was tight and I didn’t have any problems with the combat, tutorial, or navigation. Perhaps, if I were to say something it would have to be giving players more of a direction on what to do to get the last ending. Since I had to look up a guide/walkthrough to know how to get the last ending. And two bosses could’ve been tweaked a bit further to make it slightly less difficult. I could include more, but those are just nitpicking and not worth saying.
I feel all the mechanics and features in the game work well. The music synergizes excellently with the dark fantasy atmosphere permeating throughout the world. The plot is intriguing and doesn’t move too fast for the player to catch up. The pacing felt right. And combat and sheer viciousness of it upon impacting enemies feel satisfying. Didn’t need to grind in the game at all. Environment, bosses, and enemy design are wonderfully crafted to the point I can’t help but stare in disgust as well as admire the art of it.
The game didn’t capture my attention immediately. It took some time, but slowly I was brought on board. To see what happens to Lily in the end, see whether or not she can regain her memories and if she can succeed in her endeavor to purify the land of Blight along with her knight. It’s not something I'd ask a very young individual to do. But her unique ability to gather spirits as allies caught my attention. And seeing her continue to stand against countless adversity and persevere is something worth looking into.
For those looking for a different Metroidvania to sink your teeth into. One with a unique premise, tight controls, an amazing soundtrack, satisfying combat, and easy to understand user interface. Perhaps Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights might just be the game to kindle your interest.
Score: 8.5/10
Story
Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights starts with you the player controlling a young female priestess. Lily, who unfortunately has no memories of the events prior. And yet she embarks on a mission to purify the kingdom of Land’s End where all of the inhabitants have been turned into Blighted.
It is a tough task to ask of one so young, but she’s not alone in her journey. A stalwart knight spirit joins her in the beginning, to fight the battles she can’t. The duo isn’t all alone, however. As you progress in the game you will gain the ability to bind more spirits to your cause and help Lily as she purifies the land.
Stay Back, Let the Spirits Handle it
Gameplay
Gameplay in Ender Lilies follows in a 2D Metroidvania Action RPG structure. So you go off into this world with your knight. Defeat bosses, Gain new allies and abilities which can help you backtrack to old areas and overcome obstacles in locations you couldn’t access before.
Inaccessible areas you can’t access are easy to identify with the map system. So you don’t need to worry about remembering the exact place you couldn’t go to previously. I found it very refreshing to go back to previous locations and clean up the area properly. There is even a nifty feature where the map will be colored to let players know there are no more items left in the area.
The flow of combat is satisfying in that you don’t personally fight. You fight by having your spirits that accompany you do the work. Primarily offensive abilities. Your knight will slash enemies with his sword. Another can bash enemies away with a great hammer, one useful spirit can even continuously swing her wrecking ball to smash enemies. It should be noted there are a great many spirits to equip throughout the game. Not just the main bosses. Lesser spirits you may come across can give you their aid in battle. So there’s no shortage of spirits to choose from.
Some abilities you earn from bosses can be used indefinitely while others have a limited amount. You can raise the limit by equipping certain relics which can increase the number of spirits used.
Speaking of relics. There are a bunch to find in the game and each of them can change your status in a myriad of ways. Some are basic like increasing health, attack, and movement. But others like prayer usage increase, a new sp gauge, more experience, among others are really useful. I played around using different kinds of relics. So if you’re having trouble beating a boss, perhaps changing your relic setup might be needed.
There is no penalty for dying. So you don’t need to worry about losing your currency to upgrade spirits.
Finding Hope in a Melancholy World
Final thoughts
Didn’t experience any bugs or crashes throughout my 16-hour playthrough to see everything the game has to offer.
On the criticisms I could say for the game. There’s not much, to be frank. The gameplay was tight and I didn’t have any problems with the combat, tutorial, or navigation. Perhaps, if I were to say something it would have to be giving players more of a direction on what to do to get the last ending. Since I had to look up a guide/walkthrough to know how to get the last ending. And two bosses could’ve been tweaked a bit further to make it slightly less difficult. I could include more, but those are just nitpicking and not worth saying.
I feel all the mechanics and features in the game work well. The music synergizes excellently with the dark fantasy atmosphere permeating throughout the world. The plot is intriguing and doesn’t move too fast for the player to catch up. The pacing felt right. And combat and sheer viciousness of it upon impacting enemies feel satisfying. Didn’t need to grind in the game at all. Environment, bosses, and enemy design are wonderfully crafted to the point I can’t help but stare in disgust as well as admire the art of it.
The game didn’t capture my attention immediately. It took some time, but slowly I was brought on board. To see what happens to Lily in the end, see whether or not she can regain her memories and if she can succeed in her endeavor to purify the land of Blight along with her knight. It’s not something I'd ask a very young individual to do. But her unique ability to gather spirits as allies caught my attention. And seeing her continue to stand against countless adversity and persevere is something worth looking into.
For those looking for a different Metroidvania to sink your teeth into. One with a unique premise, tight controls, an amazing soundtrack, satisfying combat, and easy to understand user interface. Perhaps Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights might just be the game to kindle your interest.
Score: 8.5/10
2022
"We fight to live!"
Starting Thoughts
After 150+ hours with the game, I think I can safely say the Tactics Ogre: Reborn(TO:R) shot up to one of my absolute favorite strategy role-playing games. There is enough nuance here in how worldbuilding is constructed and politics I found realistic and surprising to a degree where my suspension of disbelief was held at bay. Pulling my interest from the beginning to the very end. As well as a host of other great features in the game like fun gameplay, freedom to customize units/classes, and a multiple route system is enough to sink many hours into the game.
The game has so much content in terms of multiple routes involved and exclusive units to recruit. And not only that, there is a people lorebook here which can constantly update based on the current events in each chapter. A propagandistic newspaper of events happening outside of your sphere of influence. A wealth of classes to choose from and easily switch into. Some are cleverly hidden, but for the most part, I felt all classes are viable depending on how you use your troops.
Impactful decisions throughout the plot and one where you can see the immediate consequences. So be wary of making hasty choices, take your time, and decide the best course of action. Since the plot will change drastically as you delve deeper into the game. Likewise, recruits and events will also change depending on what choice you made in earlier chapters. These can lead to different outcomes and events. There is a useful feature after you beat the game to see what happens in other routes.
"....True Victory is won in the heart, not on the battlefield"
Some Thoughts
Love the gameplay where you can create your party. Assemble a team of tanks with healers and you can make a tanky phalanx crew to mop up enemies ahead. Or mix things up and create a team of twelve, with every unit as a different class to spice up the class variety. Heck, you can even make a party full of casters if you so desire. And there are plenty of classes to choose from. Like frightening enemies with a terror knight. Unleash devastating spells using a warlock/witch/wizard. Recruit hybrid classes like valkyrie/fencer/enchantress and more. Dish out so much damage as a berserker in a 180-degree radius. And even stock up your healers with spells to attack and buff your allies with faster speed. Or take up the sword and become a swordmaster or the ninja class to strike enemies with ninjutsu. There are so many class combos you can try, the only limit is your imagination.
Great map variety where you can start from atop a hill and fight your way down to the enemy below or vice-versa. Where you start from the very bottom and must fight your way to the top. Elevation matters here a lot and weather can change how you approach a battle. So bringing a winged unit would be great to travel to high places easily, but will be hampered in accuracy due to rain or snowy weather. So keep an eye on the weather and the terrain you will fight on. To turn the tide against your enemies.
A bunch of side content you can do. While most of them occur in the final chapter I spent a good chunk of my hours completing a great majority of them. There is even a post-game included which can take even more hours of your time to complete. But I recommend it all the same. Especially to see the epilogue and what happens after the final boss is defeated. Very rare to see this among other games nowadays.
Health and fortune to you all
Final Thoughts
To balance all the glowing praise I've given to Tactics Ogre: Reborn. There are a couple of things I wish the game did better to elevate it a bit more to perfection.
Additional cutscenes to develop characters more. While I consider the main cast and villains pretty good. What would elevate them more would be additional cutscenes to flesh them out. Sure there is dialogue during battles and it is fantastic to learn more about your units as you fight. But I feel some more optional cutscenes could’ve given a bit more room to turn characters into more human and complex characters. More unique battle dialogue would be appreciated. Perhaps sprinkling some of their backgrounds after reaching an ‘x’ amount of battles with the said unit or some other suggestion would be nice to see.
Easier means to recruit hard-to-acquire units in each route. Or at least vaguely say what to do to recruit a unit. Had to follow a guide to make sure I didn’t mess up on some characters to recruit them. I imagine blind players can be frustrated if they unknowingly messed up a key requirement midway through recruiting a character. Especially if a unit can be important to receiving certain cutscenes and background with another character and further character development.
Aside from the criticisms, I listed above. I feel TO:R is an incredibly deep game for SRPGs. It touches on heavy topics on war and doesn't shy away from the brutality of it. While subjecting our main cast(the three units you start with) to the machinations of people in power. What to do with said power, what changes come from our protagonists, and who suffers the most in war. Where their beliefs will be tested and their strength of character checked constantly to see if they can overcome or succumb to the consequences of battles and skirmishes. Both physical and mental.
The game doesn’t have an amazing visual style, and yet the game’s graphics still hold up quite well today. And while there isn’t deep character development to the point I would be shouting across the rooftops for everyone to play TO:R. I feel the developers do a good enough job selling the characters enough since our main cast is intertwined with the plot and what becomes of them in the end, as well as any characters I recruit too. There is enough variation and differences in each route to see. And exclusive content you could only find in their respective routes. The soundtrack is great and I have nothing bad to say about it. If anything, I will say the music composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto & Masaharu Iwata made many tracks that fit in many places during battle and outside. Making me feel immersed in the world and battles ahead. The gameplay is really fun and my hours flew by as I continued to fight on every map I could and if need be, I could take a break and let the AI fight for me.
If you are looking for a game about war and political factions vying for power along with the usual tropes of protagonists coming to save the day. Then you won’t find that here. The game goes deeper into what you find in war and it ain't pretty. What happens when politics and other factions come into the equation and how that can affect the main cast, side-cast and innocent people. You’ll find out what exactly happens to our young trio at the end of the game and the events to come based on your decisions. So if you are looking for any of that, I feel Tactics Ogre: Reborn could be the right game for you.
Score: 9.75/10
Starting Thoughts
After 150+ hours with the game, I think I can safely say the Tactics Ogre: Reborn(TO:R) shot up to one of my absolute favorite strategy role-playing games. There is enough nuance here in how worldbuilding is constructed and politics I found realistic and surprising to a degree where my suspension of disbelief was held at bay. Pulling my interest from the beginning to the very end. As well as a host of other great features in the game like fun gameplay, freedom to customize units/classes, and a multiple route system is enough to sink many hours into the game.
The game has so much content in terms of multiple routes involved and exclusive units to recruit. And not only that, there is a people lorebook here which can constantly update based on the current events in each chapter. A propagandistic newspaper of events happening outside of your sphere of influence. A wealth of classes to choose from and easily switch into. Some are cleverly hidden, but for the most part, I felt all classes are viable depending on how you use your troops.
Impactful decisions throughout the plot and one where you can see the immediate consequences. So be wary of making hasty choices, take your time, and decide the best course of action. Since the plot will change drastically as you delve deeper into the game. Likewise, recruits and events will also change depending on what choice you made in earlier chapters. These can lead to different outcomes and events. There is a useful feature after you beat the game to see what happens in other routes.
"....True Victory is won in the heart, not on the battlefield"
Some Thoughts
Love the gameplay where you can create your party. Assemble a team of tanks with healers and you can make a tanky phalanx crew to mop up enemies ahead. Or mix things up and create a team of twelve, with every unit as a different class to spice up the class variety. Heck, you can even make a party full of casters if you so desire. And there are plenty of classes to choose from. Like frightening enemies with a terror knight. Unleash devastating spells using a warlock/witch/wizard. Recruit hybrid classes like valkyrie/fencer/enchantress and more. Dish out so much damage as a berserker in a 180-degree radius. And even stock up your healers with spells to attack and buff your allies with faster speed. Or take up the sword and become a swordmaster or the ninja class to strike enemies with ninjutsu. There are so many class combos you can try, the only limit is your imagination.
Great map variety where you can start from atop a hill and fight your way down to the enemy below or vice-versa. Where you start from the very bottom and must fight your way to the top. Elevation matters here a lot and weather can change how you approach a battle. So bringing a winged unit would be great to travel to high places easily, but will be hampered in accuracy due to rain or snowy weather. So keep an eye on the weather and the terrain you will fight on. To turn the tide against your enemies.
A bunch of side content you can do. While most of them occur in the final chapter I spent a good chunk of my hours completing a great majority of them. There is even a post-game included which can take even more hours of your time to complete. But I recommend it all the same. Especially to see the epilogue and what happens after the final boss is defeated. Very rare to see this among other games nowadays.
Health and fortune to you all
Final Thoughts
To balance all the glowing praise I've given to Tactics Ogre: Reborn. There are a couple of things I wish the game did better to elevate it a bit more to perfection.
Additional cutscenes to develop characters more. While I consider the main cast and villains pretty good. What would elevate them more would be additional cutscenes to flesh them out. Sure there is dialogue during battles and it is fantastic to learn more about your units as you fight. But I feel some more optional cutscenes could’ve given a bit more room to turn characters into more human and complex characters. More unique battle dialogue would be appreciated. Perhaps sprinkling some of their backgrounds after reaching an ‘x’ amount of battles with the said unit or some other suggestion would be nice to see.
Easier means to recruit hard-to-acquire units in each route. Or at least vaguely say what to do to recruit a unit. Had to follow a guide to make sure I didn’t mess up on some characters to recruit them. I imagine blind players can be frustrated if they unknowingly messed up a key requirement midway through recruiting a character. Especially if a unit can be important to receiving certain cutscenes and background with another character and further character development.
Aside from the criticisms, I listed above. I feel TO:R is an incredibly deep game for SRPGs. It touches on heavy topics on war and doesn't shy away from the brutality of it. While subjecting our main cast(the three units you start with) to the machinations of people in power. What to do with said power, what changes come from our protagonists, and who suffers the most in war. Where their beliefs will be tested and their strength of character checked constantly to see if they can overcome or succumb to the consequences of battles and skirmishes. Both physical and mental.
The game doesn’t have an amazing visual style, and yet the game’s graphics still hold up quite well today. And while there isn’t deep character development to the point I would be shouting across the rooftops for everyone to play TO:R. I feel the developers do a good enough job selling the characters enough since our main cast is intertwined with the plot and what becomes of them in the end, as well as any characters I recruit too. There is enough variation and differences in each route to see. And exclusive content you could only find in their respective routes. The soundtrack is great and I have nothing bad to say about it. If anything, I will say the music composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto & Masaharu Iwata made many tracks that fit in many places during battle and outside. Making me feel immersed in the world and battles ahead. The gameplay is really fun and my hours flew by as I continued to fight on every map I could and if need be, I could take a break and let the AI fight for me.
If you are looking for a game about war and political factions vying for power along with the usual tropes of protagonists coming to save the day. Then you won’t find that here. The game goes deeper into what you find in war and it ain't pretty. What happens when politics and other factions come into the equation and how that can affect the main cast, side-cast and innocent people. You’ll find out what exactly happens to our young trio at the end of the game and the events to come based on your decisions. So if you are looking for any of that, I feel Tactics Ogre: Reborn could be the right game for you.
Score: 9.75/10
2000
Enter Ashley Riot, Riskbreaker
Basic premise/Story
From developer studio Square, and directed by Yasumi Matsuno. You play as Ashley Riot, a Riskbreaker who travels to Leá Monde to investigate the connection between a cult leader and duke Bardorba. A simple investigation right? Oh, I wish. There is more at work here in the dark and a story worth uncovering.
Battle Mode Please
Unique Gameplay
Vagrant Story's gameplay is one of the most innovative or convoluted systems of systems I have ever had the pleasure of playing. But, I feel the game has some of the weirdest design decisions regarding those systems in place. So I sympathize with the sentiments of those, who feel the combat/crafting is clunky and cumbersome. I certainly felt them. However, I feel these two systems along with the progression of how to increase stats and gain affinities to be more effective against enemies is a neat twist against the traditional level-up by grinding enemies endlessly.
Here, you have to be smart since enemies feel deadlier. Encounter an undead enemy and you may find yourself having a tough time without a silver weapon or a certain type of weapon like blunt, edged, or pierce. Each monster is weak to a certain type or more. So you have to figure out their weaknesses by analyzing enemies or through trial and error. You cannot simply bash every enemy you see with your strongest weapon. The game simply doesn’t work that way.
Nonetheless, not only do you have to figure out what weapon the enemies are weak to, but their base characteristics give a hint or sign of what else they could be weak to. Such as phantoms. Weak to weapons with a high affinity to phantoms or any other element. Humans and other creatures you face become increasingly more susceptible to their nature. As long as you use the same weapon continuously to create a high affinity with the weapon. You can become more effective in dishing out more damage to the creature/humanoid/or other abominable nightmares you face.
And this is where the game truly starts to shine. As you use the same weapon since the beginning. You become more in tune and more effective at using it. Making it deadlier against say 'dragons' if you continue to kill more dragons or combat them. You gain affinity incrementally as you fight each type of enemy. And thus your weapon can become stronger. If you’re worried that the main weapon you have been using will fall behind in damage you can combine that equipment with another blade to create a more powerful blade. The catch is you need to be in a workshop with the right type as well as make sure the resulting weapon is stronger and not an inferior weapon.
As long as players pay attention to stat values in the bottom right corner and make sure your affinities are intact. Because combined weapons combined each blade's affinities. So using a piece of old equipment with a piece of new equipment and the resulting equipment will maintain the gained values and negative values the item has. So in theory and practice, you can use an old weapon you have been using since the beginning and use that weapon by endgame. Well… It’s going to be combined with other weapons, so the merged weapon would contain all the affinities you built up since the beginning. Weapons don’t degrade after continuous use either.
So then what’s the main appeal to the battle system beyond fighting and defeating enemies to make our current weapons stronger? The answer is the battle system or more aptly named ‘Battle Mode.’ With one button press Ashley can unsheathe his weapon and or shield he has equipped and a sphere starts to spread from his character. Any enemy caught within the sphere can then be attacked by Ashley on any limbs the target has. The body and head are included. This simple mode is enjoyable throughout the game to choose which area of the enemy you’re facing is weakest. Kinda like the V.A.T.S. system in Fallout, the mechanic is very similar here. With each limb/part detailing the chance to hit and how much damage Ashley can inflict. The game has buffs and debuffs as well which can increase your strengths and accuracy among other values to your benefit. Although, the enemy is pretty smart in their own right and can dish out debuffs to make you weaker. You won’t see this in every fight, but it is something to watch out for.
You don’t gain stats traditionally like other Jrpgs. Instead, every time you defeat a boss you have a slot machine with various stat increases scrolling by. And when you hit a button on the controller the scrolling will stop and whatever stat is displayed will increase your base stats. So if the last section that the scrolling stopped on was MP +2 then your mana pool will increase by 2. HP, str, agi, and int, are also possible results with the number varying. You can also find stat-boosting items whenever you delve deeper into the Leá Monde. By endgame, I had a good spread of my stats and didn’t find too much trouble in the end.
Leá Monde's Secrets
Final thoughts/Ruminations
I’ve heard of Vagrant Story over the years. Usually regarded as tough and complex for the gameplay mechanics to understand and sometimes having one of the most compelling stories out there for a JRPG. And now when the end credits are rolling, I cannot help but agree with those statements.
Despite some of the combat systems being a bit of a learning curve to understand, for the most part. The game is largely self-contained to give you the information and help you understand it. Additionally, there is a quick manual within the game, you can pull up whenever you need to. I found this helpful whenever I needed a refresher on a mechanic I needed a bit more information on.
In my case, I found the combat challenging and rewarding since they give the players so many options to dispatch enemies as I see fit. I could chain attack, my enemies, to death without giving them any moment of reprieve as long as I time my attacks to the big red exclamation point. Could switch to a mage-type build and blast my enemies with devastating spells. Or switch to any of my weapons and blast them with break arts. Using only my HP as the cost if I didn’t want to chain attack them. Defend Ashley with Defensive abilities, so the damage my enemies deal to me isn’t as severe. Switch weapons during combat anytime and rebuff/debuff my enemies before they can get a single hit and more. Heck, I can even position myself so the enemy will hit his/her comrade. And the game will let it occur! So friendly fire does exist! Sucks to be them honestly. Luckily Ashley is a solo man. So you don’t need to worry about hitting party members.
I love the freedom the devs give to the players and it shows so much. If you have the options, abuse it to your heart's content. And Vagrant Story does so magnificently in its own right. While making the enemies challenging and fair to fight. You are never in an insurmountable fight, only unprepared with the wrong equipment being used. As long as you know which type of weapon and shield to use against your enemies you should be able to breeze through the game.
Since the game doesn’t have wide open fields like the team’s previous game with Final Fantasy Tactics. The game largely takes place in box-sized levels. So you don’t have lots of room to explore. I feel the devs used this to their advantage by creating lots of rooms with purpose. Some even go so far as to include no enemies with only boxes where you will have to place them in certain ways to get to the other areas of the room or activate mechanisms to unlock the door. There are even timed events where you need to run across a series of rooms to get to the other side, making combat, not the end all be all for the game. I love this type of breather room so to speak to give players a rest and just run to another room. Granted there aren't a lot of these rooms, but their inclusion of them is still appreciated throughout the game. And while I would’ve liked more interesting rooms to use a different art palette. And a bit more differentiation from some similar corridors. I think the game still has enough surprises in store to alleviate those concerns. One aspect I didn’t see was a decent spread of platforming involved to get to the other side of the room which I took as a personal challenge to do in some rooms. It’s awesome how there is a dedicated jump button so you can evade enemies at your leisure. And the game makes full use of that.
The sound is impeccably well-tuned to the cinematic graphics for the game. Where the story would transition into a cutscene moment between antagonists or with Ashley in the picture. The music is fitting here providing the right amount of tension, anxiety, momentum, and vigor to shift the player’s mood. In my case to great success. I felt intrigued by some scenes. Worried in others, anxious in other cases, and pumped in ensuing fight scenes about to occur. All in all the music and sound effects were intricately linked with the game and I found it enjoyable to listen.
Graphics also share the teamwork load by providing excellent use of cinematic direction to push the PlayStation hardware to its absolute limits of rendering everything in 3D. And while this did limit the game in some areas. I was impressed throughout my playthrough by how the devs were able to circumvent these issues with clever lighting, camera angles, and comic book-styled visual design to accentuate the narrative and keep it intriguing. I felt rooted in my seat in anticipation for the next scene to occur and wondering what will happen next. I also liked the gritter atmosphere the game conveyed of Leá Monde and the surrounding levels and enemies reflected that greatly enhancing the immersion of something more at work here.
I wish the game had some quality-of-life improvements to make the combat a bit more fresh and more modern for newcomers. Having the menu not be slow, removing hard limits on inventory, and connecting it to the storage. Crafting/combining using your whole inventory including the storage chest to eliminate backtracking and going back and forth to the chest. A detailed map of combinations to combine weapons, armor, and shields without consulting a chart online. To help newcomers on what equipment to keep based on stat values. Saving anytime instead of within save circles. And a tiny bit more differentiation between corridors
If there is one last thing to touch on for Vagrant Story. It is how the story is detailed. Through expositional dialog. So you won’t find any factual information to peruse like lorebooks or conversing with NPCs. Pretty much everything you need is through the scenes occurring in the game. And perhaps some item descriptions you find here and there for worldbuilding.
I feel the story closes all important plot points and loose ends pretty well within Leá Monde; the place where all the events take place. It can be slow in the beginning to understand the early scenes being shown, but stick around and you'll probably be engrossed as I did with intrigue and curiosity to learn more. With clever twists and turns I didn't expect and moments I was genuinely shocked to learn as the plot moved forward. There is no cliffhanger ending either and I was quite satisfied with the ending scenes. I will admit the game can make the early scenes confusing if you skip an important cutscene by lingering at the start menu screen and don’t skip any of the following scenes after starting the game. So I recommend not skipping anything.
Be that as it may, there is something quite special here I haven't quite seen, since the time I played Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears. To show players something entirely new and bold to the audience without any wasted dialogue. Demonstrating a clever balance of wit in writing. Striving and succeeding in holding my interest throughout by shifting the pendulum in favor of the antagonists or the hero of the story. A fun combat system reminiscent of my time playing games from the Mother series/Witcher 1. With timing my chain attacks. An intriguing story from the beginning, middle, and end. Well-rounded antagonists to boot. Impressive cinematic direction. And takes regular tropes we associate with JRPGs and flips them on its head. To great effect.
All of this is a remarkable achievement for a Playstation 1 title. And despite some criticisms, I have with the game. I think I can safely say it's one of those PlayStation 1 gems that is a must-play for anyone looking for a nuanced story outside the scope of Final Fantasy then look no further than Vagrant Story.
Here is a quote from the director Yasumi Matsuno. I feel this sums up what Vagrant Story is.
"If FF is the game industry version of a major Hollywood movie, then VAGRANT STORY is an independent movie to be watched quietly in a small movie theatre. The scale is different, but the burning enthusiasm and the dreams behind the scenes are the same as in the majors."
Score: 9/10
Basic premise/Story
From developer studio Square, and directed by Yasumi Matsuno. You play as Ashley Riot, a Riskbreaker who travels to Leá Monde to investigate the connection between a cult leader and duke Bardorba. A simple investigation right? Oh, I wish. There is more at work here in the dark and a story worth uncovering.
Battle Mode Please
Unique Gameplay
Vagrant Story's gameplay is one of the most innovative or convoluted systems of systems I have ever had the pleasure of playing. But, I feel the game has some of the weirdest design decisions regarding those systems in place. So I sympathize with the sentiments of those, who feel the combat/crafting is clunky and cumbersome. I certainly felt them. However, I feel these two systems along with the progression of how to increase stats and gain affinities to be more effective against enemies is a neat twist against the traditional level-up by grinding enemies endlessly.
Here, you have to be smart since enemies feel deadlier. Encounter an undead enemy and you may find yourself having a tough time without a silver weapon or a certain type of weapon like blunt, edged, or pierce. Each monster is weak to a certain type or more. So you have to figure out their weaknesses by analyzing enemies or through trial and error. You cannot simply bash every enemy you see with your strongest weapon. The game simply doesn’t work that way.
Nonetheless, not only do you have to figure out what weapon the enemies are weak to, but their base characteristics give a hint or sign of what else they could be weak to. Such as phantoms. Weak to weapons with a high affinity to phantoms or any other element. Humans and other creatures you face become increasingly more susceptible to their nature. As long as you use the same weapon continuously to create a high affinity with the weapon. You can become more effective in dishing out more damage to the creature/humanoid/or other abominable nightmares you face.
And this is where the game truly starts to shine. As you use the same weapon since the beginning. You become more in tune and more effective at using it. Making it deadlier against say 'dragons' if you continue to kill more dragons or combat them. You gain affinity incrementally as you fight each type of enemy. And thus your weapon can become stronger. If you’re worried that the main weapon you have been using will fall behind in damage you can combine that equipment with another blade to create a more powerful blade. The catch is you need to be in a workshop with the right type as well as make sure the resulting weapon is stronger and not an inferior weapon.
As long as players pay attention to stat values in the bottom right corner and make sure your affinities are intact. Because combined weapons combined each blade's affinities. So using a piece of old equipment with a piece of new equipment and the resulting equipment will maintain the gained values and negative values the item has. So in theory and practice, you can use an old weapon you have been using since the beginning and use that weapon by endgame. Well… It’s going to be combined with other weapons, so the merged weapon would contain all the affinities you built up since the beginning. Weapons don’t degrade after continuous use either.
So then what’s the main appeal to the battle system beyond fighting and defeating enemies to make our current weapons stronger? The answer is the battle system or more aptly named ‘Battle Mode.’ With one button press Ashley can unsheathe his weapon and or shield he has equipped and a sphere starts to spread from his character. Any enemy caught within the sphere can then be attacked by Ashley on any limbs the target has. The body and head are included. This simple mode is enjoyable throughout the game to choose which area of the enemy you’re facing is weakest. Kinda like the V.A.T.S. system in Fallout, the mechanic is very similar here. With each limb/part detailing the chance to hit and how much damage Ashley can inflict. The game has buffs and debuffs as well which can increase your strengths and accuracy among other values to your benefit. Although, the enemy is pretty smart in their own right and can dish out debuffs to make you weaker. You won’t see this in every fight, but it is something to watch out for.
You don’t gain stats traditionally like other Jrpgs. Instead, every time you defeat a boss you have a slot machine with various stat increases scrolling by. And when you hit a button on the controller the scrolling will stop and whatever stat is displayed will increase your base stats. So if the last section that the scrolling stopped on was MP +2 then your mana pool will increase by 2. HP, str, agi, and int, are also possible results with the number varying. You can also find stat-boosting items whenever you delve deeper into the Leá Monde. By endgame, I had a good spread of my stats and didn’t find too much trouble in the end.
Leá Monde's Secrets
Final thoughts/Ruminations
I’ve heard of Vagrant Story over the years. Usually regarded as tough and complex for the gameplay mechanics to understand and sometimes having one of the most compelling stories out there for a JRPG. And now when the end credits are rolling, I cannot help but agree with those statements.
Despite some of the combat systems being a bit of a learning curve to understand, for the most part. The game is largely self-contained to give you the information and help you understand it. Additionally, there is a quick manual within the game, you can pull up whenever you need to. I found this helpful whenever I needed a refresher on a mechanic I needed a bit more information on.
In my case, I found the combat challenging and rewarding since they give the players so many options to dispatch enemies as I see fit. I could chain attack, my enemies, to death without giving them any moment of reprieve as long as I time my attacks to the big red exclamation point. Could switch to a mage-type build and blast my enemies with devastating spells. Or switch to any of my weapons and blast them with break arts. Using only my HP as the cost if I didn’t want to chain attack them. Defend Ashley with Defensive abilities, so the damage my enemies deal to me isn’t as severe. Switch weapons during combat anytime and rebuff/debuff my enemies before they can get a single hit and more. Heck, I can even position myself so the enemy will hit his/her comrade. And the game will let it occur! So friendly fire does exist! Sucks to be them honestly. Luckily Ashley is a solo man. So you don’t need to worry about hitting party members.
I love the freedom the devs give to the players and it shows so much. If you have the options, abuse it to your heart's content. And Vagrant Story does so magnificently in its own right. While making the enemies challenging and fair to fight. You are never in an insurmountable fight, only unprepared with the wrong equipment being used. As long as you know which type of weapon and shield to use against your enemies you should be able to breeze through the game.
Since the game doesn’t have wide open fields like the team’s previous game with Final Fantasy Tactics. The game largely takes place in box-sized levels. So you don’t have lots of room to explore. I feel the devs used this to their advantage by creating lots of rooms with purpose. Some even go so far as to include no enemies with only boxes where you will have to place them in certain ways to get to the other areas of the room or activate mechanisms to unlock the door. There are even timed events where you need to run across a series of rooms to get to the other side, making combat, not the end all be all for the game. I love this type of breather room so to speak to give players a rest and just run to another room. Granted there aren't a lot of these rooms, but their inclusion of them is still appreciated throughout the game. And while I would’ve liked more interesting rooms to use a different art palette. And a bit more differentiation from some similar corridors. I think the game still has enough surprises in store to alleviate those concerns. One aspect I didn’t see was a decent spread of platforming involved to get to the other side of the room which I took as a personal challenge to do in some rooms. It’s awesome how there is a dedicated jump button so you can evade enemies at your leisure. And the game makes full use of that.
The sound is impeccably well-tuned to the cinematic graphics for the game. Where the story would transition into a cutscene moment between antagonists or with Ashley in the picture. The music is fitting here providing the right amount of tension, anxiety, momentum, and vigor to shift the player’s mood. In my case to great success. I felt intrigued by some scenes. Worried in others, anxious in other cases, and pumped in ensuing fight scenes about to occur. All in all the music and sound effects were intricately linked with the game and I found it enjoyable to listen.
Graphics also share the teamwork load by providing excellent use of cinematic direction to push the PlayStation hardware to its absolute limits of rendering everything in 3D. And while this did limit the game in some areas. I was impressed throughout my playthrough by how the devs were able to circumvent these issues with clever lighting, camera angles, and comic book-styled visual design to accentuate the narrative and keep it intriguing. I felt rooted in my seat in anticipation for the next scene to occur and wondering what will happen next. I also liked the gritter atmosphere the game conveyed of Leá Monde and the surrounding levels and enemies reflected that greatly enhancing the immersion of something more at work here.
I wish the game had some quality-of-life improvements to make the combat a bit more fresh and more modern for newcomers. Having the menu not be slow, removing hard limits on inventory, and connecting it to the storage. Crafting/combining using your whole inventory including the storage chest to eliminate backtracking and going back and forth to the chest. A detailed map of combinations to combine weapons, armor, and shields without consulting a chart online. To help newcomers on what equipment to keep based on stat values. Saving anytime instead of within save circles. And a tiny bit more differentiation between corridors
If there is one last thing to touch on for Vagrant Story. It is how the story is detailed. Through expositional dialog. So you won’t find any factual information to peruse like lorebooks or conversing with NPCs. Pretty much everything you need is through the scenes occurring in the game. And perhaps some item descriptions you find here and there for worldbuilding.
I feel the story closes all important plot points and loose ends pretty well within Leá Monde; the place where all the events take place. It can be slow in the beginning to understand the early scenes being shown, but stick around and you'll probably be engrossed as I did with intrigue and curiosity to learn more. With clever twists and turns I didn't expect and moments I was genuinely shocked to learn as the plot moved forward. There is no cliffhanger ending either and I was quite satisfied with the ending scenes. I will admit the game can make the early scenes confusing if you skip an important cutscene by lingering at the start menu screen and don’t skip any of the following scenes after starting the game. So I recommend not skipping anything.
Be that as it may, there is something quite special here I haven't quite seen, since the time I played Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears. To show players something entirely new and bold to the audience without any wasted dialogue. Demonstrating a clever balance of wit in writing. Striving and succeeding in holding my interest throughout by shifting the pendulum in favor of the antagonists or the hero of the story. A fun combat system reminiscent of my time playing games from the Mother series/Witcher 1. With timing my chain attacks. An intriguing story from the beginning, middle, and end. Well-rounded antagonists to boot. Impressive cinematic direction. And takes regular tropes we associate with JRPGs and flips them on its head. To great effect.
All of this is a remarkable achievement for a Playstation 1 title. And despite some criticisms, I have with the game. I think I can safely say it's one of those PlayStation 1 gems that is a must-play for anyone looking for a nuanced story outside the scope of Final Fantasy then look no further than Vagrant Story.
Here is a quote from the director Yasumi Matsuno. I feel this sums up what Vagrant Story is.
"If FF is the game industry version of a major Hollywood movie, then VAGRANT STORY is an independent movie to be watched quietly in a small movie theatre. The scale is different, but the burning enthusiasm and the dreams behind the scenes are the same as in the majors."
Score: 9/10
For a long time, I have wished for one game to give me a similar feeling of wonder and discovery as my time with Dark Souls 1. For years I have searched, and as the market filled with countless soul's-likes, I was still unsatisfied. Because they strive to fulfill different criteria of what makes a soul's-like truly great in varying degrees. Except for a single Indie RPG. Bleak Faith: Forsaken.
Made by 3 developers. And one I feel has nearly enough to stand next to Fromsoftware's beloved Soul's games for an indie RPG. Yet, the recent release has been unjustly, unfairly, and unreasonably panned by many users on the web for bugs and an Epic controversy. The former has been hyperbolized beyond disbelief and gatekeeping, while the latter is a rabbit hole; I'm not going to discuss it here.
Despite, these major claims, I sought to review the game based on its own merits upon release. This is my review of Bleak Faith: Forsaken after 34 hours. For full disclosure, I did not ask the developers for a review copy since I wanted to experience it with everyone else.
Anyway, let's get started.
Primarily an open-world survival horror action third-person RPG. A cross between sci-fi and dark fantasy. A ‘Blame! By Tsutomu Nihei’ meets ‘Berserk by Kentaro Miura’ game. You will explore the omnistructure and discover the history behind this unforgiving world. Embrace the unknown and risk your life multiple times against powerful adversaries.
That’s the main gist of what I can glean. And for the most part, it is pretty true in exploring the omnistructure. It does share similarities as a souls-like. However, there is enough content here to differentiate itself from being another soul's clone.
You don't level conventionally in Bleak Faith. Instead, the game runs entirely based on the gear you find in the world and the equipment you earn from enemies. This is an interesting take on the gameplay formula since it eliminates the need to go to a stationary safe zone to allocate stats. Instead, it enforces a bold approach where players must venture to explore the Omnistructure.
A vast world full of verticality with medium-large levels. And where some can quickly become lost in the sheer scale of wonder and discovery. In my experience, I was captivated by the level design and appreciated the environments of sci-fi megastructures to the mix of fantasy elements of technomancy. I became lost in the narrow corridors while searching for better loot and taking in the sheer scenery of places. At times, you will need a mental map of the levels you encounter. Nonetheless, sometimes your curiosity might lead you to find a great treasure or a hidden shortcut to unlock. The great thing about playing games like these without any official guides or information on the web at the time of release is that it forces the player to go in any direction at their peril and curiosity. To my utter joy, the first area you start does a good job of dropping you into the world and letting you go off in any direction. And the 2nd area is impressive due to each level being intrinsically interconnected.
Early previews of trailers have some heavy Shadow of the Colossus inspiration here. And I am glad to report there is such a system in place to climb onto large enemies to weaken them. The mechanic is not half-baked either. You will be fighting differently by striking their legs to stagger them. And then you climb atop their body to strike at their weak points. This mix of Colossus-style combat is refreshing to the combat formula where you fight lone or multiple adversaries. Now you have to keep in mind the larger giants as well.
Climbing, jumping, water traversal are allowed in the game. Adding to the player freedom and traversal on nearly every cliff, crevice, as well as a sprinkle of platforming here. A nice change of pace from battles. To see more of the level structure, the power to do so at any time and for players to figure out their path is an incredible feeling. Granted, it is not at every level. But, the fact is we can jump anytime. Also is integrated well enough with the other mechanics, not to the point of a checklist, but each mechanic felt natural and not thrown in haphazardly. Enhancing the world to make nearly every nook and cranny possible to reach. So if you think there will be some obstacles blocking your path... Well... You know what to do.
I love your character abilities here and the perk system. They visually affect different playstyles to become extra powerful or subtly with stat upgrades. For example, I could pick the Vamprism perk, granting my character life steal. One perk: Increases the number of health potions on my belt, a passive chance to create illusions. Dual weapon & heavy weapon masteries to increase damage and more.
These coupled with interchangeable character abilities, made my playthrough very enjoyable since it emphasized different builds and experimentation.
I like the crafting system here. Since it does not contain a currency system to buy equipment or items. Unlike the Souls games it's inspired by, you don't lose currency on death, so it is okay to die. Therefore, the gameplay loop of exploration and defeating enemies to gather materials becomes a euphoric feeling. Allowing the player to become stronger as they progress further. Upgrading your weapons and gear outputs a good change in the stats of your character. As a result, the crafting system helps the player overcome bosses or tough enemy mobs.
For bosses. They are threatening and do a fantastic job of giving you a good bit of trouble. But, not to the point of being insurmountable to defeat. Simply upgrade gear and weapons, and have enough items on your belt to increase damage, armor rating, and more items. Help immensely to turn the tide of battle. And for the most part that was enough for me. Attackers are also varied and I did not see a lot of copy-paste here and there. The whole world evolves in a way I didn't expect as I progressed deeper into the game, making new foes appear.
Dig the large variety of weapons and armor you can find. Made hunting around the world for unique armor sets and equipment a pleasure and fighting opponents not dull. Considering, I wanted an enemy's gear. Cool cape? That's mine now. Woah cool staff dude. That too will be mine. So the gameplay momentum is sustained as you progress further in the omnistructure.
Weaponry feels powerful and usable in certain situations since they can have one or two unique abilities attached. A unique weapon can emit a sword slash in front of you. The other can teleport behind enemy lines backstabbing them, others can summon beams of light. I haven't found all of them yet, but the sheer amount of weapon abilities with unique animations is a great plus in my books. Just like the souls series, boss weapons feel very powerful to use and very rewarding to have after a tough fight. Also, they aesthetically look very epic.
Speaking of epic. The music slaps. And I dearly want to buy the soundtrack as soon as possible. Boss tracks especially are fitting and overworld levels give off a pleasant track tunes.
Now then, as much as I want to go on praising what works effectively here. There are some things I must critique. And granted, the developers have already fixed the controls and Giant's bug. Two major complaints I had were quickly resolved. During my playthrough. This is very satisfying to see and so, I’ll focus on other matters.
First. Inventory updates. Occasionally will not show what I acquired from an enemy or what item I found. I had to check my inventory constantly and discover, “when did I get that item?” All items should pop up clearly. So I do not need to check my inventory and double-check.
Minor to somewhat troublesome bugs. Compared to the exaggerated claims by some users online panning the release as unplayable due to the number of bugs. Quite frankly, I didn’t encounter that many. And when I did they were largely fixed by the re-spawn mechanic you have innately. You can spawn one nearby when there are no enemies. Nonetheless, I did experience falling off the map, not intentionally mind you two to four times, getting outside level boundaries two to three times, and collisions with the enemy where I am stuck to them about three to four times. These all occurred throughout my thirty-four-hour playthrough and one crash to the desktop. And suffice it to say I didn’t lose a major amount of progress either. Granted my playthrough could be different and I’ve seen different reviews from other reviewers who have played to end credits stating different experiences with bugs. So this could be a ‘your mileage might vary’ type of deal. Be that as it may, most reviews on Steam still have negative thumbs-down ratings. When the developers have already fixed a good number of those complaints regarding the controls, floating while jumping, and instant death from climbing giants. This is a gentle reminder to read other reviewers' impressions of the game who have played extensively. And provide clarity and logical reasoning. There is a clear difference between ten to twenty minutes of playtime to two hours or less and then compared to those who played five, ten, twenty plus hours.
Moving on.
The next points I'll cover can be a hit or miss. Not a negative or a positive. All the same, I have decided to say here for transparency.
To start, hitboxes can be a hit or miss. Sometimes the weapon I am using is just a tad bit short. Other times it is great when evading an enemy. Could be better I feel.
I wish there is a 'perk reset' button or drinking a unique consumable to revert perks. I made the mistake of clicking one perk thinking, "This will be good." Except it's not. And now I'm stuck with a perk for my whole playthrough. Granted, there was a warning attached of picking a perk being irreversible. So that's on me.
Has jank when it was good. But also jank when it is bad. Yet, I still had a lot of fun throughout my playthrough and didn't reach a point of frustration to the degree I wanted to gatekeep this indie RPG for good. In several cases, I had jolly good laughs on some jank occurring. Some of which work in my favor!
I wish there was more story here. Seems, the narrative can be a bit vague at times. And while I appreciated the cutscenes greatly, more dialogue to explain some lore, sidequests for more side activities to do and more NPCs to flesh out the world-building could do wonders in immersing me further.
I also think the combo system can be a hit or miss. I barely touched it early on since I couldn't get the mechanic to activate it correctly. While a friend of mine told me it works for them. So I am going back to see if I can properly activate them in fights. Probably my fault for not fully understanding how it works. Perhaps a tutorial archive in the menu to refresh players on mechanics would be nice.
And that’s it. My final score for Bleak Faith: Forsaken is an 8/10. I was thinking of a 7/10. But I feel that is way too harsh. There is plenty of good content here, the game has organically especially from 3 developers. I could see it going to a 9/10 in the coming months as the devs continue making incredible progress as each day passes. And will add more free updates. Such as NG+, content expansions, and multiplayer. But first fixes since that is a very high priority.
So! If you are on the hunt, for an indie RPG souls-like in the vein of Dark Souls 1 just as I was. A mix of sci-fi and fantasy with a cross of Blame! & Berserk. And don't mind the occasional jank here and there. Then I recommend Bleak Faith: Forsaken. I have faith that the developers from Archangel Studios will come out with something great in store for us.
Made by 3 developers. And one I feel has nearly enough to stand next to Fromsoftware's beloved Soul's games for an indie RPG. Yet, the recent release has been unjustly, unfairly, and unreasonably panned by many users on the web for bugs and an Epic controversy. The former has been hyperbolized beyond disbelief and gatekeeping, while the latter is a rabbit hole; I'm not going to discuss it here.
Despite, these major claims, I sought to review the game based on its own merits upon release. This is my review of Bleak Faith: Forsaken after 34 hours. For full disclosure, I did not ask the developers for a review copy since I wanted to experience it with everyone else.
Anyway, let's get started.
Primarily an open-world survival horror action third-person RPG. A cross between sci-fi and dark fantasy. A ‘Blame! By Tsutomu Nihei’ meets ‘Berserk by Kentaro Miura’ game. You will explore the omnistructure and discover the history behind this unforgiving world. Embrace the unknown and risk your life multiple times against powerful adversaries.
That’s the main gist of what I can glean. And for the most part, it is pretty true in exploring the omnistructure. It does share similarities as a souls-like. However, there is enough content here to differentiate itself from being another soul's clone.
You don't level conventionally in Bleak Faith. Instead, the game runs entirely based on the gear you find in the world and the equipment you earn from enemies. This is an interesting take on the gameplay formula since it eliminates the need to go to a stationary safe zone to allocate stats. Instead, it enforces a bold approach where players must venture to explore the Omnistructure.
A vast world full of verticality with medium-large levels. And where some can quickly become lost in the sheer scale of wonder and discovery. In my experience, I was captivated by the level design and appreciated the environments of sci-fi megastructures to the mix of fantasy elements of technomancy. I became lost in the narrow corridors while searching for better loot and taking in the sheer scenery of places. At times, you will need a mental map of the levels you encounter. Nonetheless, sometimes your curiosity might lead you to find a great treasure or a hidden shortcut to unlock. The great thing about playing games like these without any official guides or information on the web at the time of release is that it forces the player to go in any direction at their peril and curiosity. To my utter joy, the first area you start does a good job of dropping you into the world and letting you go off in any direction. And the 2nd area is impressive due to each level being intrinsically interconnected.
Early previews of trailers have some heavy Shadow of the Colossus inspiration here. And I am glad to report there is such a system in place to climb onto large enemies to weaken them. The mechanic is not half-baked either. You will be fighting differently by striking their legs to stagger them. And then you climb atop their body to strike at their weak points. This mix of Colossus-style combat is refreshing to the combat formula where you fight lone or multiple adversaries. Now you have to keep in mind the larger giants as well.
Climbing, jumping, water traversal are allowed in the game. Adding to the player freedom and traversal on nearly every cliff, crevice, as well as a sprinkle of platforming here. A nice change of pace from battles. To see more of the level structure, the power to do so at any time and for players to figure out their path is an incredible feeling. Granted, it is not at every level. But, the fact is we can jump anytime. Also is integrated well enough with the other mechanics, not to the point of a checklist, but each mechanic felt natural and not thrown in haphazardly. Enhancing the world to make nearly every nook and cranny possible to reach. So if you think there will be some obstacles blocking your path... Well... You know what to do.
I love your character abilities here and the perk system. They visually affect different playstyles to become extra powerful or subtly with stat upgrades. For example, I could pick the Vamprism perk, granting my character life steal. One perk: Increases the number of health potions on my belt, a passive chance to create illusions. Dual weapon & heavy weapon masteries to increase damage and more.
These coupled with interchangeable character abilities, made my playthrough very enjoyable since it emphasized different builds and experimentation.
I like the crafting system here. Since it does not contain a currency system to buy equipment or items. Unlike the Souls games it's inspired by, you don't lose currency on death, so it is okay to die. Therefore, the gameplay loop of exploration and defeating enemies to gather materials becomes a euphoric feeling. Allowing the player to become stronger as they progress further. Upgrading your weapons and gear outputs a good change in the stats of your character. As a result, the crafting system helps the player overcome bosses or tough enemy mobs.
For bosses. They are threatening and do a fantastic job of giving you a good bit of trouble. But, not to the point of being insurmountable to defeat. Simply upgrade gear and weapons, and have enough items on your belt to increase damage, armor rating, and more items. Help immensely to turn the tide of battle. And for the most part that was enough for me. Attackers are also varied and I did not see a lot of copy-paste here and there. The whole world evolves in a way I didn't expect as I progressed deeper into the game, making new foes appear.
Dig the large variety of weapons and armor you can find. Made hunting around the world for unique armor sets and equipment a pleasure and fighting opponents not dull. Considering, I wanted an enemy's gear. Cool cape? That's mine now. Woah cool staff dude. That too will be mine. So the gameplay momentum is sustained as you progress further in the omnistructure.
Weaponry feels powerful and usable in certain situations since they can have one or two unique abilities attached. A unique weapon can emit a sword slash in front of you. The other can teleport behind enemy lines backstabbing them, others can summon beams of light. I haven't found all of them yet, but the sheer amount of weapon abilities with unique animations is a great plus in my books. Just like the souls series, boss weapons feel very powerful to use and very rewarding to have after a tough fight. Also, they aesthetically look very epic.
Speaking of epic. The music slaps. And I dearly want to buy the soundtrack as soon as possible. Boss tracks especially are fitting and overworld levels give off a pleasant track tunes.
Now then, as much as I want to go on praising what works effectively here. There are some things I must critique. And granted, the developers have already fixed the controls and Giant's bug. Two major complaints I had were quickly resolved. During my playthrough. This is very satisfying to see and so, I’ll focus on other matters.
First. Inventory updates. Occasionally will not show what I acquired from an enemy or what item I found. I had to check my inventory constantly and discover, “when did I get that item?” All items should pop up clearly. So I do not need to check my inventory and double-check.
Minor to somewhat troublesome bugs. Compared to the exaggerated claims by some users online panning the release as unplayable due to the number of bugs. Quite frankly, I didn’t encounter that many. And when I did they were largely fixed by the re-spawn mechanic you have innately. You can spawn one nearby when there are no enemies. Nonetheless, I did experience falling off the map, not intentionally mind you two to four times, getting outside level boundaries two to three times, and collisions with the enemy where I am stuck to them about three to four times. These all occurred throughout my thirty-four-hour playthrough and one crash to the desktop. And suffice it to say I didn’t lose a major amount of progress either. Granted my playthrough could be different and I’ve seen different reviews from other reviewers who have played to end credits stating different experiences with bugs. So this could be a ‘your mileage might vary’ type of deal. Be that as it may, most reviews on Steam still have negative thumbs-down ratings. When the developers have already fixed a good number of those complaints regarding the controls, floating while jumping, and instant death from climbing giants. This is a gentle reminder to read other reviewers' impressions of the game who have played extensively. And provide clarity and logical reasoning. There is a clear difference between ten to twenty minutes of playtime to two hours or less and then compared to those who played five, ten, twenty plus hours.
Moving on.
The next points I'll cover can be a hit or miss. Not a negative or a positive. All the same, I have decided to say here for transparency.
To start, hitboxes can be a hit or miss. Sometimes the weapon I am using is just a tad bit short. Other times it is great when evading an enemy. Could be better I feel.
I wish there is a 'perk reset' button or drinking a unique consumable to revert perks. I made the mistake of clicking one perk thinking, "This will be good." Except it's not. And now I'm stuck with a perk for my whole playthrough. Granted, there was a warning attached of picking a perk being irreversible. So that's on me.
Has jank when it was good. But also jank when it is bad. Yet, I still had a lot of fun throughout my playthrough and didn't reach a point of frustration to the degree I wanted to gatekeep this indie RPG for good. In several cases, I had jolly good laughs on some jank occurring. Some of which work in my favor!
I wish there was more story here. Seems, the narrative can be a bit vague at times. And while I appreciated the cutscenes greatly, more dialogue to explain some lore, sidequests for more side activities to do and more NPCs to flesh out the world-building could do wonders in immersing me further.
I also think the combo system can be a hit or miss. I barely touched it early on since I couldn't get the mechanic to activate it correctly. While a friend of mine told me it works for them. So I am going back to see if I can properly activate them in fights. Probably my fault for not fully understanding how it works. Perhaps a tutorial archive in the menu to refresh players on mechanics would be nice.
And that’s it. My final score for Bleak Faith: Forsaken is an 8/10. I was thinking of a 7/10. But I feel that is way too harsh. There is plenty of good content here, the game has organically especially from 3 developers. I could see it going to a 9/10 in the coming months as the devs continue making incredible progress as each day passes. And will add more free updates. Such as NG+, content expansions, and multiplayer. But first fixes since that is a very high priority.
So! If you are on the hunt, for an indie RPG souls-like in the vein of Dark Souls 1 just as I was. A mix of sci-fi and fantasy with a cross of Blame! & Berserk. And don't mind the occasional jank here and there. Then I recommend Bleak Faith: Forsaken. I have faith that the developers from Archangel Studios will come out with something great in store for us.
2023
Every time I give a mixed rating. My heart feels heavy. Since I like to highlight what works well, and what doesn't, critique, offer suggestions, and move on. Wartales(WT) is passable for me. After struggling to play for two months since the launch in April of this year. But, I wanted to see as much as I could. Because I love supporting indies and especially if they have role-playing elements. After over forty-five hours I decided it was time to review WT before my feelings soured further.
A medieval low fantasy tactical RPG with sandbox gameplay. As someone who loves medieval and low fantasy settings, this was a no-brainer to watch out for. And I’ve been watching the developers work closely ever since. Avidly reading patch notes, whooping in delight when roadmaps appear and progress is made. Waiting until the final day when the official release arrives.
First let's start on what WT is about, then move on to the critique or what I call my mixed feelings. There is no central story from which your company of mercenaries must follow throughout your journey. Instead, you complete scenarios in each region of which there are six to explore, fight, trade, and even play detective. Upon finishing, some are related to a scenario, the progress bar in the top left corner will fill up until you reach a hundred where you can partake in the final province mission before you move on to another place. Times will vary to accomplish your goals. In my experience, they can range from eight to twelve hours to thoroughly comb one sector with a majority of sidequests done. And I had already progressed past four of them. Was one-third of the way done on my fifth before I couldn’t take it anymore.
The main meat here holding up a chunk of your time is the combat portion. Turn-based emerges when you encounter a hostile in the overworld. Honestly reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin(D: OS) a lot since you can maneuver your party members in any direction. Not a grid or hex-based. Use abilities as long as you have valor points. Points you can earn every time you rest. These don’t recharge every fight, so be careful utilizing them. However, there are skills you can attain to increase temporary valor points to mitigate the loss. One of the cool things you can do is switch any weapon/shield that can grant you new toys to play around with. I could switch from a greatsword that allows me to hit multiple enemies in a 160-degree radius in front of me. Then switch to a different sword allowing my character to charge forth through multiple bandits caught unaware. Swap my shield to inflict a debuff causing a cannibal to be more susceptible to damage and more. I appreciate this since it makes equipment management useful in combat(You need to unlock the skill later, you cannot switch weapons early on). Entrusting the player to carefully manage new powerful weapons containing lackluster effects. Old weapons with cool spell sets that do a bit less damage. And while you cannot use the environment to your advantage akin to D: OS. The underhandedness of Wartales comes into play here. Regarding debuffs. Can’t wreck through a baddie's health or armor? Use poison to whittle down their health(HP). Stack that up for more damage. Still not enough? Here’s bleeding taking off “X” percent of their maximum HP. Burn them too. And watch how the effect can spread to nearby guards in close range and yourself if you’re close enough. And if that’s not enough there is even corrosion and disarming foes too! I haven’t gone through the whole list because each class has its skill tree unique to them.
An acceptable amount of class variety here. In spears, swords, hammers, axe, bows, arrows, daggers, and animals, suffice it to say there is a varied amount of choices you can pick and specialize your companions. I had fun recruiting new troops and setting them up with new equipment I had on hand after defeating an annoying private army. A nice way to build up your mercenary crew. Interestingly enough, I don’t believe there is a limit. I've read other reviews noting bigger sizes. I was able to manage over twenty units. Twelve are battle-ready, while the rest such as my ponies and prisoners cannot fight. So overwhelming odds against a lone soul or two to four is well immensely satisfying to decimate. Didn’t have any issues paying wages and feeding them either. I suspect a larger group could be a hassle.
You mainly find your busy work to do upon entering a tavern and talking to an emissary near a bounty board. From there you can accept contracts to eliminate a troublesome group, destroy a rat infestation, and even find tombs(these are underground dungeons). These contracts, if you can excuse the radiant missions(Basically filler and repeat again and again) are decent in that some of them you come across as you traverse the big overworld. See a merchant under attack, help a family solve a murder, find the missing person, hunt down a group who terrorized a village, etc. Side content, for the most part, is all right, since they're just a bit below the quality of the main quests for a scenario.
Nonetheless, let’s move on to my critique. Not a positive or a negative. But for the sake of transparency, I’m noting them down. Suggestions in the end parts.
Experience(EXP) contribution and how that is earned needs a major overhaul. Early on, leveling up your troops is not a big issue. It starts to become a bigger problem as you head to the middle portion and then final parts. If I could sum it up in one word. Grindy. The max, as far as I know, is twelve. I was only able to reach level eight for a small portion of my crew while the rest were in the six to seven range. And facing off hostiles in the eighth to ninth resulted in battles being time-consuming averaging out to 15-30 min engagements, each time I encountered a sizable group against my party. Why does it take a while man? Do you not have the best equipment? Trust me, when I say my crew is built comparable to a tank capable of withstanding the hardest of blows. And strong enough to deal devastating damage, eliminating them swiftly with one guy. Hell, I've even used my min-maxing skills to maximize every centimeter of damage at my company’s disposal to inch my way to victory so I would say I was very prepared. I was not prepared to struggle on the grind. I had to download a half-EXP mod on the Nexus to circumvent the horrible grind I saw every time. Only used it after the 3rd region. For reference. The amount to go from six to seven is 2600. And from eight to nine you require 4200. You can imagine the rest as you climb to twelve. Having to start from zero and reach the next tier starting from seven to eight. 3500. Let’s do the math. Winning rewards 50 -/+ EXP. During endgame 50~. Still has the same payout. Hold on, WHAT THE F$#%. Do you expect me to grind to the seventh!? For each of my companions?! Do you know how many engagements that will take? 70! Now multiply that number by the average it takes to complete one. 15-30 min. 1050 minutes to 2100 minutes which if converted to hours comes out to 17.5 - 35! You can forget about me grinding past the ninth! These numbers are an average based on how many times I batted heads versus evil people in every region. They should not be inferred as everyone’s experience of WT. They could vary. I also changed the difficulty to the lowest so I'm not bothered with deep engagements. Facing off a group for an extended period of time runs the risk of potentially losing a valuable unit you trained up until now. Lose one? Recruit another fella starting from the lowest tier level. If your party is at eight but a majority are at six then hello newbie six. There is no rewind mechanic if your unit dies. They died? Ya gotta bury them.Or eat them for one food.
Oddly enough, I’m reminded of my time playing Xenosaga Episode 2. Due to similar lengthy fights. The image is one of the longer battles. Do you want to know the average there? Five to fifteen minutes for an average brawl past the midportion. And boss skirmishes can easily double or bloom more...Sighs
Personally dislike using mods since I prefer to expose myself to what vanilla content there is to offer. I had to break my rule to see if it can help lessen my frustration. Providing my troops a better chance. Ultimately the mod is a bandaid to the underlying problem of how EXP is earned. I think offering up more substantial rewards for side/main content and during your professions(I'll touch on this later) would help lessen the grind as well as provide a better outlet than the default method.
I feel auto-battle should be available to ease turn-based encounters. And not as a requirement to face each mob. At least an option to auto-complete for randoms you face in the overworld. Thereby lessening the tedium of entering a clash with some schmuck who somehow concludes they can face my hardcore mercenary company? An optional toggle in the settings you can check off or on depending on your preference. Hostile mobs? Auto-battle is activated. Turn-based for the side/main stuff. This way you don’t have to spend a lot of time battling and can do whatever you want such as fishing. Yes, there is fishing here and a host of other activities you can do for example lockpicking. There are more than eight professions to mold your members. Of course, they start at a newbie tier before they can become masters. So if you want to construct one of your companions as a thief you can do that. Cook? Essential. Woodcutter? Yup! Bard sure! Miner, yes, please! Necessary for my blacksmithing job. No problem. Alchemist too? Wow, what is this Witcher? Sign me up!
The user interface especially when hitting a button on your keyboard(Alt) highlighted items of interest & humans. Forming a barely noticeable outline. Alternatively, an option to include a more player-friendly outline should exist to prevent players from having to squint too hard. Therefore, allowing players to find anything else in the environment. Finding any secrets out in the overworld or inside corridors. I had to spend the majority of my time swiping my mouse left and right and up and down to double-check that I didn’t miss anything.
For some reason, I had stutter issues in combat and outside. Didn’t impact me in a major capacity. Occurred uncommonly in my playthrough as well as in random instances during traversal in the overworld. More time in the oven to be optimized some more to spawn smoother playthroughs. And I tested this with lower settings on my computer as well to see if that made a difference. Nope, still the same. So beware of that. Thankfully no bugs or glitches are here.
Last but not least, a more central story would be appreciated to hook players more into worldbuilding. Could be better and more cohesive. Despite the murders, cannibalism, private army vs. government, politics, factions and backstabbing. A harsh gritty adventure awaits. If only the developers linked me closer to the stories told by the people living in this harsh gritty world. Generate heavier incentives, so players care more for the alchemist nearby whose family member was kidnapped. Oh, the barkeeper is friends with the one who was kidnapped. Time to save them! Oh, you helped the mayor in the 1st region? Nice! They’re a good friend of mine. Why back in my day, we were young whipper snappers… And so forth to link the main/side stuff combined. Further meaningful content alongside memorable and fleshed-out characters. NPCs and missions are scattered, offering up little cultural significance both in the history of the world and the characters living in it. And while I was satisfied for my first fifteen hours, the majority and rest of my time left me in a state that leaves me befuddled.
I am left sighing at the end of the day due to a multitude of factors. A combat system that seems fine in the beginning except marred by troubled enemy encounters that can reach long engagements. Fatiguing the player and forcing them to grind a lot to stand a better chance versus the mid to endgame elites. An unoptimized product prone to stutters, you may come across and a user interface has to be refined to outline interesting objects/people. In need of a central plot to connect all scenarios and link to flesh out the worldbuilding and parties' efforts more. Thereby, producing a difficult item to recommend. Looking back on the patch notes I think they developed each region as a checklist. Focusing on adding new regions, connecting them superficially, and presenting a foggy vision that isn't as clear as it remains as a list of tasks to do and finish at your leisure. Full of systems and mechanics focusing on breadth instead of depth on gameplay and not on the finer details of what I mentioned earlier to hold everything in an interconnected manner. Creating a sort of mix of fulfilling and unfulfilling content to explore beyond the surface level. A mile wide, an inch deep example.
There is potential here. I can see it. Shiro Games could improve with patches. However, I cannot recommend Wartales in good conscience. I can only offer a grimace and a read/watch more label to ensure your purchase is solid. To those who enjoyed WT, I salute your dedication to playing through everything. Sadly I can’t bring myself to say I enjoyed it to a degree. I find myself shaking my head rather than nodding since I had plenty of big flaws rather than full of praise.
6/10
Edit: Removed, added, clarified some text to explain my thoughts better and made it a bit less negative. 99% of review still intact.
A medieval low fantasy tactical RPG with sandbox gameplay. As someone who loves medieval and low fantasy settings, this was a no-brainer to watch out for. And I’ve been watching the developers work closely ever since. Avidly reading patch notes, whooping in delight when roadmaps appear and progress is made. Waiting until the final day when the official release arrives.
First let's start on what WT is about, then move on to the critique or what I call my mixed feelings. There is no central story from which your company of mercenaries must follow throughout your journey. Instead, you complete scenarios in each region of which there are six to explore, fight, trade, and even play detective. Upon finishing, some are related to a scenario, the progress bar in the top left corner will fill up until you reach a hundred where you can partake in the final province mission before you move on to another place. Times will vary to accomplish your goals. In my experience, they can range from eight to twelve hours to thoroughly comb one sector with a majority of sidequests done. And I had already progressed past four of them. Was one-third of the way done on my fifth before I couldn’t take it anymore.
The main meat here holding up a chunk of your time is the combat portion. Turn-based emerges when you encounter a hostile in the overworld. Honestly reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin(D: OS) a lot since you can maneuver your party members in any direction. Not a grid or hex-based. Use abilities as long as you have valor points. Points you can earn every time you rest. These don’t recharge every fight, so be careful utilizing them. However, there are skills you can attain to increase temporary valor points to mitigate the loss. One of the cool things you can do is switch any weapon/shield that can grant you new toys to play around with. I could switch from a greatsword that allows me to hit multiple enemies in a 160-degree radius in front of me. Then switch to a different sword allowing my character to charge forth through multiple bandits caught unaware. Swap my shield to inflict a debuff causing a cannibal to be more susceptible to damage and more. I appreciate this since it makes equipment management useful in combat(You need to unlock the skill later, you cannot switch weapons early on). Entrusting the player to carefully manage new powerful weapons containing lackluster effects. Old weapons with cool spell sets that do a bit less damage. And while you cannot use the environment to your advantage akin to D: OS. The underhandedness of Wartales comes into play here. Regarding debuffs. Can’t wreck through a baddie's health or armor? Use poison to whittle down their health(HP). Stack that up for more damage. Still not enough? Here’s bleeding taking off “X” percent of their maximum HP. Burn them too. And watch how the effect can spread to nearby guards in close range and yourself if you’re close enough. And if that’s not enough there is even corrosion and disarming foes too! I haven’t gone through the whole list because each class has its skill tree unique to them.
An acceptable amount of class variety here. In spears, swords, hammers, axe, bows, arrows, daggers, and animals, suffice it to say there is a varied amount of choices you can pick and specialize your companions. I had fun recruiting new troops and setting them up with new equipment I had on hand after defeating an annoying private army. A nice way to build up your mercenary crew. Interestingly enough, I don’t believe there is a limit. I've read other reviews noting bigger sizes. I was able to manage over twenty units. Twelve are battle-ready, while the rest such as my ponies and prisoners cannot fight. So overwhelming odds against a lone soul or two to four is well immensely satisfying to decimate. Didn’t have any issues paying wages and feeding them either. I suspect a larger group could be a hassle.
You mainly find your busy work to do upon entering a tavern and talking to an emissary near a bounty board. From there you can accept contracts to eliminate a troublesome group, destroy a rat infestation, and even find tombs(these are underground dungeons). These contracts, if you can excuse the radiant missions(Basically filler and repeat again and again) are decent in that some of them you come across as you traverse the big overworld. See a merchant under attack, help a family solve a murder, find the missing person, hunt down a group who terrorized a village, etc. Side content, for the most part, is all right, since they're just a bit below the quality of the main quests for a scenario.
Nonetheless, let’s move on to my critique. Not a positive or a negative. But for the sake of transparency, I’m noting them down. Suggestions in the end parts.
Experience(EXP) contribution and how that is earned needs a major overhaul. Early on, leveling up your troops is not a big issue. It starts to become a bigger problem as you head to the middle portion and then final parts. If I could sum it up in one word. Grindy. The max, as far as I know, is twelve. I was only able to reach level eight for a small portion of my crew while the rest were in the six to seven range. And facing off hostiles in the eighth to ninth resulted in battles being time-consuming averaging out to 15-30 min engagements, each time I encountered a sizable group against my party. Why does it take a while man? Do you not have the best equipment? Trust me, when I say my crew is built comparable to a tank capable of withstanding the hardest of blows. And strong enough to deal devastating damage, eliminating them swiftly with one guy. Hell, I've even used my min-maxing skills to maximize every centimeter of damage at my company’s disposal to inch my way to victory so I would say I was very prepared. I was not prepared to struggle on the grind. I had to download a half-EXP mod on the Nexus to circumvent the horrible grind I saw every time. Only used it after the 3rd region. For reference. The amount to go from six to seven is 2600. And from eight to nine you require 4200. You can imagine the rest as you climb to twelve. Having to start from zero and reach the next tier starting from seven to eight. 3500. Let’s do the math. Winning rewards 50 -/+ EXP. During endgame 50~. Still has the same payout. Hold on, WHAT THE F$#%. Do you expect me to grind to the seventh!? For each of my companions?! Do you know how many engagements that will take? 70! Now multiply that number by the average it takes to complete one. 15-30 min. 1050 minutes to 2100 minutes which if converted to hours comes out to 17.5 - 35! You can forget about me grinding past the ninth! These numbers are an average based on how many times I batted heads versus evil people in every region. They should not be inferred as everyone’s experience of WT. They could vary. I also changed the difficulty to the lowest so I'm not bothered with deep engagements. Facing off a group for an extended period of time runs the risk of potentially losing a valuable unit you trained up until now. Lose one? Recruit another fella starting from the lowest tier level. If your party is at eight but a majority are at six then hello newbie six. There is no rewind mechanic if your unit dies. They died? Ya gotta bury them.
Oddly enough, I’m reminded of my time playing Xenosaga Episode 2. Due to similar lengthy fights. The image is one of the longer battles. Do you want to know the average there? Five to fifteen minutes for an average brawl past the midportion. And boss skirmishes can easily double or bloom more...Sighs
Personally dislike using mods since I prefer to expose myself to what vanilla content there is to offer. I had to break my rule to see if it can help lessen my frustration. Providing my troops a better chance. Ultimately the mod is a bandaid to the underlying problem of how EXP is earned. I think offering up more substantial rewards for side/main content and during your professions(I'll touch on this later) would help lessen the grind as well as provide a better outlet than the default method.
I feel auto-battle should be available to ease turn-based encounters. And not as a requirement to face each mob. At least an option to auto-complete for randoms you face in the overworld. Thereby lessening the tedium of entering a clash with some schmuck who somehow concludes they can face my hardcore mercenary company? An optional toggle in the settings you can check off or on depending on your preference. Hostile mobs? Auto-battle is activated. Turn-based for the side/main stuff. This way you don’t have to spend a lot of time battling and can do whatever you want such as fishing. Yes, there is fishing here and a host of other activities you can do for example lockpicking. There are more than eight professions to mold your members. Of course, they start at a newbie tier before they can become masters. So if you want to construct one of your companions as a thief you can do that. Cook? Essential. Woodcutter? Yup! Bard sure! Miner, yes, please! Necessary for my blacksmithing job. No problem. Alchemist too? Wow, what is this Witcher? Sign me up!
The user interface especially when hitting a button on your keyboard(Alt) highlighted items of interest & humans. Forming a barely noticeable outline. Alternatively, an option to include a more player-friendly outline should exist to prevent players from having to squint too hard. Therefore, allowing players to find anything else in the environment. Finding any secrets out in the overworld or inside corridors. I had to spend the majority of my time swiping my mouse left and right and up and down to double-check that I didn’t miss anything.
For some reason, I had stutter issues in combat and outside. Didn’t impact me in a major capacity. Occurred uncommonly in my playthrough as well as in random instances during traversal in the overworld. More time in the oven to be optimized some more to spawn smoother playthroughs. And I tested this with lower settings on my computer as well to see if that made a difference. Nope, still the same. So beware of that. Thankfully no bugs or glitches are here.
Last but not least, a more central story would be appreciated to hook players more into worldbuilding. Could be better and more cohesive. Despite the murders, cannibalism, private army vs. government, politics, factions and backstabbing. A harsh gritty adventure awaits. If only the developers linked me closer to the stories told by the people living in this harsh gritty world. Generate heavier incentives, so players care more for the alchemist nearby whose family member was kidnapped. Oh, the barkeeper is friends with the one who was kidnapped. Time to save them! Oh, you helped the mayor in the 1st region? Nice! They’re a good friend of mine. Why back in my day, we were young whipper snappers… And so forth to link the main/side stuff combined. Further meaningful content alongside memorable and fleshed-out characters. NPCs and missions are scattered, offering up little cultural significance both in the history of the world and the characters living in it. And while I was satisfied for my first fifteen hours, the majority and rest of my time left me in a state that leaves me befuddled.
I am left sighing at the end of the day due to a multitude of factors. A combat system that seems fine in the beginning except marred by troubled enemy encounters that can reach long engagements. Fatiguing the player and forcing them to grind a lot to stand a better chance versus the mid to endgame elites. An unoptimized product prone to stutters, you may come across and a user interface has to be refined to outline interesting objects/people. In need of a central plot to connect all scenarios and link to flesh out the worldbuilding and parties' efforts more. Thereby, producing a difficult item to recommend. Looking back on the patch notes I think they developed each region as a checklist. Focusing on adding new regions, connecting them superficially, and presenting a foggy vision that isn't as clear as it remains as a list of tasks to do and finish at your leisure. Full of systems and mechanics focusing on breadth instead of depth on gameplay and not on the finer details of what I mentioned earlier to hold everything in an interconnected manner. Creating a sort of mix of fulfilling and unfulfilling content to explore beyond the surface level. A mile wide, an inch deep example.
There is potential here. I can see it. Shiro Games could improve with patches. However, I cannot recommend Wartales in good conscience. I can only offer a grimace and a read/watch more label to ensure your purchase is solid. To those who enjoyed WT, I salute your dedication to playing through everything. Sadly I can’t bring myself to say I enjoyed it to a degree. I find myself shaking my head rather than nodding since I had plenty of big flaws rather than full of praise.
6/10
Edit: Removed, added, clarified some text to explain my thoughts better and made it a bit less negative. 99% of review still intact.
This might be one of the most difficult reviews, I've done so far since reviewing Fire Emblem Engage. Because I have so many mixed feelings about WayForward’s remake of Advance Wars(AW) 1 + 2. Full of ups and downs. And yet, I'm still not satisfied after ruminating for over a week. But in the interest of not having to stare at my google docs page for more time than necessary, this will be the final time I have to type this out after overhauling my thoughts several times. So here goes.
Let’s talk about the huge disgusting tank out of the way. I completely agree with all the reviews panning the games under three stars. The biggest, glaring fault must be the unfaithful 3D representation that takes out the rugged and lil dirty look from the Gameboy Advance(GBA) era. You can see in Vee’s review with pictures and greater detail. To add oil onto this fire truck of a situation. I also found the ‘Vtuber animation style’ coined by TyphoonSwell. Accurate as well. And I couldn’t stop musing on the matter during my playthroughs. The shiny visual style Wayforward recreated under is a persistent style that continues well into the 2nd campaign. Which slowly increased my dislike for the visuals. As someone who enjoys remasters and remakes. This one aspect disappointed me. Since there are other games that I feel do remakes or remasters justice. Like Bluepoint Games with Shadow of the Colossus. Crash Bandicoot trilogy by Vicarious Visions and Spyro trilogy from Toys for Bob. These developers I believe faithfully recreate the original experience under modern lenses. Here I don’t see that as much. Graphics-wise. Granted it could be worse, making a remake that could not run well, plagued with bugs and glitches galore, sound effects not correct and voice sync is off. They could’ve made too many changes to the remake which I would equate to a re-imagining such as Final Fantasy VII remake. I’m grateful in some ways Wayforward didn’t completely butcher AW 1 + 2. Probably in a worse timeline they did. But, I can take a small measure of satisfaction, they didn’t completely massacre it like my favorite RTS Warcraft 3: Reforged turned out at launch…oof…
Voice acting are another issue. Each character is voiced, but after saying their first lines, no voiceover(VO) follows. With the rest of the sentences unvoiced. I’m not sure whether this is a bug or simply the development team ran out of budget to properly voice all the lines. But to me, the result is a jarring mess when I expect lines to occur as I read their text dialogue. Either go all out on the voice acting or take it out altogether. Don't make me expect something that isn't there. Furthermore, I feel it's worth noting. NocturnalFudj had the same issue as well. I'm glad I am not alone in experiencing this.
Additionally, The bundle has been delayed too long by Nintendo due to a war that occurred last year in Europe. And I cannot for the life of me wonder how much of it was seriously a delay when the product hasn’t changed drastically to the point you need to delay for over a year since the announcement. Other games with similar development delays & changes due to world events are Metal Gear Solid 2 experienced major changes to the ending and hell even Grand Theft Auto III was changed with the color scheme, art, etc. affected. GTA III was delayed three weeks while the former did not experience a delay. And yet here we are for AW 1+2 reboot camp needing a year to make what substantial changes? The story starts with an invasion! Oh. My. God… My facial expression is the most exasperated I could make. Big sigh
Last critique. I wish there is a rewind button to fix slight errors or you make a big tactical mistake. Previous Intelligent System titles such as Fire Emblem Engage and their predecessor Fire Emblem: Three Houses had a rewind mechanic as well as another strategy RPG, Tactics Ogre: Reborn. So I don’t suppose it's too hard for Wayforward to add it in just in case you mess up. It's pretty brutal having to do an hour plus during a mission and fail. Making the player have to restart from the very beginning once again. It’s soul-crushing. And while there is a ‘reset turn’ button available. It only resets your current turn. So you have to play very carefully and make sure each decision counts before moving. 2nd I wish an enemy range button existed. This way you can see the total number of enemies possible attack range. I had to select every unit to triple-check that I can get the most out of my unit's distance without being attacked in return. And finally, I wish the 2nd and 1st embraced deeper or extra radical mission objectives. The 2nd improves on the victory parameters. However, I did see a bit of copy and paste in the endgame where you have to destroy yet another pipe or cannon. This wouldn’t become so egregious if we had diverse mission objectives; Surviving for an ‘x’ amount of turns, escorting ‘x’ units to a corner of the map, and mixing up the destroyed objectives with extra interesting encounters. Stopping a big Neotank before it escapes. Or eliminate a wave of enemies while protecting your base. Defend your bases and allies against naval and air assault while contending with enemies at your flank. Ok, that might be a bit too brutal. But hopefully, you get the point.
Moving on. I never got the chance to try the Advance Wars series on the GBA in my younger days. So when the announcement of AW 1+2 was being remade, I became very excited. I’ve heard AW over the years as another franchise Intelligent Systems developed. And as a casual Fire Emblem fan, my reaction was something along the lines of “Ooooohhh modern Fire Emblem? But not really.” So this is a newcomer’s perspective.
For those who don’t know Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy title set in a fictional world where multiple colored-named countries fight using modern warfare except think of it comparatively to toy warfare. In the first campaign, you play Andy, a commanding officer(CO) in the Orange Star nation under the leader of Nell. In the beginning, there was peace until the Blue Moon nation(led by Olaf) attacked. That’s the main start for the plot to roll around. For the second campaign, I won’t say since the campaign selection is covered until you beat the 1st AW(But you can jump right into the 2nd with no problem). A great way to keep things spoiler-safe for newcomers.
In early missions, you can blaze on through pretty fast once you know what each unit can do and what they’re effective against, similar to chess. Forget notions of weapon triangles from Fire Emblem and embrace different unit compositions. Where an anti-air unit can be very effective against a foot soldier haha. Most missions will have you defeat all enemy units or capture the headquarters. There are other win parameters as well, but I won’t go through the whole list. You control a variety of units from land, sea, and even air. I found the diversity in my army to be a good thing, because I could choose any soldier or vehicle in my command for the right situation. I could choose a medium tank over the tank(Yes there is a difference in tanks). Or the battleship to replace my submarine. Although these units are costly they can be worth the price if used effectively. The inverse can also be true. Sometimes you don’t need to pay so much money to create a unit to take down a medium tank. A combination of baiting the enemy to key locations to a road that has zero defense is better than fighting, when they have the terrain advantage, acting as if they’re stationed on a tree tile. The trick is to use the most of the units you're given. Enough to damage them in the most crushing manner and as a result cripple their combat capability. So using soldiers as fodder, artillery from behind, a combination of sea, and air vehicles, and using a mix of mechanical infantry can turn the tide of battle in your favor. Hell, I love using the APC vehicle which is a supply unit and functions as a fast storage vehicle to carry my foot soldiers across great distances as bait. Which will the A.I. target? Surely not the tank?! They fired at my APC vehicle!
Honestly, playing around with these units and building them when certain missions allowed me to is great. A decent spread of map variety here. You can fight in open plains with roads, navigating through a mountainous region with a forest nearby. Once you throw water and rivers into the mix, the difficulty gradually increases as you unlock new powerful additions to your forces, new terrain to consider, and new enemy units into the equation. A nice pace to steadily nudge players along bit by bit and teach and reward them. A fair balance, whereas other titles throw you off the deep end. And ask you to climb a tall cliff. Reminds me of my time playing Starcraft and Warcraft back in the day and recently Wargroove. A fantasy strategy turn-based indie similar to Advance Wars. Feels good to head back to familiar roots here with AW and see how the franchise has gone off to inspire indies to the same degree Warside and Empires shall Fall Both titles are currently in development.
Gameplay-wise, for those who have never tried a turn-based title. Advance Wars starts with you the player controlling a set amount of units. You start a turn by moving and attacking any force on a map. Once you use all of your vehicle and infantry's actions you can end your turn. Then the opponent's forces will advance. The process repeats until either side wins. However, there is a cool gimmick to this. You and the enemy leader can activate their respective abilities. For Andy, once his meter fills up you can repair all of your unit's health +2 & +10 to firepower and defense. Olaf’s ability changes the whole battlefield to snow, increasing movement costs for all units except his own. Olaf’s forces gain +10 in firepower and defense. New COs’ abilities are different. Capable of adding substantial adjustments to the battlefield than changing numbers. If used at the right time they can change the fate of a battle in your favor. So use them when you're in a pinch. Just be careful, the leader can use their ability to inch closer to victory. These mechanics largely stay the same in the 2nd campaign. With extra CO abilities because of new commanders and a greater map variety with large cannons and pipes. AW 2 is pretty neat. The sequel I feel is better since they expanded on victory objectives. They can range from destroying a large cannon, multiple small cannons, and even a small pipe behind a big cannon. Missions take a bit longer to complete than in the first installment, but overall I found it better than their predecessor due to the map variety and mission objectives. Also, the villains are more menacing in the 2nd game than the first. An improvement over the first installment. Very refreshing to beat them mercilessly, who assumes they can beat me? Tsk tsk tsk. Don't underestimate the kid with a big wrench.
For AW 1. My experience is a positive one, despite the harsh critique I stated earlier. Took me over eighteen hours to complete the main story. Enjoyed fighting on various maps and utilizing a good spread of my units. There’s a lot of strategy involved and even when the fog of war maps came in, the difficulty didn’t waver in the slightest. In the old versions, the A.I. could cheat. Here that’s not possible anymore. Which is a cool tidbit to learn about. Plus, I found the usage of CO powers an awesome way to spice up the gameplay beyond commanding your troops. They provide a fair way to tussle against the enemy commander while supplementing your forces. Granting a layer of strategy to expect. Should I activate my ability now? Or wait until they use theirs? These questions will undoubtedly pop up as hypothetical scenarios of where to place your forces on land, sea, or air. Or if you need a bit of a boost to your forces in a dire situation.
For AW 2. My experience was still positive. Took me over twenty-six hours to complete the main story. And I believe it is a better sequel than the first with better villains to fight. And new commanders to choose from. Also, the player can choose to progress in a non-linear fashion by choosing different factions to start in the middle of the game. Start missions from Yellow Comet or Blue Moon and Green Earth are pretty wicked choices instead of always commanding troops from the same nation again and again. The difficulty is a bit increased, but as a sequel, I feel they function fine for the new changes to the gameplay. Not too much to be rage-inducing while not being too easy on classic difficulty. Moreover, your CO power is upgraded. If you wait a while, you can activate a supercharged move. This is a great way for players to reward those who patiently wait for their meter to increase or for those who immediately use their CO power once available. The choice is yours.
I want to say one last thing before I head out. Since this review is getting too long for my tastes and I apologize for that. I don’t want to make a review to put you off the game. I’m merely stating my experience and hope my review helps you in some fashion to understand another piece in the pie for AW 1 + 2 discussion in general. Despite the harsh critique I said in the beginning. I think the bundle is fine for anyone looking for other turn-based strategy goodness. Solid enough to hold your hand, but enough to keep you on your toes. The plot is decent. I didn’t expect anything amazing. Those who expect a simple story will be left with some measure of satisfaction upon completing either of the two campaigns. And a main cast I found to be endearing at times. Andy’s straightforwardness despite being a loveable dork. To the overprotective Kanbei for his daughter Sonja. Grit and even Eagle I like as well. The music is good. My favorite would be the Orange Star National Anthem. For some reason, I’m receiving Fire Emblem vibes from the track. Orange Star Theme I love how upbeat it is. And if I was isekai’d into the Wars World, I would immediately travel and enlist in their nation. The gameplay is all right, despite the critique I said earlier. I believe the mechanics are optimal enough to grasp as long as you can remember what each unit does and what they're effective against.
I also want to plug in a useful website to offer some helpful tips for anyone. Looking to play AW 1 + 2 These tips helped me immensely, so I feel more people should know about it just in case. I failed horribly in the first mission since I was operating with a Fire Emblem(FE) mindset. Despite the fact, FE & AW were made by the same company.
So, if you’re looking to try out Wayforward’s take on Advance Wars. I think Re-Boot camp is fine to play for newcomers or the original versions on the GBA. I sincerely hope the bundle sells enough, so we can see a new entry for fans in the series. And perhaps we can see Dual Strike and Days of Ruin come ashore in the future. Remade properly. Hopefully, the developers learn their lessons here and improve. But the future is uncertain, so we’ll see if that bears fruit.
Score for AW 1: 7/10
Score for AW 2: 7.5/10
Score for bundle: 7.25/10
Final note: I played both games on classic difficulty.
An option to play on ‘Casual’ is available.
Let’s talk about the huge disgusting tank out of the way. I completely agree with all the reviews panning the games under three stars. The biggest, glaring fault must be the unfaithful 3D representation that takes out the rugged and lil dirty look from the Gameboy Advance(GBA) era. You can see in Vee’s review with pictures and greater detail. To add oil onto this fire truck of a situation. I also found the ‘Vtuber animation style’ coined by TyphoonSwell. Accurate as well. And I couldn’t stop musing on the matter during my playthroughs. The shiny visual style Wayforward recreated under is a persistent style that continues well into the 2nd campaign. Which slowly increased my dislike for the visuals. As someone who enjoys remasters and remakes. This one aspect disappointed me. Since there are other games that I feel do remakes or remasters justice. Like Bluepoint Games with Shadow of the Colossus. Crash Bandicoot trilogy by Vicarious Visions and Spyro trilogy from Toys for Bob. These developers I believe faithfully recreate the original experience under modern lenses. Here I don’t see that as much. Graphics-wise. Granted it could be worse, making a remake that could not run well, plagued with bugs and glitches galore, sound effects not correct and voice sync is off. They could’ve made too many changes to the remake which I would equate to a re-imagining such as Final Fantasy VII remake. I’m grateful in some ways Wayforward didn’t completely butcher AW 1 + 2. Probably in a worse timeline they did. But, I can take a small measure of satisfaction, they didn’t completely massacre it like my favorite RTS Warcraft 3: Reforged turned out at launch…oof…
Voice acting are another issue. Each character is voiced, but after saying their first lines, no voiceover(VO) follows. With the rest of the sentences unvoiced. I’m not sure whether this is a bug or simply the development team ran out of budget to properly voice all the lines. But to me, the result is a jarring mess when I expect lines to occur as I read their text dialogue. Either go all out on the voice acting or take it out altogether. Don't make me expect something that isn't there. Furthermore, I feel it's worth noting. NocturnalFudj had the same issue as well. I'm glad I am not alone in experiencing this.
Additionally, The bundle has been delayed too long by Nintendo due to a war that occurred last year in Europe. And I cannot for the life of me wonder how much of it was seriously a delay when the product hasn’t changed drastically to the point you need to delay for over a year since the announcement. Other games with similar development delays & changes due to world events are Metal Gear Solid 2 experienced major changes to the ending and hell even Grand Theft Auto III was changed with the color scheme, art, etc. affected. GTA III was delayed three weeks while the former did not experience a delay. And yet here we are for AW 1+2 reboot camp needing a year to make what substantial changes? The story starts with an invasion! Oh. My. God… My facial expression is the most exasperated I could make. Big sigh
Last critique. I wish there is a rewind button to fix slight errors or you make a big tactical mistake. Previous Intelligent System titles such as Fire Emblem Engage and their predecessor Fire Emblem: Three Houses had a rewind mechanic as well as another strategy RPG, Tactics Ogre: Reborn. So I don’t suppose it's too hard for Wayforward to add it in just in case you mess up. It's pretty brutal having to do an hour plus during a mission and fail. Making the player have to restart from the very beginning once again. It’s soul-crushing. And while there is a ‘reset turn’ button available. It only resets your current turn. So you have to play very carefully and make sure each decision counts before moving. 2nd I wish an enemy range button existed. This way you can see the total number of enemies possible attack range. I had to select every unit to triple-check that I can get the most out of my unit's distance without being attacked in return. And finally, I wish the 2nd and 1st embraced deeper or extra radical mission objectives. The 2nd improves on the victory parameters. However, I did see a bit of copy and paste in the endgame where you have to destroy yet another pipe or cannon. This wouldn’t become so egregious if we had diverse mission objectives; Surviving for an ‘x’ amount of turns, escorting ‘x’ units to a corner of the map, and mixing up the destroyed objectives with extra interesting encounters. Stopping a big Neotank before it escapes. Or eliminate a wave of enemies while protecting your base. Defend your bases and allies against naval and air assault while contending with enemies at your flank. Ok, that might be a bit too brutal. But hopefully, you get the point.
Moving on. I never got the chance to try the Advance Wars series on the GBA in my younger days. So when the announcement of AW 1+2 was being remade, I became very excited. I’ve heard AW over the years as another franchise Intelligent Systems developed. And as a casual Fire Emblem fan, my reaction was something along the lines of “Ooooohhh modern Fire Emblem? But not really.” So this is a newcomer’s perspective.
For those who don’t know Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy title set in a fictional world where multiple colored-named countries fight using modern warfare except think of it comparatively to toy warfare. In the first campaign, you play Andy, a commanding officer(CO) in the Orange Star nation under the leader of Nell. In the beginning, there was peace until the Blue Moon nation(led by Olaf) attacked. That’s the main start for the plot to roll around. For the second campaign, I won’t say since the campaign selection is covered until you beat the 1st AW(But you can jump right into the 2nd with no problem). A great way to keep things spoiler-safe for newcomers.
In early missions, you can blaze on through pretty fast once you know what each unit can do and what they’re effective against, similar to chess. Forget notions of weapon triangles from Fire Emblem and embrace different unit compositions. Where an anti-air unit can be very effective against a foot soldier haha. Most missions will have you defeat all enemy units or capture the headquarters. There are other win parameters as well, but I won’t go through the whole list. You control a variety of units from land, sea, and even air. I found the diversity in my army to be a good thing, because I could choose any soldier or vehicle in my command for the right situation. I could choose a medium tank over the tank(Yes there is a difference in tanks). Or the battleship to replace my submarine. Although these units are costly they can be worth the price if used effectively. The inverse can also be true. Sometimes you don’t need to pay so much money to create a unit to take down a medium tank. A combination of baiting the enemy to key locations to a road that has zero defense is better than fighting, when they have the terrain advantage, acting as if they’re stationed on a tree tile. The trick is to use the most of the units you're given. Enough to damage them in the most crushing manner and as a result cripple their combat capability. So using soldiers as fodder, artillery from behind, a combination of sea, and air vehicles, and using a mix of mechanical infantry can turn the tide of battle in your favor. Hell, I love using the APC vehicle which is a supply unit and functions as a fast storage vehicle to carry my foot soldiers across great distances as bait. Which will the A.I. target? Surely not the tank?! They fired at my APC vehicle!
Honestly, playing around with these units and building them when certain missions allowed me to is great. A decent spread of map variety here. You can fight in open plains with roads, navigating through a mountainous region with a forest nearby. Once you throw water and rivers into the mix, the difficulty gradually increases as you unlock new powerful additions to your forces, new terrain to consider, and new enemy units into the equation. A nice pace to steadily nudge players along bit by bit and teach and reward them. A fair balance, whereas other titles throw you off the deep end. And ask you to climb a tall cliff. Reminds me of my time playing Starcraft and Warcraft back in the day and recently Wargroove. A fantasy strategy turn-based indie similar to Advance Wars. Feels good to head back to familiar roots here with AW and see how the franchise has gone off to inspire indies to the same degree Warside and Empires shall Fall Both titles are currently in development.
Gameplay-wise, for those who have never tried a turn-based title. Advance Wars starts with you the player controlling a set amount of units. You start a turn by moving and attacking any force on a map. Once you use all of your vehicle and infantry's actions you can end your turn. Then the opponent's forces will advance. The process repeats until either side wins. However, there is a cool gimmick to this. You and the enemy leader can activate their respective abilities. For Andy, once his meter fills up you can repair all of your unit's health +2 & +10 to firepower and defense. Olaf’s ability changes the whole battlefield to snow, increasing movement costs for all units except his own. Olaf’s forces gain +10 in firepower and defense. New COs’ abilities are different. Capable of adding substantial adjustments to the battlefield than changing numbers. If used at the right time they can change the fate of a battle in your favor. So use them when you're in a pinch. Just be careful, the leader can use their ability to inch closer to victory. These mechanics largely stay the same in the 2nd campaign. With extra CO abilities because of new commanders and a greater map variety with large cannons and pipes. AW 2 is pretty neat. The sequel I feel is better since they expanded on victory objectives. They can range from destroying a large cannon, multiple small cannons, and even a small pipe behind a big cannon. Missions take a bit longer to complete than in the first installment, but overall I found it better than their predecessor due to the map variety and mission objectives. Also, the villains are more menacing in the 2nd game than the first. An improvement over the first installment. Very refreshing to beat them mercilessly, who assumes they can beat me? Tsk tsk tsk. Don't underestimate the kid with a big wrench.
For AW 1. My experience is a positive one, despite the harsh critique I stated earlier. Took me over eighteen hours to complete the main story. Enjoyed fighting on various maps and utilizing a good spread of my units. There’s a lot of strategy involved and even when the fog of war maps came in, the difficulty didn’t waver in the slightest. In the old versions, the A.I. could cheat. Here that’s not possible anymore. Which is a cool tidbit to learn about. Plus, I found the usage of CO powers an awesome way to spice up the gameplay beyond commanding your troops. They provide a fair way to tussle against the enemy commander while supplementing your forces. Granting a layer of strategy to expect. Should I activate my ability now? Or wait until they use theirs? These questions will undoubtedly pop up as hypothetical scenarios of where to place your forces on land, sea, or air. Or if you need a bit of a boost to your forces in a dire situation.
For AW 2. My experience was still positive. Took me over twenty-six hours to complete the main story. And I believe it is a better sequel than the first with better villains to fight. And new commanders to choose from. Also, the player can choose to progress in a non-linear fashion by choosing different factions to start in the middle of the game. Start missions from Yellow Comet or Blue Moon and Green Earth are pretty wicked choices instead of always commanding troops from the same nation again and again. The difficulty is a bit increased, but as a sequel, I feel they function fine for the new changes to the gameplay. Not too much to be rage-inducing while not being too easy on classic difficulty. Moreover, your CO power is upgraded. If you wait a while, you can activate a supercharged move. This is a great way for players to reward those who patiently wait for their meter to increase or for those who immediately use their CO power once available. The choice is yours.
I want to say one last thing before I head out. Since this review is getting too long for my tastes and I apologize for that. I don’t want to make a review to put you off the game. I’m merely stating my experience and hope my review helps you in some fashion to understand another piece in the pie for AW 1 + 2 discussion in general. Despite the harsh critique I said in the beginning. I think the bundle is fine for anyone looking for other turn-based strategy goodness. Solid enough to hold your hand, but enough to keep you on your toes. The plot is decent. I didn’t expect anything amazing. Those who expect a simple story will be left with some measure of satisfaction upon completing either of the two campaigns. And a main cast I found to be endearing at times. Andy’s straightforwardness despite being a loveable dork. To the overprotective Kanbei for his daughter Sonja. Grit and even Eagle I like as well. The music is good. My favorite would be the Orange Star National Anthem. For some reason, I’m receiving Fire Emblem vibes from the track. Orange Star Theme I love how upbeat it is. And if I was isekai’d into the Wars World, I would immediately travel and enlist in their nation. The gameplay is all right, despite the critique I said earlier. I believe the mechanics are optimal enough to grasp as long as you can remember what each unit does and what they're effective against.
I also want to plug in a useful website to offer some helpful tips for anyone. Looking to play AW 1 + 2 These tips helped me immensely, so I feel more people should know about it just in case. I failed horribly in the first mission since I was operating with a Fire Emblem(FE) mindset. Despite the fact, FE & AW were made by the same company.
So, if you’re looking to try out Wayforward’s take on Advance Wars. I think Re-Boot camp is fine to play for newcomers or the original versions on the GBA. I sincerely hope the bundle sells enough, so we can see a new entry for fans in the series. And perhaps we can see Dual Strike and Days of Ruin come ashore in the future. Remade properly. Hopefully, the developers learn their lessons here and improve. But the future is uncertain, so we’ll see if that bears fruit.
Score for AW 1: 7/10
Score for AW 2: 7.5/10
Score for bundle: 7.25/10
Final note: I played both games on classic difficulty.
An option to play on ‘Casual’ is available.
2022
"Even in times of peace, one is not spared from the cruelty of man.”
Every time I play a game I always ask myself if this game is the one that will wow and impress me. And most of the time I'm usually left with good, great, all right, meh and other regular platitudes to describe my experience after the end of a game. Chained Echoes is none of that. The game strives to become something bold and new all while standing tall on its own and merely showing what it has to offer. Matthias Linda who created the game and Eddie Marianukroh who composed the soundtrack have remarkably impressed me to a degree I haven’t seen since I played Omori. So yes this is one hell of a bar they raised.
The game doesn’t boast to wear its proud laurels touting the best of the best jrpgs of the past. Instead, the game simply describes itself as a “16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where you follow a group of heroes traveling around the continent of Valandis to bring an end to the war between its three kingdoms.”
Not the most exciting catch to pull every consumer, but I feel it gets the job done. Because right off the bat, it is not saying they’re going to be the next classic since the time of Chrono Trigger or whatever RPG that is simply the best. Nor are they comparing their game to the JRPGs of old like other games on Steam. The devs are merely detailing what their game is going to be about. And that’s it. The game will show what it has to offer through the gameplay, story, music, characters, and more. And so the question remains. Does the game deliver? And is there a lot of content?
Chained Echoes does have a lot to offer. You have mecha gameplay. A big colorful cast of party members. The gorgeous visual style and soundtrack are worth listening to. An engrossing story, with a plot that is grounded and paced well. And scenes that left me shocked and unpredictable throughout. All of these hit me in such a way, I couldn’t stop myself from seeing one more scene, one more battle, and one more secret to find. I lost myself in the game and was chained, not willing to let me go.
Before I start, I need to preface this with some critique of the game. While excellent and remarkable in its own right, I feel the game could’ve used a bit more scenes to flesh out the characters. Not bad mind you. About three moments in the game, I feel could’ve transitioned better. Possibly, been padded a bit more to allow players to digest what happened from moment to moment between party members. It wasn’t jarring or abrupt. I just felt some scenes needed a bit more oomph in a way to let players digest a bit more context and exposition. Although, I find myself battling this point because if there is too much or too little it could break the pacing or remove the player from being immersive in the game. I equate this to deleted scenes in movies. While not strictly necessary, some additional scenes could've explained or refocused the scene differently.
Secondly, several villains except for some since they’re brilliant. Could’ve been fleshed out a bit more to make them more compelling. I noticed in their dialogue they would be in their role to be evil and explain motives and more etc. Except, during their final moments. Their character shifts in a way that is acceptable and decent, but I feel can be perceived as a tad abrupt. Not horrendous or bad. But my mind couldn’t help but consider alternatives if the scenes were rewritten or tweaked a bit. It's not a knock on the character as a whole since they performed as expected and in some cases unexpectedly, but the dialogue felt off and forced in a way. So more scenes to flesh them out really.
That’s all I can name off the top of my head.
Now let's dig into the real good stuff.
The story, caught me off-guard because I expected a standard JRPG trope affair full of references non-stop along the lines of Ready Player One. Instead, I got something the likes of Xenogears except much more grounded and taking me on a roller coaster ride. As if Chrono Trigger devs blessed the team to perfect the formula of introducing scenes to intrigue players, quick meaningful battles, excellent usage, and placement of antagonists scenes with well-placed humor sprinkled here and there that is fun and not forced.
The gameplay is fun and fresh and not all that complicated. Get into overdrive and stay there. Don’t overheat. And as I continued to gather more party members and when the game introduced mech gameplay, oh boy my grin was ear to ear. Plenty of bosses and unique enemies to fight, along with encountering a host of different creatures and beasts and humanoids here. Whereas, other games would usually change the color of an enemy and call it a day. None of that lazy stuff is in Chained Echoes. Each enemy fits their environment. Hell, there is a reward board ala FF12 style. So you can complete tasks while out on the field and get rewarded for doing so. None of the simple fetch quest and kill ‘x’ creatures stuff here. You have sidequests, buried treasure, hidden caves, unique requirements to finish off a group of enemies, defeating unique monsters, and more. Heck, the game doesn’t even have a level system so you don’t need to grind!
The game felt balanced since there are options to manage skills and upgrade them. And options to reduce enemy health and aggressiveness if you so desire. Overall, I didn’t feel tired from the combat system since the whole package of the game from reward boards, mecha gameplay, and unique enemies and bosses made the experience all the more satisfying to complete.
Visually the game is stunning and the art style works to its favor, a great deal. I was constantly impressed not seeing copy-paste areas and looking for templates where Mathias cut corners and I could not find one! Every environment is unique with a gimmick to earn your way out through small puzzles or clever switches and hidden areas to traverse. And these puzzles are implemented in such a way I wasn't truly frustrated. A nice change of pace and a breather from the regular travel and battle. Enemy design is terrifying and cute in some ways. The scenes throughout the game felt natural with animations not too sudden or too rigid. Smooth is key here and I can’t for the life of me recall a bad scene or egregious bugs.
On the soundtrack, I am just in awe of Eddie's work. It’s not the greatest thing since Mitsuda or Okabe. But holy hell does Eddie demonstrate MAXIMUM EFFORT here. I felt so much passion and emotion in Eddie’s soundtrack. Field themes that left me breathless and where all I wanted was to listen to the track on a loop. Catchy battle themes I never got tired of listening to these. Feeling pumped and invigorated to hear this again and again. And appropriate themes in cutscenes leave me shifting my mood to what is currently happening in the game. Serious scene. Cue slow track. Sad scene. Cue sad track. Funny moment. Cue funny track, and so on. And these cases were placed with such care I couldn’t predict what was coming next. Yet, transitioned well to match what is shown on the screen. Brilliant synergy to know what scene and track to use and display that to the player enhances their experience. Excuse me as I go back to listening to Iron Scraps for Breakfast and Flower Fields of Perpetua and so much more on repeat.
It is this pacing I want to talk about next. There is a great deal of freedom given to the player in the middle of the game that doesn’t ruin the pacing of the game at all. I feel Mathias managed to balance player freedom with nudges here and there on the main plot to give you just enough to be satisfied with your optional content and then focus back on the real task at hand. And this is exemplified again and again when I was played like a damn fiddle. Since I wasn’t exposed to constant exposition or repeated reminders of what to do, nor were there scenes where villains regurgitated lines they said previously. Character development was the answer here. Nothing too crazy and none too ambiguous or slow to manifest. Instead, used in such a way I found myself nodding. The cast struggles and learns, fails, succeeds, tries to learn to be better, fails again, and yet keeps trying is admirable and moving. It's not exactly what happens in the game, but just a rough estimate. Other elements can be injected of course like other cast members' motivations, feelings, history, and current relationships can tip the scales quite a bit to create drama or more. Keeping you the player invested in what happens next.
And this is what Chained Echoes demonstrates to an excellent degree. The pacing coupled with character development balanced it with optional content.
Before I forget, I have to give praise to the characters. Since, I doubted every single one of them and by the end of the game came away very impressed by how far each has come. Some more so than others, but for the most part, I felt attached to my characters. I hated one character quite a bit for a good chunk of the game. And yet by the end after seeing said character's struggles and scenes I couldn’t help but begrudgingly admit how hard they suffered and what they had to go through to see what becomes of them in the end. And this extends to my other party members who more or less undergo remarkable development throughout. In a manner, I found realistic without taking my suspension of disbelief to a whirlpool and flushing it down the ocean. There is a heartwarming amount of care Mathias has done to create characters with feelings that are so human and in the opposite spectrum create characters, so twisted and disgusting I can’t help but feel conniptions towards them.
Still what remains is a loveable cast of quirky characters and antagonists who are more than a simple villain here and there. A riveting story the likes I haven’t seen since Chrono Trigger and Xenogears and other wonderful JRPGs of old. Very fun and satisfying gameplay loop taking me over 40+ hours to 100% the game without being tired. Visuals aesthetically pleasing with no copy-paste artwork and unique enemies/characters/environments everywhere. The soundtrack is very satisfying to listen to, taking my breath away every time I listen to the main theme and more. Pacing and character development are balanced and excelled with nothing coming to my mind that felt forced or unnatural. And while it could’ve been improved on some villains and moment-to-moment scenes, I can forgive that since the game as a whole more than makes up for those very minor critiques.
Chained Echoes isn’t trying to become good nor does it profess to become one of the greats as classic well regarded JRPGs have done in the past of which we hold them fondly as favorites and more. Chained Echoes is one man’s vision with the help of a fantastic composer to bring to life an indie RPG with a story they want others to experience.
It’s a humbling, heartwarming game in homage to old JRPGs of the past. With enough content to stand tall with the greats. If you love JRPGs, Indie RPGs, or have a desire for a starter in the genre. And wish to be wowed like I did, to a point where you hold your favorite games close to your heart. Perhaps Chained Echoes will be that one game to impress you just as it had with me.
Every time I play a game I always ask myself if this game is the one that will wow and impress me. And most of the time I'm usually left with good, great, all right, meh and other regular platitudes to describe my experience after the end of a game. Chained Echoes is none of that. The game strives to become something bold and new all while standing tall on its own and merely showing what it has to offer. Matthias Linda who created the game and Eddie Marianukroh who composed the soundtrack have remarkably impressed me to a degree I haven’t seen since I played Omori. So yes this is one hell of a bar they raised.
The game doesn’t boast to wear its proud laurels touting the best of the best jrpgs of the past. Instead, the game simply describes itself as a “16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where you follow a group of heroes traveling around the continent of Valandis to bring an end to the war between its three kingdoms.”
Not the most exciting catch to pull every consumer, but I feel it gets the job done. Because right off the bat, it is not saying they’re going to be the next classic since the time of Chrono Trigger or whatever RPG that is simply the best. Nor are they comparing their game to the JRPGs of old like other games on Steam. The devs are merely detailing what their game is going to be about. And that’s it. The game will show what it has to offer through the gameplay, story, music, characters, and more. And so the question remains. Does the game deliver? And is there a lot of content?
Chained Echoes does have a lot to offer. You have mecha gameplay. A big colorful cast of party members. The gorgeous visual style and soundtrack are worth listening to. An engrossing story, with a plot that is grounded and paced well. And scenes that left me shocked and unpredictable throughout. All of these hit me in such a way, I couldn’t stop myself from seeing one more scene, one more battle, and one more secret to find. I lost myself in the game and was chained, not willing to let me go.
Before I start, I need to preface this with some critique of the game. While excellent and remarkable in its own right, I feel the game could’ve used a bit more scenes to flesh out the characters. Not bad mind you. About three moments in the game, I feel could’ve transitioned better. Possibly, been padded a bit more to allow players to digest what happened from moment to moment between party members. It wasn’t jarring or abrupt. I just felt some scenes needed a bit more oomph in a way to let players digest a bit more context and exposition. Although, I find myself battling this point because if there is too much or too little it could break the pacing or remove the player from being immersive in the game. I equate this to deleted scenes in movies. While not strictly necessary, some additional scenes could've explained or refocused the scene differently.
Secondly, several villains except for some since they’re brilliant. Could’ve been fleshed out a bit more to make them more compelling. I noticed in their dialogue they would be in their role to be evil and explain motives and more etc. Except, during their final moments. Their character shifts in a way that is acceptable and decent, but I feel can be perceived as a tad abrupt. Not horrendous or bad. But my mind couldn’t help but consider alternatives if the scenes were rewritten or tweaked a bit. It's not a knock on the character as a whole since they performed as expected and in some cases unexpectedly, but the dialogue felt off and forced in a way. So more scenes to flesh them out really.
That’s all I can name off the top of my head.
Now let's dig into the real good stuff.
The story, caught me off-guard because I expected a standard JRPG trope affair full of references non-stop along the lines of Ready Player One. Instead, I got something the likes of Xenogears except much more grounded and taking me on a roller coaster ride. As if Chrono Trigger devs blessed the team to perfect the formula of introducing scenes to intrigue players, quick meaningful battles, excellent usage, and placement of antagonists scenes with well-placed humor sprinkled here and there that is fun and not forced.
The gameplay is fun and fresh and not all that complicated. Get into overdrive and stay there. Don’t overheat. And as I continued to gather more party members and when the game introduced mech gameplay, oh boy my grin was ear to ear. Plenty of bosses and unique enemies to fight, along with encountering a host of different creatures and beasts and humanoids here. Whereas, other games would usually change the color of an enemy and call it a day. None of that lazy stuff is in Chained Echoes. Each enemy fits their environment. Hell, there is a reward board ala FF12 style. So you can complete tasks while out on the field and get rewarded for doing so. None of the simple fetch quest and kill ‘x’ creatures stuff here. You have sidequests, buried treasure, hidden caves, unique requirements to finish off a group of enemies, defeating unique monsters, and more. Heck, the game doesn’t even have a level system so you don’t need to grind!
The game felt balanced since there are options to manage skills and upgrade them. And options to reduce enemy health and aggressiveness if you so desire. Overall, I didn’t feel tired from the combat system since the whole package of the game from reward boards, mecha gameplay, and unique enemies and bosses made the experience all the more satisfying to complete.
Visually the game is stunning and the art style works to its favor, a great deal. I was constantly impressed not seeing copy-paste areas and looking for templates where Mathias cut corners and I could not find one! Every environment is unique with a gimmick to earn your way out through small puzzles or clever switches and hidden areas to traverse. And these puzzles are implemented in such a way I wasn't truly frustrated. A nice change of pace and a breather from the regular travel and battle. Enemy design is terrifying and cute in some ways. The scenes throughout the game felt natural with animations not too sudden or too rigid. Smooth is key here and I can’t for the life of me recall a bad scene or egregious bugs.
On the soundtrack, I am just in awe of Eddie's work. It’s not the greatest thing since Mitsuda or Okabe. But holy hell does Eddie demonstrate MAXIMUM EFFORT here. I felt so much passion and emotion in Eddie’s soundtrack. Field themes that left me breathless and where all I wanted was to listen to the track on a loop. Catchy battle themes I never got tired of listening to these. Feeling pumped and invigorated to hear this again and again. And appropriate themes in cutscenes leave me shifting my mood to what is currently happening in the game. Serious scene. Cue slow track. Sad scene. Cue sad track. Funny moment. Cue funny track, and so on. And these cases were placed with such care I couldn’t predict what was coming next. Yet, transitioned well to match what is shown on the screen. Brilliant synergy to know what scene and track to use and display that to the player enhances their experience. Excuse me as I go back to listening to Iron Scraps for Breakfast and Flower Fields of Perpetua and so much more on repeat.
It is this pacing I want to talk about next. There is a great deal of freedom given to the player in the middle of the game that doesn’t ruin the pacing of the game at all. I feel Mathias managed to balance player freedom with nudges here and there on the main plot to give you just enough to be satisfied with your optional content and then focus back on the real task at hand. And this is exemplified again and again when I was played like a damn fiddle. Since I wasn’t exposed to constant exposition or repeated reminders of what to do, nor were there scenes where villains regurgitated lines they said previously. Character development was the answer here. Nothing too crazy and none too ambiguous or slow to manifest. Instead, used in such a way I found myself nodding. The cast struggles and learns, fails, succeeds, tries to learn to be better, fails again, and yet keeps trying is admirable and moving. It's not exactly what happens in the game, but just a rough estimate. Other elements can be injected of course like other cast members' motivations, feelings, history, and current relationships can tip the scales quite a bit to create drama or more. Keeping you the player invested in what happens next.
And this is what Chained Echoes demonstrates to an excellent degree. The pacing coupled with character development balanced it with optional content.
Before I forget, I have to give praise to the characters. Since, I doubted every single one of them and by the end of the game came away very impressed by how far each has come. Some more so than others, but for the most part, I felt attached to my characters. I hated one character quite a bit for a good chunk of the game. And yet by the end after seeing said character's struggles and scenes I couldn’t help but begrudgingly admit how hard they suffered and what they had to go through to see what becomes of them in the end. And this extends to my other party members who more or less undergo remarkable development throughout. In a manner, I found realistic without taking my suspension of disbelief to a whirlpool and flushing it down the ocean. There is a heartwarming amount of care Mathias has done to create characters with feelings that are so human and in the opposite spectrum create characters, so twisted and disgusting I can’t help but feel conniptions towards them.
Still what remains is a loveable cast of quirky characters and antagonists who are more than a simple villain here and there. A riveting story the likes I haven’t seen since Chrono Trigger and Xenogears and other wonderful JRPGs of old. Very fun and satisfying gameplay loop taking me over 40+ hours to 100% the game without being tired. Visuals aesthetically pleasing with no copy-paste artwork and unique enemies/characters/environments everywhere. The soundtrack is very satisfying to listen to, taking my breath away every time I listen to the main theme and more. Pacing and character development are balanced and excelled with nothing coming to my mind that felt forced or unnatural. And while it could’ve been improved on some villains and moment-to-moment scenes, I can forgive that since the game as a whole more than makes up for those very minor critiques.
Chained Echoes isn’t trying to become good nor does it profess to become one of the greats as classic well regarded JRPGs have done in the past of which we hold them fondly as favorites and more. Chained Echoes is one man’s vision with the help of a fantastic composer to bring to life an indie RPG with a story they want others to experience.
It’s a humbling, heartwarming game in homage to old JRPGs of the past. With enough content to stand tall with the greats. If you love JRPGs, Indie RPGs, or have a desire for a starter in the genre. And wish to be wowed like I did, to a point where you hold your favorite games close to your heart. Perhaps Chained Echoes will be that one game to impress you just as it had with me.
“...you’ll find the sea to be vast, deep…full of strength and energy, yet kind and gentle.”
- Fisherman at the docks of Arni Village
Early on in my blind playthrough, I encountered an NPC who uttered those words to me and as I sailed the calm seas and battled my way across countless biomes, the quote resonated in my mind again. Even as I landed the final blow on the final boss I still felt it. Only when the end credits rolled around, did I realize. If I were to replace the word “sea” with “Chrono Cross(CC)” I feel the statement would still work.
The game is vast, but not to the point of a barrel of filler content. Vast in the sense there is enough to explore off the beaten path to satisfy those who want to take a break in the story, but also enough to hold your satisfaction from the beginning, middle, and end of the narrative. Deep in the themes conjured both subtly in NPC conversations and by important characters, you meet. Evoking thoughtful provoking questions as well as nuggets of lore. Occasionally, you may find a clue to your next destination to progress the plot. Without being too complex to comprehend. Full of strength and energy permeates every inch of my playthrough. Environments are eye candy and have every color in the rainbow I could think of. Settings come alive from forests, beaches, caves, jungles, and more! Each monster is carefully designed to fit in their natural habitat. So you won’t find a lava monster in a desert ya know? Or let's say a robot in an underwater cave. Heck, you won’t see fairies or dwarves in cities or towns!
So much kindness and gentleness In the music. Often I would close my eyes, listening to a new track I haven’t heard, and let the melody fill my soul with tranquility. Ahhh… I have to give props once again to Yasunori Mitsuda and more for gracing me with a beautiful soundtrack. This man does not miss. If I were to describe the whole soundtrack in as few words as possible. I would say. Upbeat, soulful, and mesmerizing. Like, I have been transported into the world of the tropical archipelago El Nido and every track felt so pleasing to grace my ears. Especially one track I want to drop. But, best to experience it in-game since it feels almost magical to hear. But for a taste listen to a small part from Etude 1. Other tracks I love are Arni Village - Home and Termina - Another which brought to mind powerful emotions to me. I could gush pages, but I'll keep it short. Resonant Arc describes it better than me. In How Music Moves Us. Plus the soundtrack within the Radical Dreamers edition is a refined one & rpgsite clarifies Square Enix’s vague response here “These tracks are not arrangements, but instead, these are simply cleaned-up versions of the original music with small adjustments to noise compression, equalization, etc. This is the only soundtrack found when actually playing the game, and you cannot toggle it.”
Gameplay is a mix of standard JRPG turn-based battles and exploration. Except you don’t have any levels to grind for. A blessing. Since it eliminates the grind. So, your party will naturally grow stat-wise as you defeat enemies. The main bread and butter for combat are the elements. Each character comes equipped with them. Though, you need to start filling up the slots by attacking enemies with melee. They must hit as well to count. No point in missing attacks. I recommend attacking foes with the first option during fights. The second and third options have a lower chance to hit and therefore miss, wasting an action. So spamming the first option can quickly fill the elemental slots. You don't get a full tank of elements out the gate. Think of them, like consumable spells. You can equip various spells onto each ally like healing, buffs, debuffs, attack, and attack all spells. Designated by six colored elements: red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white. As you win battles you can slot more elements onto each party member, the caveat is each time you use one during combat you cannot use them again. So no spamming willy-nilly. Players must carefully equip the right amount of elements to manage future battles while contending against enemies who can alter the field effect. Each time you or the enemy cast an element during a fight. A circle will change to correspond to the use of the spell. Let's use three fire attacks. The field effect transforms accordingly and in effect, my attacks with fire will become stronger. So, players should keep that in mind if a monster constantly uses water attacks. Perhaps I should transmute the field or an opposite element to counter their strong attacks.
Plenty of awesome quality of life(QOL) features that make the remaster very appealing. Auto-battle, fast-speed mode, and slow-speed mode are available. I don’t see slow-speed mode very often in other JRPG ports, but I have to admit the inclusion of it is useful to admire animations. Or literally, embrace a very slow playthrough. No random battles & battle boosts. These are welcome additions. The former is self-explanatory, the latter gives your whole party invincibility, all enemy attacks miss and you will have filled elemental slots that will never deplete until you turn off the option. These enhancements are a godsend for quickly defeating enemy mobs. Allowing players to move at a turbo pace. Ever so often, I felt the natural speed of the game was slow. So the QOL features greatly enhanced my experience making the combat system faster and eliminating the process of actively avoiding enemies in your field of view. Thereby, not wasting your time and effort. In my case, I was able to finish the game quicker than I initially thought from CC's How Long to Beat(HLTB) time. At just a little over twenty-three hours completing a decent amount of sidequests and recruiting a lot of characters too.
In addition to exploring, you can enlist new party members throughout your journey. Some of which are missable and non-missable. Reminds me heavily of the Suikoden series except you don’t have to recruit over a hundred people. Instead, you have forty-five possible units to join your merry band. It is important to note, you cannot enlist everyone from the get-go. A few can only be gathered in a New Game+ playthrough or using the “Continue +” option with multiple save files. They can range from the story one’s, you’ll gain naturally as you progress the plot. And others are tucked away in sidequests. More often than not, they're pretty straightforward to get them to join your crew, but others may take extra steps depending on their requirements. Revisiting them later on, to give an important key item, defeating a monster, battling them, or helping with a small or large task. Usually, if you see a unique portrait when speaking. Most likely, a new ally that can join you in the near or far future.
Battles are fair and balanced. Enemies didn’t feel absurdly difficult with outrageous health points and even in the final act, they were reasonably challenging. Not to the extent, I was battling against a sponge every chance I encountered an enemy. And as a result, the narrative moved at a comfortable pace, since I could adjust the speed at my leisure. Item drops, shops, and upgrading my equipment felt painless and easy. Didn't feel the urge to meticulously arrange new elements for my new allies since an option exists to auto-fill or auto-remove them.
Speaking of which, the story starts with the player controlling Serge, Kid, and one random companion coming outside of an elevator in a large stone fort. Kid will remark about Lynx’s day of reckoning which sums it up best. Your group must defeat Lynx in the fort. Why? What? How? Questions don’t matter for now. Once you finish your task at the fort, important events steadily rise. Forming an interesting pace, full of twists and sailing by turbulent storms and tides. Whether or not we succeed in defeating Lynx is a major device, the plot cleverly hides until an opportune moment. Surely more is underneath the simple objective to kill one man right? Well…
Yes! Yet, to go into further detail on what happens is to delve deeper into spoilers. And this review is a non-spoiler one. So I’ll move on. I'll talk about my mixed feelings about the remaster. Not a positive or a negative. But for the sake of transparency, I'm noting them down.
There is a point in the game, where major revelations are told to the player, and quite frankly a lot of JRPGs like to do this to varying degrees. CC is weird in that respect. Whereas their predecessor Chrono Trigger(CT). A title I played years ago and think fondly of. Executes the revelations in a condensed and easily digestible form in such a way, I feel a majority of players understand. Hence the reception. Here that also exists, although Masato Kato(The director and writer for CC) tries to bite off more than he can chew. The executions of said revelations make the impact of a certain point, a bit shaky and as a result, it’s not as strong as CT in that regard. Be that as it may, to play a devil's advocate(DA). I do applaud the bold move to tip the scales a tad to make CC rise above CT in ways. If we consider, the topic of ‘time travel’ in its entirety with all its aspects and subcategories can be a daunting task to link each thread. Other titles take a stab at the topic: FFXIII-2 delved into a pothole of time periods. Radiant Historia refined the aspect of producing a fresh product and palatable to newcomers. And while I haven't played 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim yet(Trust me, I'll get around to it someday). The countless praise I've heard deserves a spot here for time-travel stories worth looking into. So in a way, some parts could've been gently fed. Allowing the player to digest the revelations easily. Perhaps, less on lore dump, but further on the "show, don't tell" method.
As much as I’ve turned a 180 on the combat system long ago, I still have a small voice in my head saying it is possible newcomers will become confused. And I’ve consulted several friends of mine who had similar feelings. To this, I advise you to try it out first and experience it. If you’re having trouble, do what I did and undertake a tutorial battle against the chief in Arni Village. They explain all the terms, unique field effects, elemental usage, and attacks. Honestly, he did a good job explaining things and I can’t help wishing I had a machine to go back in time to slap my old self silly for quitting early on... Anyway, besides the combat, you can use QOL features to breeze fights and perhaps check out Before I Play on CC in case you want to know extra tips and maybe a spoiler-free missable guide for a first playthrough.
Some units' requirements to enlist them onto your party can be a bit vague on where to go or what to do. Perhaps a new location holds the key or clue to visit another location or converse with another NPC to progress further. I would scratch my head a bit and ponder my next course of action. Intermittently, I can take the loss and move on. The plot in the middle to the final act shares this dilemma as well. I only had to consult a walkthrough once since I became lost on where to go. But for the most part, important story characters will lead you in the right direction. Just try to remember what your next objective is. You may have an easier time than I did!
Usually, story units rather than the optional members, receive more spotlight in their backstory, relationships, and lore. And while I can understand this, I wish it was the same across the board. On the other hand, I did experience quite a decent chunk of noteworthy sidequests which delved deep into a couple of characters. Could be a "your mileage might vary" type of deal. Granted, if I were to play DA once again the added backstory, relationships, and quality sidequests would inflate the game's hours more. Maybe it's not a good idea to have every side character fleshed out... But the potential... Hmm…
Undoubtedly, the question of whether or not you need to play Chrono Trigger will spring up. Maybe. Chrono Cross plays safely enough without the knowledge of CT. Hell the director states it! However, playing the first entry, rewards players with important lore from their predecessor. Constructing a sort of foundation for players to settle upon and see once they play CC. Providing context as to how and why the events that occur. And perhaps enhance their experience. So I'm on both sides if you played CT or not before playing CC. Like their predecessor, there are multiple endings here. So if you were unable to earn the true ending in the first go. You can see it via youtube. So don't worry if the ending you obtained felt meh. I didn't see it in my blind first playthrough, so I searched for the true ending online. Literally ten times better than the garbage ending I got. I facepalmed so hard, once I saw the requirements to achieve it.
That’s it for my mixed feelings. Quite frankly, I mainly had a lot of upsides and hardly any downsides when playing. I didn’t have any crashes on my switch version. No serious or minor bugs either. I did come across the analog stick, rarely taking me out of engagements by accidentally pressing the "runaway option," nonetheless, I was able to restart the battle swiftly without much progress lost. The remaster performs as expected without any notable issues. The last update improved the fps and bug fixes. So I think I can safely say the Radical Dreamers edition is a safe recommendation to start your playthrough versus the old version. Even comes packaged with the never before released outside Japan until now. English visual novel(VN) called Radical Dreamers. A short side-story to CT and precursor to CC took me less than three hours to complete and while labeled as a non-canon. I greatly appreciate the extra backstory, and moments shared between Serge, Kid, and Magil. Though, I didn't like the random encounters during some sections. Seemed too forced to make it a bit of a struggle to fight against. Despite the troublesome encounters, I liked the music and the decisions you make. I also think it's a nice way for Chrono fans who want to experience it before/after playing CC. Since the remaster added a new hidden-post credits scene. Only activating once you finish both games and hit the credits option in the menu. The scene left me in a state of bewilderment and excitement. And as much as I want to delve more into that. It's time to end this review since it's getting too long.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. Is one of the finest JRPGs I’ve had the pleasure of playing. Masato Kato and his team have accomplished the impossible by bringing back a skeptical one who thought they could not top Chrono Trigger. Yet, it does in several ways. The mix of recruiting allies as you progress the narrative is a fascinating take from the Suikoden formula and my journey was full of laughter and seriousness to top it all. Succeeds in balancing an enjoyable gameplay mix of exploring, recruiting, and battling in aesthetically pleasing environments accompanied by a refined soundtrack from Mitsuda. And filled to the barrel full of charm, wit, and a likable cast. Worthwhile sidequests with plenty of optional content to fill your belly. A vibrant visual style makes full use of the color palette. Enriching every dungeon, town, overworld, creature, and the main cast. While the plot can make or break it for some. It holds steady in the sea due to the elements above holding the boat up high. So give it a shot and don’tcha be afraid of starting. A must-play for any JRPG fan or newcomer to the genre.
Score: 9.5/10
For those curious. The fisherman did have some more lines to say which I find fascinating in contrast to what he said initially.
“But, once it becomes angry, it can turn into the most frightening monster you’ve ever seen, engulfing everything…”
“Close your eyes and prick up your ears.”
“Can you hear the cries of countless men swallowed by the sea? The hidden secret the sea whispers?”
“I recommend you learn to sense the mood of the sea. That’s if you don’t want to join the fellows already on the bottom.
- Fisherman at the docks of Arni Village
- Fisherman at the docks of Arni Village
Early on in my blind playthrough, I encountered an NPC who uttered those words to me and as I sailed the calm seas and battled my way across countless biomes, the quote resonated in my mind again. Even as I landed the final blow on the final boss I still felt it. Only when the end credits rolled around, did I realize. If I were to replace the word “sea” with “Chrono Cross(CC)” I feel the statement would still work.
The game is vast, but not to the point of a barrel of filler content. Vast in the sense there is enough to explore off the beaten path to satisfy those who want to take a break in the story, but also enough to hold your satisfaction from the beginning, middle, and end of the narrative. Deep in the themes conjured both subtly in NPC conversations and by important characters, you meet. Evoking thoughtful provoking questions as well as nuggets of lore. Occasionally, you may find a clue to your next destination to progress the plot. Without being too complex to comprehend. Full of strength and energy permeates every inch of my playthrough. Environments are eye candy and have every color in the rainbow I could think of. Settings come alive from forests, beaches, caves, jungles, and more! Each monster is carefully designed to fit in their natural habitat. So you won’t find a lava monster in a desert ya know? Or let's say a robot in an underwater cave. Heck, you won’t see fairies or dwarves in cities or towns!
So much kindness and gentleness In the music. Often I would close my eyes, listening to a new track I haven’t heard, and let the melody fill my soul with tranquility. Ahhh… I have to give props once again to Yasunori Mitsuda and more for gracing me with a beautiful soundtrack. This man does not miss. If I were to describe the whole soundtrack in as few words as possible. I would say. Upbeat, soulful, and mesmerizing. Like, I have been transported into the world of the tropical archipelago El Nido and every track felt so pleasing to grace my ears. Especially one track I want to drop. But, best to experience it in-game since it feels almost magical to hear. But for a taste listen to a small part from Etude 1. Other tracks I love are Arni Village - Home and Termina - Another which brought to mind powerful emotions to me. I could gush pages, but I'll keep it short. Resonant Arc describes it better than me. In How Music Moves Us. Plus the soundtrack within the Radical Dreamers edition is a refined one & rpgsite clarifies Square Enix’s vague response here “These tracks are not arrangements, but instead, these are simply cleaned-up versions of the original music with small adjustments to noise compression, equalization, etc. This is the only soundtrack found when actually playing the game, and you cannot toggle it.”
Gameplay is a mix of standard JRPG turn-based battles and exploration. Except you don’t have any levels to grind for. A blessing. Since it eliminates the grind. So, your party will naturally grow stat-wise as you defeat enemies. The main bread and butter for combat are the elements. Each character comes equipped with them. Though, you need to start filling up the slots by attacking enemies with melee. They must hit as well to count. No point in missing attacks. I recommend attacking foes with the first option during fights. The second and third options have a lower chance to hit and therefore miss, wasting an action. So spamming the first option can quickly fill the elemental slots. You don't get a full tank of elements out the gate. Think of them, like consumable spells. You can equip various spells onto each ally like healing, buffs, debuffs, attack, and attack all spells. Designated by six colored elements: red, green, blue, yellow, black, and white. As you win battles you can slot more elements onto each party member, the caveat is each time you use one during combat you cannot use them again. So no spamming willy-nilly. Players must carefully equip the right amount of elements to manage future battles while contending against enemies who can alter the field effect. Each time you or the enemy cast an element during a fight. A circle will change to correspond to the use of the spell. Let's use three fire attacks. The field effect transforms accordingly and in effect, my attacks with fire will become stronger. So, players should keep that in mind if a monster constantly uses water attacks. Perhaps I should transmute the field or an opposite element to counter their strong attacks.
Plenty of awesome quality of life(QOL) features that make the remaster very appealing. Auto-battle, fast-speed mode, and slow-speed mode are available. I don’t see slow-speed mode very often in other JRPG ports, but I have to admit the inclusion of it is useful to admire animations. Or literally, embrace a very slow playthrough. No random battles & battle boosts. These are welcome additions. The former is self-explanatory, the latter gives your whole party invincibility, all enemy attacks miss and you will have filled elemental slots that will never deplete until you turn off the option. These enhancements are a godsend for quickly defeating enemy mobs. Allowing players to move at a turbo pace. Ever so often, I felt the natural speed of the game was slow. So the QOL features greatly enhanced my experience making the combat system faster and eliminating the process of actively avoiding enemies in your field of view. Thereby, not wasting your time and effort. In my case, I was able to finish the game quicker than I initially thought from CC's How Long to Beat(HLTB) time. At just a little over twenty-three hours completing a decent amount of sidequests and recruiting a lot of characters too.
In addition to exploring, you can enlist new party members throughout your journey. Some of which are missable and non-missable. Reminds me heavily of the Suikoden series except you don’t have to recruit over a hundred people. Instead, you have forty-five possible units to join your merry band. It is important to note, you cannot enlist everyone from the get-go. A few can only be gathered in a New Game+ playthrough or using the “Continue +” option with multiple save files. They can range from the story one’s, you’ll gain naturally as you progress the plot. And others are tucked away in sidequests. More often than not, they're pretty straightforward to get them to join your crew, but others may take extra steps depending on their requirements. Revisiting them later on, to give an important key item, defeating a monster, battling them, or helping with a small or large task. Usually, if you see a unique portrait when speaking. Most likely, a new ally that can join you in the near or far future.
Battles are fair and balanced. Enemies didn’t feel absurdly difficult with outrageous health points and even in the final act, they were reasonably challenging. Not to the extent, I was battling against a sponge every chance I encountered an enemy. And as a result, the narrative moved at a comfortable pace, since I could adjust the speed at my leisure. Item drops, shops, and upgrading my equipment felt painless and easy. Didn't feel the urge to meticulously arrange new elements for my new allies since an option exists to auto-fill or auto-remove them.
Speaking of which, the story starts with the player controlling Serge, Kid, and one random companion coming outside of an elevator in a large stone fort. Kid will remark about Lynx’s day of reckoning which sums it up best. Your group must defeat Lynx in the fort. Why? What? How? Questions don’t matter for now. Once you finish your task at the fort, important events steadily rise. Forming an interesting pace, full of twists and sailing by turbulent storms and tides. Whether or not we succeed in defeating Lynx is a major device, the plot cleverly hides until an opportune moment. Surely more is underneath the simple objective to kill one man right? Well…
Yes! Yet, to go into further detail on what happens is to delve deeper into spoilers. And this review is a non-spoiler one. So I’ll move on. I'll talk about my mixed feelings about the remaster. Not a positive or a negative. But for the sake of transparency, I'm noting them down.
There is a point in the game, where major revelations are told to the player, and quite frankly a lot of JRPGs like to do this to varying degrees. CC is weird in that respect. Whereas their predecessor Chrono Trigger(CT). A title I played years ago and think fondly of. Executes the revelations in a condensed and easily digestible form in such a way, I feel a majority of players understand. Hence the reception. Here that also exists, although Masato Kato(The director and writer for CC) tries to bite off more than he can chew. The executions of said revelations make the impact of a certain point, a bit shaky and as a result, it’s not as strong as CT in that regard. Be that as it may, to play a devil's advocate(DA). I do applaud the bold move to tip the scales a tad to make CC rise above CT in ways. If we consider, the topic of ‘time travel’ in its entirety with all its aspects and subcategories can be a daunting task to link each thread. Other titles take a stab at the topic: FFXIII-2 delved into a pothole of time periods. Radiant Historia refined the aspect of producing a fresh product and palatable to newcomers. And while I haven't played 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim yet(Trust me, I'll get around to it someday). The countless praise I've heard deserves a spot here for time-travel stories worth looking into. So in a way, some parts could've been gently fed. Allowing the player to digest the revelations easily. Perhaps, less on lore dump, but further on the "show, don't tell" method.
As much as I’ve turned a 180 on the combat system long ago, I still have a small voice in my head saying it is possible newcomers will become confused. And I’ve consulted several friends of mine who had similar feelings. To this, I advise you to try it out first and experience it. If you’re having trouble, do what I did and undertake a tutorial battle against the chief in Arni Village. They explain all the terms, unique field effects, elemental usage, and attacks. Honestly, he did a good job explaining things and I can’t help wishing I had a machine to go back in time to slap my old self silly for quitting early on... Anyway, besides the combat, you can use QOL features to breeze fights and perhaps check out Before I Play on CC in case you want to know extra tips and maybe a spoiler-free missable guide for a first playthrough.
Some units' requirements to enlist them onto your party can be a bit vague on where to go or what to do. Perhaps a new location holds the key or clue to visit another location or converse with another NPC to progress further. I would scratch my head a bit and ponder my next course of action. Intermittently, I can take the loss and move on. The plot in the middle to the final act shares this dilemma as well. I only had to consult a walkthrough once since I became lost on where to go. But for the most part, important story characters will lead you in the right direction. Just try to remember what your next objective is. You may have an easier time than I did!
Usually, story units rather than the optional members, receive more spotlight in their backstory, relationships, and lore. And while I can understand this, I wish it was the same across the board. On the other hand, I did experience quite a decent chunk of noteworthy sidequests which delved deep into a couple of characters. Could be a "your mileage might vary" type of deal. Granted, if I were to play DA once again the added backstory, relationships, and quality sidequests would inflate the game's hours more. Maybe it's not a good idea to have every side character fleshed out... But the potential... Hmm…
Undoubtedly, the question of whether or not you need to play Chrono Trigger will spring up. Maybe. Chrono Cross plays safely enough without the knowledge of CT. Hell the director states it! However, playing the first entry, rewards players with important lore from their predecessor. Constructing a sort of foundation for players to settle upon and see once they play CC. Providing context as to how and why the events that occur. And perhaps enhance their experience. So I'm on both sides if you played CT or not before playing CC. Like their predecessor, there are multiple endings here. So if you were unable to earn the true ending in the first go. You can see it via youtube. So don't worry if the ending you obtained felt meh. I didn't see it in my blind first playthrough, so I searched for the true ending online. Literally ten times better than the garbage ending I got. I facepalmed so hard, once I saw the requirements to achieve it.
That’s it for my mixed feelings. Quite frankly, I mainly had a lot of upsides and hardly any downsides when playing. I didn’t have any crashes on my switch version. No serious or minor bugs either. I did come across the analog stick, rarely taking me out of engagements by accidentally pressing the "runaway option," nonetheless, I was able to restart the battle swiftly without much progress lost. The remaster performs as expected without any notable issues. The last update improved the fps and bug fixes. So I think I can safely say the Radical Dreamers edition is a safe recommendation to start your playthrough versus the old version. Even comes packaged with the never before released outside Japan until now. English visual novel(VN) called Radical Dreamers. A short side-story to CT and precursor to CC took me less than three hours to complete and while labeled as a non-canon. I greatly appreciate the extra backstory, and moments shared between Serge, Kid, and Magil. Though, I didn't like the random encounters during some sections. Seemed too forced to make it a bit of a struggle to fight against. Despite the troublesome encounters, I liked the music and the decisions you make. I also think it's a nice way for Chrono fans who want to experience it before/after playing CC. Since the remaster added a new hidden-post credits scene. Only activating once you finish both games and hit the credits option in the menu. The scene left me in a state of bewilderment and excitement. And as much as I want to delve more into that. It's time to end this review since it's getting too long.
Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. Is one of the finest JRPGs I’ve had the pleasure of playing. Masato Kato and his team have accomplished the impossible by bringing back a skeptical one who thought they could not top Chrono Trigger. Yet, it does in several ways. The mix of recruiting allies as you progress the narrative is a fascinating take from the Suikoden formula and my journey was full of laughter and seriousness to top it all. Succeeds in balancing an enjoyable gameplay mix of exploring, recruiting, and battling in aesthetically pleasing environments accompanied by a refined soundtrack from Mitsuda. And filled to the barrel full of charm, wit, and a likable cast. Worthwhile sidequests with plenty of optional content to fill your belly. A vibrant visual style makes full use of the color palette. Enriching every dungeon, town, overworld, creature, and the main cast. While the plot can make or break it for some. It holds steady in the sea due to the elements above holding the boat up high. So give it a shot and don’tcha be afraid of starting. A must-play for any JRPG fan or newcomer to the genre.
Score: 9.5/10
For those curious. The fisherman did have some more lines to say which I find fascinating in contrast to what he said initially.
“But, once it becomes angry, it can turn into the most frightening monster you’ve ever seen, engulfing everything…”
“Close your eyes and prick up your ears.”
“Can you hear the cries of countless men swallowed by the sea? The hidden secret the sea whispers?”
“I recommend you learn to sense the mood of the sea. That’s if you don’t want to join the fellows already on the bottom.
- Fisherman at the docks of Arni Village
If Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to end Future Redeemed in a way to satisfy fans in the beyond after XC3's incredible ending. Well spark, my dude. You exceeded my expectations and then some. As a fan of the Xeno games since the time of Xenogears. Future Redeemed encompasses all the necessary callbacks, references, easter eggs, and precious moments we were waiting for.
I was captivated by the countless affinity scenes(moments you can see out in the world without any level or party member requirement) that struck me the most with the experience of all the past Xenoblade Chronicles games. And while, I wish there were even more to the point of fan service. I understand why Monolith Soft didn’t do so. It’s a delicate thread to balance for the fans to an extent they will be satisfied without over-gorging too much. And yet I am astounded at how great these scenes I saw within the expansion that evoked a sense of satisfaction. Some were bittersweet, some heartwarming, and some I couldn’t help but be amused at the sheer cheekiness. It is Xenoblade through and through. So you will experience a wide range in the emotional spectrum.
Gameplay didn’t change much like in Torna. The Xenoblade 3 combat system makes a welcome return, with the addition of unity combos and unity setups to mix things up a bit. Familiar and a mix of unfamiliar systems in place to capture player interest more into the gameplay-focus of Xenoblade. I thought the systems were decent. Didn’t need to go too complex or too simple. There is plenty of customization here as well. And I felt the tutorials do a good job explaining the old and new mechanics. Music as expected of Monolith Soft's composer team hits all the right notes. Players will recognize familiar tracks and new tracks.
I greatly appreciate the interconnected zones here, than in Torna due to the implementation of an increase in platforming and secrets. It’s not as deep as the intricate layers you see in Dark Souls. But zones flow seamlessly into other regions you will traverse and I found them to be a good length to explore and fight in. It’s not super large; to the extent you need to spend ‘x’ hours to reach one end of a zone into another zone. There is careful thought and precision by Monolith to make beautiful environments and secrets worth finding feel natural as past Xenoblade games were designed. And the expansion flourishes as a result. You do have new field mechanics to play around with, to reach new areas like repairing broken ladders. And other methods which I won’t say since it's better to experience that in-game. But suffice it to say I had fun exploring once again in Future Redeemed just like the past entries. Including X.
One last bit of praise. It is an absolute pleasure once again to see two familiar characters. There are so many moments, I have wished so hard in the past to witness and it has come to fruition now in Future Redeemed. So their presence creates a new dynamic I don't often see in Jrpg's or DLC expansions.
Moving on, while I consider the expansion excellent. There were some things that did tickle my mixed feelings. I don’t consider it a positive or a negative, but for the sake of transparency, I'm noting the qualities to let readers know ahead of time.
Certain unlocks for the characters you play are locked behind some side quests and through exploration, in secret areas, and opening relic chests. These will unlock gem unlocks, accessories, affinity growth charts, and arts. several can be easy to spot and therefore unlock whatever the above for each character at your leisure. But a small to decent chunk can be a bit tricky to spot. By the endgame, I had mostly everyone’s slots unlocked. With only a couple of my party members features locked since I wasn’t as thorough in exploring everything. Despite the fact I cleared 90%+ of every zone and completed I would say 95% of all sidequests. So this mix of forcing the player to unlock their innate features for each character feels a bit forced to make players explore. This is fine for me because I love to explore, except I also want to get most of my party member's abilities and features through natural-based progression. Meaning when a new chapter begins. Release a third of my parties accessories, arts, gems, and affinity growth charts locked status. I can understand why Monolith Soft tried to shake things up with this approach to encourage exploration which is worth seeing. Except for me, I’m left shaking my head at the potential my party could’ve had naturally instead of being forced to explore.
Secondly, I am flabbergasted by an important scene that was not properly labeled on the map with a giant exclamation point or affinity scene after witnessing a story cutscene in chapter 4. Which revealed massive lore context we needed from XC3. Without going into spoilers too much. Visit someone's(not going to say the name of the character’s) workshop after viewing the story cutscene on a mountain(located at a high elevation) in chapter 4. This will happen naturally, but players need to go back to the workshop to notice the scene. The map does not display it. Hopefully, this is a bug and the developers missed it. But as a Xeno lore dude, I'm shaking my head, if people miss the scene. So please don’t forget about checking the workshop!
Another point of mixed feeling would’ve been further time to flesh out two characters. Not going to say names, since this is a non-spoiler review. But, I consider two of the cast within the expansion, somewhat needing extra development and cutscenes to shine. There are familiar cast members that kinda take out the spotlight from the two characters and as a result, they don’t shine as much in my eyes. While understandable due to other characters' sheer presence, I think additional affinity scenes could’ve been used to delve deeper into the bonds of our party and create a cohesive party at hand. Thereby, allowing the cast to bond thoroughly and make the endgame stand out a just a little bit larger.
Not a nitpick at the endgame chapters. Since I consider it a fitting farewell to the trilogy. The expansion has the weight and reach of the first game. The grand presence of the second game and the lessons learned from Torna in creating side quests that are not needed to progress through the story by community levels. Expands what we already know in the third game, Delving deep into the missing context and cues we so desperately needed and wished for. And I would say the developers delivered so much. It is exactly what I needed from Takahashi and his team. The connection of the past and future is connected, all while capturing the wonderful magic that is unique in every Xeno game. With a great main cast and soulful music once again struck me deep in the heart. Satisfying gameplay loop and worthwhile cutscenes every Xeno series fan needs to experience. It’s been an incredible journey seeing how far they’ve come since the first Xenoblade game and from the time of Xenogears. For any Xeno series fan. This expansion is easily a must-play. And for us long-time fans since Gears and Saga. One to not miss out on.
9/10
Edit: Grammar and replacing repeated words
Edit 2: On my 2nd point above regarding a scene not being labeled properly. It actually is labeled on the map. The point of interest is covered by a hammer icon. Thanks to my friend @TehLostOne for the correction.
I was captivated by the countless affinity scenes(moments you can see out in the world without any level or party member requirement) that struck me the most with the experience of all the past Xenoblade Chronicles games. And while, I wish there were even more to the point of fan service. I understand why Monolith Soft didn’t do so. It’s a delicate thread to balance for the fans to an extent they will be satisfied without over-gorging too much. And yet I am astounded at how great these scenes I saw within the expansion that evoked a sense of satisfaction. Some were bittersweet, some heartwarming, and some I couldn’t help but be amused at the sheer cheekiness. It is Xenoblade through and through. So you will experience a wide range in the emotional spectrum.
Gameplay didn’t change much like in Torna. The Xenoblade 3 combat system makes a welcome return, with the addition of unity combos and unity setups to mix things up a bit. Familiar and a mix of unfamiliar systems in place to capture player interest more into the gameplay-focus of Xenoblade. I thought the systems were decent. Didn’t need to go too complex or too simple. There is plenty of customization here as well. And I felt the tutorials do a good job explaining the old and new mechanics. Music as expected of Monolith Soft's composer team hits all the right notes. Players will recognize familiar tracks and new tracks.
I greatly appreciate the interconnected zones here, than in Torna due to the implementation of an increase in platforming and secrets. It’s not as deep as the intricate layers you see in Dark Souls. But zones flow seamlessly into other regions you will traverse and I found them to be a good length to explore and fight in. It’s not super large; to the extent you need to spend ‘x’ hours to reach one end of a zone into another zone. There is careful thought and precision by Monolith to make beautiful environments and secrets worth finding feel natural as past Xenoblade games were designed. And the expansion flourishes as a result. You do have new field mechanics to play around with, to reach new areas like repairing broken ladders. And other methods which I won’t say since it's better to experience that in-game. But suffice it to say I had fun exploring once again in Future Redeemed just like the past entries. Including X.
One last bit of praise. It is an absolute pleasure once again to see two familiar characters. There are so many moments, I have wished so hard in the past to witness and it has come to fruition now in Future Redeemed. So their presence creates a new dynamic I don't often see in Jrpg's or DLC expansions.
Moving on, while I consider the expansion excellent. There were some things that did tickle my mixed feelings. I don’t consider it a positive or a negative, but for the sake of transparency, I'm noting the qualities to let readers know ahead of time.
Certain unlocks for the characters you play are locked behind some side quests and through exploration, in secret areas, and opening relic chests. These will unlock gem unlocks, accessories, affinity growth charts, and arts. several can be easy to spot and therefore unlock whatever the above for each character at your leisure. But a small to decent chunk can be a bit tricky to spot. By the endgame, I had mostly everyone’s slots unlocked. With only a couple of my party members features locked since I wasn’t as thorough in exploring everything. Despite the fact I cleared 90%+ of every zone and completed I would say 95% of all sidequests. So this mix of forcing the player to unlock their innate features for each character feels a bit forced to make players explore. This is fine for me because I love to explore, except I also want to get most of my party member's abilities and features through natural-based progression. Meaning when a new chapter begins. Release a third of my parties accessories, arts, gems, and affinity growth charts locked status. I can understand why Monolith Soft tried to shake things up with this approach to encourage exploration which is worth seeing. Except for me, I’m left shaking my head at the potential my party could’ve had naturally instead of being forced to explore.
Secondly, I am flabbergasted by an important scene that was not properly labeled on the map with a giant exclamation point or affinity scene after witnessing a story cutscene in chapter 4. Which revealed massive lore context we needed from XC3. Without going into spoilers too much. Visit someone's(not going to say the name of the character’s) workshop after viewing the story cutscene on a mountain(located at a high elevation) in chapter 4. This will happen naturally, but players need to go back to the workshop to notice the scene. The map does not display it. Hopefully, this is a bug and the developers missed it. But as a Xeno lore dude, I'm shaking my head, if people miss the scene. So please don’t forget about checking the workshop!
Another point of mixed feeling would’ve been further time to flesh out two characters. Not going to say names, since this is a non-spoiler review. But, I consider two of the cast within the expansion, somewhat needing extra development and cutscenes to shine. There are familiar cast members that kinda take out the spotlight from the two characters and as a result, they don’t shine as much in my eyes. While understandable due to other characters' sheer presence, I think additional affinity scenes could’ve been used to delve deeper into the bonds of our party and create a cohesive party at hand. Thereby, allowing the cast to bond thoroughly and make the endgame stand out a just a little bit larger.
Not a nitpick at the endgame chapters. Since I consider it a fitting farewell to the trilogy. The expansion has the weight and reach of the first game. The grand presence of the second game and the lessons learned from Torna in creating side quests that are not needed to progress through the story by community levels. Expands what we already know in the third game, Delving deep into the missing context and cues we so desperately needed and wished for. And I would say the developers delivered so much. It is exactly what I needed from Takahashi and his team. The connection of the past and future is connected, all while capturing the wonderful magic that is unique in every Xeno game. With a great main cast and soulful music once again struck me deep in the heart. Satisfying gameplay loop and worthwhile cutscenes every Xeno series fan needs to experience. It’s been an incredible journey seeing how far they’ve come since the first Xenoblade game and from the time of Xenogears. For any Xeno series fan. This expansion is easily a must-play. And for us long-time fans since Gears and Saga. One to not miss out on.
9/10
Edit: Grammar and replacing repeated words
Edit 2: On my 2nd point above regarding a scene not being labeled properly. It actually is labeled on the map. The point of interest is covered by a hammer icon. Thanks to my friend @TehLostOne for the correction.