An SRPG with multiple story paths to take, a large cast of characters to use in fairly simple but varied battles, and while it can be inconsistent in every area it's a frequent shift between average and excellent.
The plot has you taking control of a young noble that is quickly betrothed to the half sister of the ruler of another nation and is given control of his house due to his father's illness. The continent holds three nations, Aesfrost in the north that focuses on ironwork and a system of freedom through meritocracy that has lead to a massive divide between the rich and poor, Holy State of Hyzante in the east that controls the one known source of salt on the continent where all the citizens seem to be cared for but all have to follow the teachings of and worship a goddess, and the kingdom of Glenbrook which boasts a fairer climate than the other two nations harsh snow and desert and whose rivers and location makes it a center of trade. After a long war ended 30 years ago a joint mining venture between the three nations brings many of the higher ranking members of each country together to celebrate their alliance, but shortly after the delegates return home Arsfrost attacks and takes over the capital of your kingdom. As the new lord of one of the kingdoms three most prominent houses you, your best friend and youngest prince, future wife that is descended from a persecuted people in Hyzante, and your father's long serving advisor have to decide the best way forward.
The writing is often a more average JRPG quality with the normal ridiculous moments of characters things like "haven't we shed blood as well," "how can we hold on to our honor," "shouldn't peace and friendship be our goal." I've defended my party and people from bandits, a nation of imperialist cultists, imperialist betrayers, and bandits I don't think we need all the whining. But when the game hits the bigger moments, the character defining moments, the ends of narrative arcs, the clashes between some of the main enemies or ideologies the writing starts to get quite good, not Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together quality, but reaching a bar many games of the genre don't and in those moment the music often goes from a normal good but forgettable standard to also suddenly being excellent and working to further enhance the best moments of the game. It was nice to see that, despite the setup, I've again played one of the seeming few JRPGs where they did not take the narrative route of setting up a monarchy as a good system of government so long as it ends with a nice guy on the throne.
A strong point of the game is that many chapters have two or three options laid out by different characters as a way to proceed and the main members of your house vote on which route to take, with you being able to attempt to persuade anyone to the side you want and with the deciding vote if there is a tie. You can more easily persuade people if your conviction in one of three areas is aligned with what and who you are talking to, combined with choose the right dialogue with some possibly locked behind information found through exploration. You build points in morality utility, and freedom by your choices when talking to people, vote choices and persuasions, and smaller amounts of points through more minor actions based on a variety of actions you can take in battle or exploration. While the routes are interesting and some of the choices are difficult to guess what will happen and how much it can change the story, the actual voting and conviction system I really could have done without as it isn't mechanically interesting and never had any real effect on anything.
The conviction system thankfully stays out of the game enough where your past choices, potential for the true ending aside as that requires certain routes to be taken, won't lock you into any set options in the the future, which that just further highlights how meaningless it tends to be. You are really only using it to do two things, building up enough of one or two of the three types of conviction that side characters will come to join your house and higher values of a particular type make it easier to convince the seven main characters in your house to vote the way you want them to when making a decision that will alter the plot or change the next or next couple sections of the game. Unless you really focus on only one area, you can pretty much get the group to do whatever you want, and you should have so much of each conviction in a new game plus (which the game clearly wants you to run through multiple times to see that paths, get the true ending, unlock all characters, get all the character upgrades, etc) that you can definitely do whatever you want then. It is nice to see character's perspectives on different issues, but it might as well have just had them all talk it out and you pick the way the conversation gets steered instead of taking a vote where you may or may not have convinced particular characters of the choice and no one ever mentions any kind of disagreement again. I went into the game slightly blind and assumed that the voting system was you trying to convince other nobles of your kingdom or people from other nations to take up plans that change the games or that might give positive or negative effects to situations and battles, not that you would just be dealing with your seven friends that can typically be easily convinced of anything.
The battle system typically has you deploying from 9-12 characters with two of the main mechanics being to manage each character's TP that allow them to access their skills and to maneuver your characters in such a way that you can attack enemies while having a character on each side of them (or firing off a ranged attack while an ally is on the opposite side of them). There are a few considerations to take into account such as archers having greater ranged if they are on higher terrain, attacks having a higher hit chance if you have the high ground or are directly behind an opponent, and terrain can either offer minor benefits or can have spells chain lightning over water or freeze tiles to slow movement, start fires in some areas, or melt ice to create puddles. Every character gets a move action and can use one of their abilities each turn, this can be done in any order and there are a few movement skills that allow you to move, use the skill for further movement, and then take another skill action. It's a fairly simple system as characters learn only a few active and passive skills as they level up and are promoted but it works well, is easy to get into, tends to play out fairly quickly, and some of the map designs combined with the varied types of characters you can use keep things interesting. Each character has a main attack that used no TP and abilities that use between 1-4, 0 (for some rare abilities you can acquire passives to reduce the cost of), or all the TP the character currently has. Depending on their current class promotion, each character can hold between 3-5 points, recovers one each turn, and starts a battle with three. Certain characters might have various ways to gain more such as killing an enemy, standing on a certain kind of surface, not moving, hitting multiple enemies at once, starting a battle with more TP, or being able to add or give TP to other characters or to remove it from enemy units.
There is a large roster of characters that each have their own class and many with skills and passives completely unique to them. Some of those skills and a few entire characters specialize or can do things that are so situational or so time consuming to set up that they aren't that practical to use in comparison to other skills or characters, or a character might take so long and so many promotions to learn some valuable skills that they just won't be too useful or interesting to use until very late game or into new game plus (though the game's format does make multiple runs with different routes the main way to experience the full story, side battles, and mechanics), or they are an ok character that could have been a lot of fun to use if they just went a little further with their skill set in giving them a more defined role. One character can set up ladders on the battlefield so he and other characters can climb up to higher terrain like up buildings or steep cliffs, usually completely worthless especially as you unlock more movement based skills but you can basically break some battles with this as he can remove the ladder so enemies can't use it. Each character can have upgrades by spending money and resources at your blacksmith in the encampment area. The upgrades include bonuses two weapon upgrades that alter the look of their weapon and give access to tier 2 and 3 upgrades, upgrades to damage and/or healing done, most characters have an upgrade that you can toggle between two different options that can influence their skills or make them better at filling a certain role, an ultimate weapon ability that gives the character one new high TP cost skill, and unfortunately a lot of very underwhelming stat increases. The material cost of these upgrades increases on a tier with each upgrade very quickly and as materials can be difficult to find and you will likely take the more obviously useful upgrades first you can be left with a lot of dull +1 defense, +1 magic defense, +1 speed, etc style upgrades that just isn't that exciting when your stats are probably around the 20s-50s anyway and a few of the characters have some passive upgrades that just isn't of much use. +1 Defense to your mages isn't going to do much to their ability to tank damage, or to survive at all most likely.
Each of the eight main characters and 22 side character that you recruit either through story choices or by getting one or two of your conviction scores to the needed level will also have short scenes for their own personal story unlocked when you use them enough times in battle. The stories are of mixed quality, usually they rush through them with most only having a recruitment scene and two others doesn't give them much time to develop but through those scenes they do tend to interact with members of the main cast throughout many of their events. One issues with a few of the side characters and the conviction system is that there are a few of these potential recruits that should have a much larger impact on the story once they join you and it makes no narrative sense that they don't become main characters or have more or any plot interactions and even though they join you like some of the main characters do they have no say or appearance in any of the voting segments further highlighting its uninteresting mechanics.
Through an option at your encampment, that you can enter from the world map or during exploration, every main story battle that you have fought can be replayed (and they carry over in the list in new game+) as well as a large number of side battles with new and more difficult ones being added in the new game+ mode. Some maps are reused here but they will have some mixture of new unit placement for both sides, new enemy units, and possibly different objectives. Having new side battles, higher level enemies, and having all the abilities of characters now in earlier fights can make playing through the game again interesting, more so when taking new routes, but you will be seeing a lot of the same fights again and even more so if you attempt to unlock every character that would require at least four playthroughs.
A more recent patch added an epilogue scene to the true ending that gives some of the characters a more complete ending to their stories.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1685382576456990720
The plot has you taking control of a young noble that is quickly betrothed to the half sister of the ruler of another nation and is given control of his house due to his father's illness. The continent holds three nations, Aesfrost in the north that focuses on ironwork and a system of freedom through meritocracy that has lead to a massive divide between the rich and poor, Holy State of Hyzante in the east that controls the one known source of salt on the continent where all the citizens seem to be cared for but all have to follow the teachings of and worship a goddess, and the kingdom of Glenbrook which boasts a fairer climate than the other two nations harsh snow and desert and whose rivers and location makes it a center of trade. After a long war ended 30 years ago a joint mining venture between the three nations brings many of the higher ranking members of each country together to celebrate their alliance, but shortly after the delegates return home Arsfrost attacks and takes over the capital of your kingdom. As the new lord of one of the kingdoms three most prominent houses you, your best friend and youngest prince, future wife that is descended from a persecuted people in Hyzante, and your father's long serving advisor have to decide the best way forward.
The writing is often a more average JRPG quality with the normal ridiculous moments of characters things like "haven't we shed blood as well," "how can we hold on to our honor," "shouldn't peace and friendship be our goal." I've defended my party and people from bandits, a nation of imperialist cultists, imperialist betrayers, and bandits I don't think we need all the whining. But when the game hits the bigger moments, the character defining moments, the ends of narrative arcs, the clashes between some of the main enemies or ideologies the writing starts to get quite good, not Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together quality, but reaching a bar many games of the genre don't and in those moment the music often goes from a normal good but forgettable standard to also suddenly being excellent and working to further enhance the best moments of the game. It was nice to see that, despite the setup, I've again played one of the seeming few JRPGs where they did not take the narrative route of setting up a monarchy as a good system of government so long as it ends with a nice guy on the throne.
A strong point of the game is that many chapters have two or three options laid out by different characters as a way to proceed and the main members of your house vote on which route to take, with you being able to attempt to persuade anyone to the side you want and with the deciding vote if there is a tie. You can more easily persuade people if your conviction in one of three areas is aligned with what and who you are talking to, combined with choose the right dialogue with some possibly locked behind information found through exploration. You build points in morality utility, and freedom by your choices when talking to people, vote choices and persuasions, and smaller amounts of points through more minor actions based on a variety of actions you can take in battle or exploration. While the routes are interesting and some of the choices are difficult to guess what will happen and how much it can change the story, the actual voting and conviction system I really could have done without as it isn't mechanically interesting and never had any real effect on anything.
The conviction system thankfully stays out of the game enough where your past choices, potential for the true ending aside as that requires certain routes to be taken, won't lock you into any set options in the the future, which that just further highlights how meaningless it tends to be. You are really only using it to do two things, building up enough of one or two of the three types of conviction that side characters will come to join your house and higher values of a particular type make it easier to convince the seven main characters in your house to vote the way you want them to when making a decision that will alter the plot or change the next or next couple sections of the game. Unless you really focus on only one area, you can pretty much get the group to do whatever you want, and you should have so much of each conviction in a new game plus (which the game clearly wants you to run through multiple times to see that paths, get the true ending, unlock all characters, get all the character upgrades, etc) that you can definitely do whatever you want then. It is nice to see character's perspectives on different issues, but it might as well have just had them all talk it out and you pick the way the conversation gets steered instead of taking a vote where you may or may not have convinced particular characters of the choice and no one ever mentions any kind of disagreement again. I went into the game slightly blind and assumed that the voting system was you trying to convince other nobles of your kingdom or people from other nations to take up plans that change the games or that might give positive or negative effects to situations and battles, not that you would just be dealing with your seven friends that can typically be easily convinced of anything.
The battle system typically has you deploying from 9-12 characters with two of the main mechanics being to manage each character's TP that allow them to access their skills and to maneuver your characters in such a way that you can attack enemies while having a character on each side of them (or firing off a ranged attack while an ally is on the opposite side of them). There are a few considerations to take into account such as archers having greater ranged if they are on higher terrain, attacks having a higher hit chance if you have the high ground or are directly behind an opponent, and terrain can either offer minor benefits or can have spells chain lightning over water or freeze tiles to slow movement, start fires in some areas, or melt ice to create puddles. Every character gets a move action and can use one of their abilities each turn, this can be done in any order and there are a few movement skills that allow you to move, use the skill for further movement, and then take another skill action. It's a fairly simple system as characters learn only a few active and passive skills as they level up and are promoted but it works well, is easy to get into, tends to play out fairly quickly, and some of the map designs combined with the varied types of characters you can use keep things interesting. Each character has a main attack that used no TP and abilities that use between 1-4, 0 (for some rare abilities you can acquire passives to reduce the cost of), or all the TP the character currently has. Depending on their current class promotion, each character can hold between 3-5 points, recovers one each turn, and starts a battle with three. Certain characters might have various ways to gain more such as killing an enemy, standing on a certain kind of surface, not moving, hitting multiple enemies at once, starting a battle with more TP, or being able to add or give TP to other characters or to remove it from enemy units.
There is a large roster of characters that each have their own class and many with skills and passives completely unique to them. Some of those skills and a few entire characters specialize or can do things that are so situational or so time consuming to set up that they aren't that practical to use in comparison to other skills or characters, or a character might take so long and so many promotions to learn some valuable skills that they just won't be too useful or interesting to use until very late game or into new game plus (though the game's format does make multiple runs with different routes the main way to experience the full story, side battles, and mechanics), or they are an ok character that could have been a lot of fun to use if they just went a little further with their skill set in giving them a more defined role. One character can set up ladders on the battlefield so he and other characters can climb up to higher terrain like up buildings or steep cliffs, usually completely worthless especially as you unlock more movement based skills but you can basically break some battles with this as he can remove the ladder so enemies can't use it. Each character can have upgrades by spending money and resources at your blacksmith in the encampment area. The upgrades include bonuses two weapon upgrades that alter the look of their weapon and give access to tier 2 and 3 upgrades, upgrades to damage and/or healing done, most characters have an upgrade that you can toggle between two different options that can influence their skills or make them better at filling a certain role, an ultimate weapon ability that gives the character one new high TP cost skill, and unfortunately a lot of very underwhelming stat increases. The material cost of these upgrades increases on a tier with each upgrade very quickly and as materials can be difficult to find and you will likely take the more obviously useful upgrades first you can be left with a lot of dull +1 defense, +1 magic defense, +1 speed, etc style upgrades that just isn't that exciting when your stats are probably around the 20s-50s anyway and a few of the characters have some passive upgrades that just isn't of much use. +1 Defense to your mages isn't going to do much to their ability to tank damage, or to survive at all most likely.
Each of the eight main characters and 22 side character that you recruit either through story choices or by getting one or two of your conviction scores to the needed level will also have short scenes for their own personal story unlocked when you use them enough times in battle. The stories are of mixed quality, usually they rush through them with most only having a recruitment scene and two others doesn't give them much time to develop but through those scenes they do tend to interact with members of the main cast throughout many of their events. One issues with a few of the side characters and the conviction system is that there are a few of these potential recruits that should have a much larger impact on the story once they join you and it makes no narrative sense that they don't become main characters or have more or any plot interactions and even though they join you like some of the main characters do they have no say or appearance in any of the voting segments further highlighting its uninteresting mechanics.
Through an option at your encampment, that you can enter from the world map or during exploration, every main story battle that you have fought can be replayed (and they carry over in the list in new game+) as well as a large number of side battles with new and more difficult ones being added in the new game+ mode. Some maps are reused here but they will have some mixture of new unit placement for both sides, new enemy units, and possibly different objectives. Having new side battles, higher level enemies, and having all the abilities of characters now in earlier fights can make playing through the game again interesting, more so when taking new routes, but you will be seeing a lot of the same fights again and even more so if you attempt to unlock every character that would require at least four playthroughs.
A more recent patch added an epilogue scene to the true ending that gives some of the characters a more complete ending to their stories.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1685382576456990720