Super Lesbian Animal RPG

Super Lesbian Animal RPG. The name makes it sound like some kind of parody or that it's going to be very over-the-top, raunchy and played for laughs, but I assure you, it's very much done in earnest.  Starring two friends/lovers and several of their other close friends as they attempt to form their own adventuring guild, the game has a few of the silly elements you'd expect from the setup - stat-buffing kisses and love powered magic - but the rest is a genuine adventure with plenty of earnest humor and some surprisingly well-realized characters.  For the player's part (in the role of Melody Amaranth), you're given a career choice of three variants of Paladin, and your choices throughout the narrative do actually make a substantial difference in how scenes play out.  Despite being made in RPG Maker, the game also shows a high degree of polish and effort - I didn't spot any stock assets, and all the new ones showcase some high-quality art, spritework, music and animations.  Little touches like experience meters, custom menus and status screens (complete with a brief character profile) also go quite a long way, as do new mechanics; abilities run off both traditional Magic Points and "Star Power" that charges as the battle progresses.  Other, more substantial additions include a quest log, treasure maps with corresponding puzzles to solve, and of course the usual roundup of RPG sidequests like a bestiary and a few collection quests.  Basically it's a well-made, decently entertaining RPG with a silly title and a lot of clean humor.  And gay. Very, very gay.

 

I don't know how much these last few sliders and options actually factor in, but regardless, something I haven't seen before in an RPG.  Gets points for that!

Developer: ponett
Publisher: ponett
Released: 2022
Platforms: PC

Soul Hackers 2

Soul Hackers 2 is a mostly in-name-only sequel to the first with an entirely different locale, mythology and art style, incorporating a few elements from later games into the legacy Megami Tensei dungeon crawling experience.  But does it prove to be a worthy title for the long-lived franchise, or is Soul Hackers 2 just a hybrid game without a home?

Devil Summoner is one of many offshoots of the core Shin Megami Tensei series, with loosely-connected stories that have elements of detective fiction in them.  One of these was Soul Hackers, a Saturn and Playstation title which added a cyberpunk element to the mix; following a small hacker group named "the Spookies", it had the player investigating the Algon Soft corporation to discover their true motives, untangling a complex plot involving the series' usual mainstay of demon summoning using modern technology.

I mention this because Soul Hackers 2, despite ostensibly being a sequel to that game, has little connection to it in terms of its story.  While it takes place in a more futuristic setting, the title in fact refers to something completely different - a story element involving the game's protagonist, Ringo, literally "hacking" someone's soul to save them from death.  A few series elements do appear (the Kuzunoha family and the Devil Summoners, now two feuding rival factions), but it largely exhumes the cyberpunk feel of the original in favor of something distinctly more fantastical.  Ringo herself is part of this, being an avatar of a god-like entity named Aion which manifested in cyberspace who seeks to prevent a world-ending catastrophe. If you think I'm spoiling something telling you this, I'm really not; this is all laid out in the opening minutes of the game, and Ringo herself makes no secret of it either.  I did actually like this turn, though, as it's a nice contrast to the usual boring "amnesiac hero with a greater destiny" trope, or just relegating the supernatural character to a secondary role as they did in the first Soul Hackers.  Being part of an entity that's essentially the sum of all of humanity's knowledge pays off too; as there's very little anyone does that's surprising to her, Ringo retains a rather sardonic tone and dry delivery in reaction to almost anything, which you can probably guess appeals to me.

The game shares a good portion of its development team (and two co-producers) with Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, which is particularly evident in its combat system.  Characters have a lot of mid-battle banter and frequent voice lines, and the overall presentation is quite similar, with a lot of dynamic camera angles and some flashy visual effects for bigger attacks.  The environments also have a rather loud aesthetic, with a lot of neon colors and bright lights and some enjoyably garish character designs throughout.  Basically the whole game looks like a bright, showy city street even in its calmer moments.

In terms of gameplay the game does share more common ground with its predecessor and, indeed, the larger Shin Megami Tensei franchise, mostly being a dungeon crawling experience with turn based combat and a focus on recruiting demon allies.  It does borrow a few elements from later entries, though - one can attack foes before combat begins with a well-placed sword strike to stun them, allowing the player to slip past them or attack while they're downed to get a free hit; not unlike a similar mechanic in Shin Megami Tensei's IV and V.  Slightly similar to the All-Out attacks from Persona is a new element called "Sabbaths"; striking enemies' elemental weaknesses builds up Stacks, which at the end of each round result in a "Sabbath" - an extra, non-elemental bit of damage to all enemies, doing more damage the more Stacks you racked up that round.  As the game goes on you'll unlock more ways to build up Stacks in a single round, allowing you to really rack up the damage.  Combat does tend to get a bit repetitious, especially since the Sabbath has a pretty lengthy animation each time it occurs, but thankfully you can skip it at the press of a button.  One can also speed up animations in general by pressing the touchpad on the controller, greatly speeding up mundane battles.

Something else slightly similar to the Persona games is the character development aspect.  As story scenes play out you'll frequently have the option to choose between several options, boosting your affinity with one of your teammates depending on your choice.  Once this reaches certain plateaus you can enter a dungeon called the "Soul Matrix" and progress past tier-locked gates to battle bosses and earn upgrades for your team, as well as getting some more scenes delving into their backstory.  It's a bit more impersonal as it's not building a direct bond between your protagonist and their allies as it was in the Persona games (at least, not in the same sense), but it's an interesting new take that shows off each character's personalities and life philosophies, which are surprisingly nuanced, complex and often incompatible with one another, showing that they're all very different people working toward a common goal.  Still, they're a very well written bunch, and proof that Atlus can still come up with some complex three-dimensional personalities, which is something Persona 5 really fell short on in my opinion.

Party management remains a large element of the series, and that definitely doesn't change here.  You have four party members to control, and each has four key pieces of equipment to utilize - a weapon, an accessory which serves as a combination armor, status-blocker and stat booster, a Mistique to grant bonuses to certain skills, and a recruited Demon, which determines their usable skills and has a heavy influence on their stat spread.  (There is also a fifth slot for an Outfit, which are purely cosmetic and mostly DLC bonuses.)  Demons are of course recruited as the party traverses dungeons, though unlike most Shin Megami Tensei games, it's not done through battle this time - instead your currently equipped demons "scout" other demons in the dungeon and give you opportunities to recruit them; usually by paying a fee of items, money or hit points.  While each character can only have one equipped at a time, you do have a pool of demons to keep in reserve, which you can swap at any time outside of battle.  Of course, you do eventually earn the ability to fuse demons together to create new, more powerful ones which can carry on some skills from their 'parents' as part of another franchise staple.  Enemies will also drop crafting ingredients, which can be utilized to upgrade each character's abilities through "COMP Upgrades" or traded for rare items.

Something I've frequently criticized about the modern Shin Megami Tensei games is their day-one DLC models; in particular their affinity for gameplay loop destroying "bonus items" that basically just give you as many free levels, vendor trash items and stat boosts as you want, completely trivializing the experience (paired with making money/XP gains slower than previous games so that you're tempted to buy it...).  That still exists here (as a paid pack, no less), and as usual I'd recommend passing it up even if you're just in for the story, as it's not a particularly tough game even on the Normal difficulty setting.  Another unsavory thing is having a bonus story arc DLC on its launch day at an extra $10 charge, which is a rather sleazy practice in general.  Having several series-iconic demons and character costumes based on characters from other franchise games as separate paid packs is even worse, as they provide little or no actual gameplay benefit despite their inflated price.  Basically the only DLC pack that's worth it in any objective sense is the story addon (which is honestly a pretty damn good substory), and when it seems like something they just stripped off the disc at the last minute to sell separately for more money atop a $70 game, you can't help but feel ripped off anyway.  It's an ongoing frustration I've had with the company ever since the Sega buyout, and sadly I doubt it's going to stop anytime soon.

Soul Hackers 2 got a somewhat middling critical reception and wasn't a particularly strong seller for Atlus and Sega - it doesn't have the stylistic flair or heavy character development focus of something like Persona, and its rather monotonous dungeon designs and battles don't stand out much in an era where RPGs have evolved to contain downright brilliant puzzles and combat quirks.  I can't imagine the scummy DLC model does it any favors either, as I'm far from the only person to complain about it. But I think if you can set all that aside and look at the game for what it is - a "back-to-basics" Shin Megami Tensei title focused on the series' fundamentals of dungeon crawling and party management, with a few light elements of newer titles blended in - you've got an enjoyable experience.  It's got some fun, surprisingly nuanced characters (the game's best scenes are easily just those of the cast interacting with one another), a pretty heavy and solemn mood, and some inspired (and often quite funny) dialog atop rather pedestrian dungeon crawler/party management gameplay.  It may not set any new standards for the franchise or the genre as a whole, but its stronger elements certainly make it worth a try at least; especially since you can pick up physical copies for pretty cheap at the time of this writing.

Developer: Atlus, Artdink (PC/XBox One Ports)
Publisher: Sega
Released: 2022
Platforms: Playstation 4, Playstation 5, PC, XBox One, XBox Series

Recommended Version: All version seem to be more or less the same.

Chained Echoes

Have you ever read an awful fanfic where every bit of prose is incredibly terse to hide the writer's limited vocabulary and every line of dialog is comprised entirely of clichés and cutesy turns of phrase and references because it's all shat out by a 14-year-old who thinks getting a hundred views means they're now God's gift to the art of writing?  Well, Chained Echoes does something nobody ever asked for and brings that lovely brand of inflated ego to the world of gaming.  Don't expect it to provide any decent characterization whatsoever, because every single one is just dropped into the narrative with two sentences laying out their motivations and personality traits in plain text, and that's pretty much all the development they ever get.  Guess what: it was a lazy way to establish character in Final Fantasy VI 28 years ago, and it remains so today.  The difference is that VI transcends its stock characters and storyline on the merits of its gameplay variety, brisk pacing with minimal grinding, top-notch presentation and moments of ingenious atmosphere and cinematography that set a standard for years to come, whereas Echoes just brands itself as a 'callback' so it never has to make any effort to stand out.  Likewise, the whole script is a mishmash of plot points, scenes and characters from smarter, better games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy and Xenogears with no thought spared for narrative cohesion or logic whatsoever.  Its design sensibilities are firmly trapped in dated cliché too; there are tons of time wasting click-on-everything-to-find-the-arbitrary-plot-flag segments, dungeons that only exist to pad the runtime with tedious overlong corridors rather than provide any decent puzzles or interesting battles, mountains of dry exposition to explain all its 'deep' concepts, and huge labyrinthine towns with nobody and nothing interesting to interact with; just bland NPCs who wander randomly and repeat inanities forever.  Battles move fast yet still feel monotonous and slow, constantly pitting you against damage-sponge enemies that take dozens of special move hits to kill.  You automatically get healed to full after every battle too, which removes any element of resource conservation.  The only thing that saves the combat system from being completely brainless is a meter that fills as you deal damage; you do more when it's in the green and take more when it climbs into the red, but all this means is that rather than spamming your strongest attack until you win, you just find one effective attack/defend/heal pattern and spam it until you win.  

Chained Echoes might look and sound a bit better than a stock-asset RPG Maker game, but at its core that's exactly what it is - another trite, hackneyed outing made to milk nostalgia for 'the classics' with no appreciation of what makes them such. It never once improves on or puts any new twist on the elements present in its inspirations, and there's no satire, subversion or even self-awareness about any of the tropes it retreads, just empty imitation.  It heaps on bad dialog trying much too hard to sound witty and profound and hopes you won't notice that there's no original thought on display anywhere in the whole game; just smug hackery masquerading as a tribute to what came before.  Like so many 'homage' games it fails to recognize that '90s RPGs got popular not from having a particular look or vibe, but because they improved on their predecessors and dared to break new ground in the realms of gameplay design, character building and storytelling.  Hell, there's a good reason Final Fantasy VII is still a classic and XIII is regarded as a cruel joke.  Final Fantasy VII integrated a fantastic cutting edge presentation, some creative new gameplay mechanics, high concept storytelling and memorable characters into a format that, up to this point, was very formulaic and starting to get stale, and it did it all without ever coming across as pretentious.  It respected its audience's intelligence by leaving them with some interesting mysteries and moral quandaries to consider and letting its fantastic, layered characters carry the story rather than shovel-feeding you dry exposition to make sure you 'get' the creators' vision.  There's good reasons the game still resonates with audiences to this day.  By contrast XIII is the prime example of developer arrogance, thinking shiny textures and flashy animations will carry them to more fan acclaim in spite of a lack of effort on every other front.  Cardboard cutout characters, dumbed down inane gameplay, countless plot holes, a terribly presented story and grating, twee dialog through it all.  It's the worst kind of insult to not just its parent franchise, but to the fans that made it a hit in the first place.  That's why Chained Echoes fails too - it's another smarmy self-proclaimed 'genius' thinking you owe him the same respect as the creators of the classics simply because he made a cynical carbon copy of their work.  'Respect' of course meaning piles of money and little gold statues for their shelves, because material wealth and popularity and prestige are the only things people like this think hold any true value.  And of course, more is always better; having a bigger portfolio and more fans yes-men and trophies of your "conquests" always means you're got more talent and intelligence and morality than all of your 'competitors' with less, right?

Instead of rewarding more plagiarism by yet another visionary who claims they're going to "save" the RPG genre by making it even more sterile and stagnant, just play some of the games it's blatantly stealing from instead; nearly all of which are still available today for well under this game's $30 price point.  Or if you want some fun, strongly written, well-paced and mechanically polished indie RPGs that actually pay tribute to the classics while doing much to set themselves apart too, play Symphony of War, Ikenfell, Deltarune or Sea of Stars instead.  But hey, at least this game's title is apt for a game with design sensibilities chained to the worst kind of proud mediocrity and a plot that's an echo of scripts from much better games of the past.

 

Developer: Matthias Linda
Publisher: Deck13 Spotlight
Platform: PS4, PS5, PC, Linux, Max OS, XBox One, XBox Series, Switch
Released: 2022

Dragon Quest Treasures

A spinoff of the Dragon Quest series starring Erik and Mia from its 11th entry, which as its name implies, is focused heavily around hunting treasures in a large open world.  But does Treasures strike gold, or should it just be left buried?

Dragon Quest, as long running and successful a franchise as it is, is certainly no stranger to spinoff games, running the spectrum from Warriors style beat-em-ups to roguelikes to action platformers centered on the series' signature slimes to a monster collecting spinoff inspired by Pokemon; a bit ironic considering Dragon Quest had recruitable monsters as a mechanic several years before Pokemon was even a thing.

Treasures is another such entry, taking the familiar world of Dragon Quest XI (and starring two of its protagonists) but changing up the gameplay to be an open-world experience focused around completing objectives and hunting for hidden artifacts across a span of several floating islands.  To this end, your two main characters acquire a pair of magic daggers that allow them to procure said treasures, enlist monsters to help them pinpoint exact locations and travel more efficiently, and gradually upgrade their home base by finding loot and recruiting new characters to staff it.

A key component of any open world game, at least in my view, is making it fun to get around; after all, if you're going to be spending a ton of time running around the map, the developers had better put some work into making that aspect enjoyable, otherwise it's just 20+ minutes of empty filler in between each mission. Treasures thankfully does just that - your characters will automatically hop over small obstacles like fences and rocks, and pretty much anything that looks scalable with platforming is.  Recruited monsters aid greatly with this too, with some monsters being ridable to make running around faster (Knights), able to propel you into the air to scale cliffs (Slimes) or even go gliding over significant stretches a la Breath of the Wild (Drackys and other flying monsters).  Others still allow you to simply submerge into the ground, becoming temporarily undetectable to slip past potential dangers or avoid combat.

Combat in the game is pretty simplistic overall - Erik and Mia use their daggers and a slingshot to attack, with the latter having a large variety of pellets to utilize various effects - doing physical and elemental damage, inflicting status effects, healing allies, or even making monsters you shoot with them more likely to be "scouted" after their defeat, and they can hold X to heal using their stock of MP or tap it while moving to dodge.  Your monster allies largely move and act on their own in battles, though you can give general commands to go on an all-out offensive or battle more defensively.  Serviceable, ultimately nothing spectacular; but in a game where the majority of the focus (and experience) is in finishing objectives and treasure hunting, it's excusable.  In fact, the main reason you bother with combat is less for experience and more to gather dropped items or having a chance to "scout" them and make them into a recruitable team member back at your base for a fee (typically a handful of items and/or some gold).  Monsters will also randomly drop Medals, which you can equip on your characters to boost their stats, earning more slots for them as your treasure rank increases.

Treasure hunting itself is pretty cleverly handled.  Holding L and pressing B activates your character's treasure radar, which will point you in the direction of where its' buried.  When you get in close proximity you can pinpoint its location using your monsters' vision, showing where it's at from different angles so you can identify it with landmarks (with cute touches like looking through the slats on the Knight monster's helmet, or having a Ham Shamwich's view blocked by their hat and their nose).  From there, you dig it up and it gets added to your reserves, with one of your monsters carrying it until you're able to return to base and store it in the vault.  Sometimes monsters will drop treasures after taking a heavy blow, and they'll vanish unless you collect them again before too long passes (several minutes, so it's a pretty generous countdown).  You'll also (seemingly randomly) happen across already exposed dig spots with minor treasures called "Bric-a-Bracs" that reward less XP and gold for your vault, but finding enough of them does add up over time.  

There's a bit more to it than that, though.  Party composition, time of day and a few other factors determine each island's "golden ratio", the chance to find treasures there, so you can change up your party and try later if the prospects in an area are pretty bad.  On the other hand, a ratio of 100% is pretty ridiculous - you can barely go 30 yards without finding another bric-a-brac.  Which makes it kind of a shame that you can only carry 6-10 treasures at a time depending on your party composition.

As you complete missions and upgrade your base, you'll also add several new amenities.  These include being able to cook meals that temporarily boost your allies' stats, craft any of the many pellet types available from collected items, or even send out teams of up to three monsters on expeditions - basically they go out and gather items for you on trips that last 30 minutes or more, and they may even bring back some treasures under the right conditions.  Once a certain point in the story is reached, rival treasure hunters will become a more constant gameplay element, attempting to ambush you in the field and steal your treasures or raid your base - you can do the same back to them, however, so it's a fun dynamic.

Dragon Quest Treasures is a fun little romp - an open world lootfest adventure with some creative mechanics and the endless charm that the series has had as its trademark for three decades.  You have to be a Dragon Quest fan to get the most out of it (and appreciate the enormous encyclopedia of references to be found in the goodies you uncover), but for series enthusiasts, it's a quite fun time.  Oh, and mute the voices - I got so annoyed by my monsters constantly repeating the same three phrases over and over again every few seconds that I had little choice to continue playing.

Developer: TOSE
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Switch
Released: 2022
Recommended Version: N/A

River City Girls 2

The followup to WayForward's take on the Kunio franchise (most particularly the Downtown Nekkestsu/River City Ransom offshoot series), River City Girls 2 is what you'd expect - keeping the overall format intact while adding in a bit more of everything.  The area you're exploring is now much larger, with six interconnected maps, and there are two new playable characters added - Marian and newcomer Provie.  The game has plenty more to experience, with a wider variety of enemies and maps, plenty of quests to undertake for hefty experience and cash rewards, and a more involved (and much sillier) storyline about a Yakuza takeover of River City.  The gameplay remains largely untouched from the original, though like the old Technos games, it hits a perfect blend of being technical and visceral - you can chain together some truly flashy and devastating combos once your skills are sufficient, and being able to buy equipment to earn special effects, bolster stats and call in recruited enemies to land a hit or two (whether mid-combo or to get out of a tight situation) only further adds to the fun of it all.  River City Girls 2 is proof that more of the same isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Developer: WayForward
Publisher: WayForward, Arc System Works
Platform: PC, Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox One, XBox Series
Released: 2022

Front Mission 1st: Remake

Square's Front Mission has been a pretty popular franchise in Japan since the days of the Super Famicom, but never attained anywhere near the same level of success in North America; it got releases on PS1, PS2 and DS, though sales ranged from just passable to abysmal (with the DS remake of 1 only selling a reported 60,000 copies worldwide).  I was surprised they'd make another attempt at localizing it after that, but Front Mission 1st Remake was released as a digital-only Switch exclusive.  It's a remake of the PS1 version of the original game, which includes a bonus campaign viewed from the opposite side of the war.  The core gameplay stays basically the same regardless of your story path, though - you command a squad of customizable mechs in turn-based tactical combat across various maps and terrain types.  Your mech's limbs take damage individually from the body, though you're only rendered inoperable if the body is destroyed - losing arms disables weapons, while having your legs disabled will stop you from moving until they're repaired.  There doesn't seem to be any way to target specific body parts though, so having limbs disabled or just straight crushing an opponent (or getitng crushed) comes down to luck of the roll.  Mecha fans may also be disappointed by the fact that there's not a particularly realistic damage model - "the only hit point that matters is the last one" so to speak.  It's got a pretty decent story and plenty of customization options for your mechs, but the overall gameplay is pretty ho-hum; nothing inherently wrong with it, but not much stands out either.  A game worth a try for RPG historians, or just those who never got a chance to check out the series before, but it doesn't have too much to offer to serious mech combat fans other than a different hemisphere's perspective on the genre in the timeframe of the '90s (compare this to say, Mechwarrior 2, which came out the same year as the original version for MS-DOS).

Developer: G-Graft, Studio Clips, Tom Create, Square Enix, TOSE, Forever Entertainment
Publisher: Square Enix, Forever Entertainment
Platform: Super Famicom, Wonderswan Color, Playstation, Nintendo DS, Switch
Released: 1995, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2022

RWBY: Arrowfell

Based on the animated web series RWBY, Arrowfell looks pretty promising to any fan of the show, with some original music and animated scenes created just for the game, a story that's canonically part of the show's running plot, and a lot of characters both familiar and new to interact with.  Fittingly, you control all four characters of the titular team and swap between them on the fly, use their special abilities from the show and travel around Atlas and complete missions in maps with a Metroidvania bent.  As you finish missions you'll get skill points to unlock your base stats, and the odd upgrade to each character's Semblance, letting you reach areas you couldn't previously (for example, making Ruby's dash travel further).  Health is handled strangely, with a generic Energy bar that serves both to fuel your ranged attacks and absorb damage, with a secondary health meter in the form of hearts (which are only depleted when your energy is low/empty).  Each individual area you visit is very short, though the lack of a minimap throughout is a strange oversight, and combat is fairly one-note, with only the odd boss battle there to break up rooms of the same handful of enemies and tedious ambushes against more of the same - one would expect a bit more from a show known for its flashy action scenes, for sure.  A polished and playable, but very short and average experience overall; only the most die-hard fans of RWBY and WayForward need apply.

Developer: WayForward/Arc System Works
Publisher: Rooster Teeth Games
Platform: Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox One, XBox Series, PC
Released: 2022

Metal Max Xeno: Reborn

Metal Max is a franchise built around open-ended exploration and vehicles you can find and customize to aid you in battle, all set in a post-apocalyptic setting; sort of like Wasteland or Fallout but with JRPG-styled turn based combat.  Metal Max Xeno is only the second game in this franchise to be localized, and it does its best to try and fit in with a more modern school of design.  The minimal approach to story scenes and characterizations and the overall desolate world gives it a slight Fallout 3 vibe.  Its gameplay takes a few cues from games like New Vegas as well, with a lot of side-quests to undertake and incidental objectives called "miniquests" that give you bonus experience for doing even mundane things - collecting a certain number of an item, customizing your tank for the first time, finding new records for the jukebox back at your base, and so forth.  Switching between combat and exploration is pretty seamless - instead of having a separate combat screen, enemies draw a (literal) line of sight to you, and if you fail to move out of range before the gauge fills completely, you move a turn-based engagement; however, you can still move about freely in the time between your turns, allowing you to position yourself behind cover to avoid attacks or flee combat before you take too much damage, and once you defeat a foe, you move straight back into exploring.  Weapons also have ranges now, covering a blast radii or cone-shaped areas of effect, allowing you to hit multiple enemies at at a time with well placed shots.  Per previous games, there is a pretty heavy focus on collecting parts to build new weapons, engines and armor plating for your tank, and extras can be sold for a good bit of cash; far more than you get from battle.  It still hits some common pratfalls for the series, though - as you travel about you'll frequently encounter boss-tier monsters whom you can defeat for large bounties, but they're often far, far beyond what you can handle at first, necessitating that you avoid them and come back later (with no indication of how much later - you don't ever get to see how much HP an enemy has).  The overall bleak tone is also a detriment to a series which, up to this point, was known for its oddball humor; now the whole world is one big desert with almost nobody in it, making the whole thing feel pretty drab and lifeless, and you don't get oddball enemies like a giant subterranean VW beetle anymore - just a lot of repetitious tanks and mechs.  Metal Max Xeno tries to be something more akin to the modern Fallouts, but in doing so loses much of its own identity.  More damningly, it's missing that all-important satisfying gameplay flow, sense of freedom and subtle storytelling that make good open world RPGs so compelling.

Developer: Kadokawa Games, Cattle Call, 24Frame
Publisher: Kadokawa Games, NIS America
Platform: Playstation 4, Switch, PC
Released: 2022

Symphony of War: the Nephilim Saga

Indie turn-based strategy RPGs that draws cues from other genre juggernauts are relatively common in the modern era of gaming, and Symphony of War is the genre debut of one Dancing Dragon Games.  But does it deserve to hang with the games it's inspired by, or is this one Saga you can safely avoid?

Dancing Dragon Games was a studio I hadn't heard of before this game, but they've been around for a fair while, producing a fair number of RPG Maker content packs as well as several games made in the engine, most of which have gotten quite strong reviews on Steam.  Symphony of War appears to use the same engine (or at the least, a very similar graphical style in its spritework and backgrounds), though its gameplay is drastically changed up, melding together elements of several established strategy RPGs together in surprisingly successful fashion.

Similar to games like Fire Emblem and Dark Wizard, you deploy and command units, slowly advancing across a map and engaging enemies in battle, capturing resources as you go (used to upgrade classes between battles) and attempting to win the battle by overtaking the enemy's fortress.  Certain terrain types can grant advantages - archers that position themselves atop fortress walls or hills will get a bonus to range, while all will be harder to hit from afar when fighting in the woods or in a base.  Roads grant a movement bonus, while rough terrain will be much slower to traverse for all but lightly-armored ones.

Unlike those games, however, you're not moving individual characters, but Squads consisting of up to nine units each.  Similar to Ogre Battle, you position them on a 3x3 grid (or on lines between each grid space), with characters in front protecting units behind them during a clash, and each unit's actions during a clash changing depending on where they're positioned - melee fighters are only useful in the front row, obviously, while a mage class can hit all units for reduced damage from the middle column or full damage to an entire row from the back.  You'll obviously also have to change up your tactics for some squads - Assassins and Rogues are relatively fragile, but can do Stealth attacks (hitting the back row instead of the front) if they attack on your turn, while Gunners do heavy, armor-piercing damage but cannot counterattack at all and die relatively quickly to melee attacks.  The number of units you can have in a Squad at a time is determined by the leader's Leadership (LDR) stat, which goes up as you gain levels.  Units typically cost 10 Capacity each, though some traits can increase or decrease capacity cost.  A common one is "Mercenary", seen on most higher-end purchasable characters -- expensive, powerful, but they have a +2 to their Capacity cost if they're not a Squad leader.  Equipping items grants bonuses to all characters in the Squad, but will also result in a penalty to Capacity that increases depending on their power.

Individual units also change up depending on their elemental affinities and Traits.  Affinities change up a character's stat growth in a number of ways - Earth characters will have more HP, but lower Skill, while Dark characters will have much higher Strength and Magic damage but significant penalties to Loyalty, Leadership and HP.  Traits can also change up your squad's composition and strategy in a number of ways, with a particularly powerful one being "Captain" - reducing the Capacity cost of all units of a particular type for that Squad.  Most of these are fixed at creation or depending on player class, though every unit also gets at least one empty Trait slot you can customize with items.  Various team-wide upgrades also exist in the form of the "Tech Tree", which will help you get more mileage out of all of your units by spending Tech Points, which in turn are earned by gaining Faction Rank - getting high scores in battles and completing optional objectives within them.  

Similar to Fire Emblem, Symphony of War puts heavy focus on its story and characters, with dialog unfolding mid-battle and through cutscenes to tell its story.  Characters can also converse between battles, revealing more about themselves and showing more personal interactions, as well as granting Faction Experience and giving bonuses when their squads fight together during combat.  Classes can also be upgraded as the game progresses through a combination of collected resources and Class Points, gaining more abilities and more powerful as they go; sadly, though, most plot-related characters are fixed in their class and so remain relatively static throughout the game, though they're more than powerful enough to make up for this disadvantage (maybe a bit too much - squads of generic units are pretty underpowered in comparison to ones led by a story character).

As you can see, Symphony of War: the Nephilim Saga proves to be another high quality indie experience.  With a surprising amount of polish in its design and surprisingly deep mechanics (trust me, I've barely scratched the surface of most of its intricacies), it's a game that has a lot to offer, but surprisingly never feels overwhelming.  The game is quite generous with tutorials throughout, and if you ever need a refresher, you can check the camp menu for a list of all the tutorials you've seen and a rundown of every unit you've encountered so far in the game to let you plan out how you assemble your Squads.  It's not the most impressive game on a presentation level - its limited animation and just-alright sound design certainly won't win too many awards - but the passion shines through in its engrossing gameplay and strong writing.  Fans of turn-based tactical RPGs will have a lot to like in this one.

Developer: Dancing Dragon Games
Publisher: Dancing Dragon Games
Platform: PC
Released: 2022
Recommended Version:  N/A

Live A Live

An experimental Square Super Famicom RPG that was passed up for localization for nearly thirty years, but acquired a dedicated fanbase through the avenue of fan translations.  It's also one that proved ahead of its time in several ways and is credited with laying the groundwork for later hit titles like Chrono Trigger.  But is this odd outing one that's still worth trying out today, or was it left in Japan so long for good reason?

In the days where the Internet was starting to become mainstream, Square quickly became known as much for their localized games as for the ones that most English-speaking players never got a chance to play.  Hell, some of my earliest memories from surfing online were learning about the world of emulation and the vast number of games that never got brought over to our shores, and I actually tried out some early efforts at fan translations for games like Final Fantasy 2, 3 and 5, often with unfinished text and corrupted graphics (and more than a few instances of cringey, shoehorned-in swearing to make them more 'adult').  Live a Live wasn't one I tried out until quite a while later, and I didn't get too far owing to its strange format and offering the player quite a bit of openness and choice compared to JRPG norms.  But, with the game getting a surprise remake on the Switch twenty-eight years after its initial release, I figured it was time to finally give it another go.

Live a Live is one of Square's first attempts at an "anthology RPG" format; that is, telling several shorter stories rather than having one large, overarching plot that carries throughout the game.  Indeed, there are a total of seven stories to pick from and play through in any order, with each character coming from a very different walk of life and a totally separate time period from the others.  Each also brings at least one unique gameplay twist to the format. 

• A caveman in a chapter which contains no dialog (as spoken language was yet conceived in prehistory), but the story is conveyed entirely through character gestures and animations.  It puts emphasis on a crafting system too, having you combine sticks, bones, rocks, hides and other items to create equipment.
• A ninja sets out to infiltrate a palace in feudal Japan, and has a bit of a stealth element - you can press a button to hide behind a "screen" that makes you invisible to foes (even if you put it up while in their line of sight), and there are multiple hidden paths through the palace to take, with the story's outcome depending on which enemies you choose to kill (or if you choose to kill none at all save those strictly required).
• Set in imperial China, an aged shifu is looking to pass on his arts to several prospective students; accordingly, he starts off the chapter with a wide variety of skills and quite high stats, but cannot advance them any further, while his students must learn his moves and boost their stats through training with him.
• The Old West chapter stars a wandering gunslinger who must defend a town from a gang of bandits, utilizing traps to weaken and disable them to make up for being severely outnumbered.
• In present day, you play as a fighter in training, who slowly learns moves by observing them in battle with other fighters.  This chapter also has a character select screen and pre and post battle taunt screens reminiscent of many fighting games from the '90s, though the actual combat still plays the same as it does elsewhere.
• In the Near Future chapter, you play as an orphan with telepathic powers, seeking out a biker gang to avenge his father's death.  Fittingly, it also contains many science fiction and cyberpunk tropes, and even features a giant robot (complete with theme song) as a central element.
• In the Distant Future chapter, you play as a robot named "Cube" who builds bonds with the humans aboard a spaceship transporting a dangerous cargo, and it plays out like a visual novel more than anything else, having almost no combat at all outside of an optional minigame.

After finishing all seven, you unlock an eighth chapter, which appears to be a more traditional fantasy RPG at first, with a sword-wielding hero, magic-users aiding him and a medieval setting, and the way it's completed will set up how you play the ninth and final chapter.  Each chapter in the game is only a couple hours long (in fact, some can be 'finished' via a bad ending in far less time) and, as mentioned, they vary quite a bit on overall style; some put heavy focus on combat while others are just about telling a story.

Live a Live's combat system was a relatively unique one, too.  Instead of a side-view combat system like Final Fantasy, Live a Live has more of a top-down perspective, and has both enemies and allies positioned about a 7x7 grid.  The Active Time Battle system from Final Fantasy is still sort of here, though 'time' only advances when you move about a grid or select an action to perform, with some of your more powerful spells having a considerable delay before they're actually cast (and if a character is knocked back or felled before then, it won't activate).  Each character has a list of skills to pick from, with all of them having unique attack ranges - they may be usable against enemies in any of the eight surrounding squares, in a straight three-square-wide line, in eight directions with only the closest square to the character being out of range, and so forth.  Each also has a unique element and may inflict status effects or debuffs on hit, which adds a nice strategic bent - you may not do a lot of damage with a particular move, but weakening an enemy's attacks or chance to hit for a short period may make it worth using anyway.  Even items follow these rules, as you need to be next to an ally to heal them, though the upside is that items also have relatively wide ranges and can heal (or harm) multiple characters at a time.  There's a little touch of the later SaGa games in there too, as one a character is downed they can be revived, but if they're hit again while downed they're removed from the field for the rest of the battle.  Leveling up is pretty brisk compared to most RPGs, too - characters typically gain levels in only 1-3 battles, but that's little surprise considering how short each chapter is.  One can also rather easily evade enemies if they don't wish to fight, as monsters are visible on the maps and you almost always succeed when you try to run (unless a scripted event dictates that you can't).

Being a game spanning numerous time periods, Live a Live has quite a bit to offer both visually and musically, with some inspired tunes and art styles fitting each of the periods and quite distinct character designs, with even some well-known mangaka getting involved; one in particular that surprised me was the Feudal Japan chapter having character designs by Gosho Aoyama, best known for creating Detective Conan/Case Closed.  (Incidentally, this also contributed to the game not seeing a re-release or remake for so long, as they would have to seek permission from their publisher to do so.) 

 The Switch version of Live a Live provides much the same experience as its original incarnation, but with some improvements made to its presentation and overall balance.  The sprites stay in line with Square's classic style but are redrawn and updated for this version, and they mesh surprisingly well with the 3D backdrops that utilize large-pixeled textures.  Most dialog scenes are now given high quality voice acting (for the most part; the accents are often more than a bit phony-sounding), the soundtrack is beautifully redone, the UI is substantially improved (with health bars and weakness/resistance indicators, among other things), and as someone who found the HD-2D gimmick lacking in the previous games utilizing it, I think it actually looks pretty good here - there's far less ugly stretched textures, pointless blurring and harsh contrast than earlier attempts, and while it contains numerous added flourishes like lighting and particle effects, they never feel overdone or distract from the beautiful 16-bit styled spritework (likewise updated from the original).  For the first time I think HD-2D has actually been done in a respectful fashion, enhancing and updating a classic game to modern standards and adding something to the underlying 2D component rather than clashing with it.  If anything, Live a Live proves that this visual style works much better for enhancing games from an earlier era rather than making new games that try to somehow look 'retro' and modern at the same time and fail at both.  It's not without its weaknesses (still some very prominent pixelation in textures and a few elements do look quite odd), but overall it's the best application of the style I've seen yet.

So, while its individual stories were quite short even in the timeframe of the late '90s, let alone by modern standards, and the overall simplicity of its mechanics may be offputting to some, I still think that Live a Live is worth a visit for any genre fan.  It's an interesting, experimental title that tries to do a lot and mostly succeeds, putting the player in several short stories, changing up its gameplay in each of them, and capping it all off in a surprisingly satisfying finale that brings all of the protagonists together for one final challenge.  Hell, its multiple story paths and range-based tactical combat system also arguably served as prototypical elements for classics like Chrono Trigger, SaGa Frontier and Bahamut Lagoon.  Speaking of... can we get a remake of Bahamut Lagoon, Treasure of the Rudras or Chrono Trigger next, Square Enix?  Please?

Developer: Square, Square Enix, Historia
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Super Famicom, Switch
Released: 1994, 2022
Recommended Version: The Super Famicom version was famously fan-translated many years ago and enjoyed a small following among obscure RPG enthusiasts, and is certainly worth a look from a historical perspective.  However, the Switch HD-2D remake is the one I'd recommend now, as it's a substantial refinement gameplay-wise and aesthetically and, hopefully if it sells well, we'll see more old Square/Enix RPGs redone in this style.

Eiyuden Chronicle Rising

A prequel of sorts to the long-awaited spiritual successor to Suikoden, Rising is a pretty forgettable experience overall.  Its visual style is a nice blend of 3D environments and drawn 2D sprites, though the overall presentation is marred by the cheap "broken joint" style of animation reminiscent of an early 2000s Flash cartoon.  Gameplay-wise it's pretty basic, just being a simple sidescrolling platformer hack-and-slash with a leveling system added, and a few combos you can perform in tandem with well-timed button presses after you recruit more characters to your team serve as the only means to spice it up.  Quests are pretty mundane item-hunting chores with the odd boss fight thrown in, and while rebuilding a town bit by bit, gradually unlocking more services to enhance your adventure is a pretty great concept that's been done successfully in many other games, it's not particularly fun here owing to how flat the gameplay is.  Even the plot feels pretty superfluous, mostly just serving to set up a few characters and maybe a plot point or two they could just as easily exposit in a throwaway line in the full game.  So, a pretty bland gameplay experience that just highlights a few cool character designs and doesn't really have much of an impactful story to tell.  Even if you're someone who's excited for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes' launch in 2023, you're probably not going to miss anything of consequence by skipping this one.

Developer: Natsume Atari
Publisher: 505 Games
Released: 2022
Platform: PC, Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox One, XBox Series

Wartales

An open-ended RPG from a relatively unknown independent company, Wartales seemingly draws inspiration from games like Darklands, having no pre-scripted narrative and de-emphasizing individual characters to focus on group tactics and survival in a war-torn medieval world.  But does it prove to be a worthy open ended role-playing experience, or is this one Wartale best not told?

Open-ended RPG experiences have long been a staple of western RPGs, and it's easy to see why they remain a compelling experience - not bound to a fixed role or narrative, you just try to survive against the odds and get by however you can, constantly fighting against circumstance and limited resources as you go.  Which only adds to the compelling nature of it - running low on food or money may force your party to resort to desperate means - thieving, robbery, et cetera - to get by, or even taking on dangerous missions they normally wouldn't as a desperate means to gain some security.  That uncertainty and moral ambiguity, paired with the inherent challenge of survival in a harsh world, is something rarely seen in more narrative-driven games.

Fittingly, Wartales also gives you a vast number of paths to follow, even opening the game with one such choice.  You begin by picking a backstory for your companions, which tweaks your starting party layout and resources accordingly.  Beginning as a group of friends seeking adventure will start you with a small amount of Influence, but a penalty to experience, while beginning as a group of deserters will start you with more experience, but also some suspicion to your name.  Beginning as a band of thieves puts you in a similar state - though you start with a decent amount of money, your starting Suspicion is also quite high, meaning you'll be on the run from the guards right from the get-go.

Fitting the group-centered dynamic, each member of your party has their own individual (and semi-randomized) stats and traits, as well as two professions - a fixed combat profession which determines what skills, armor and weapons they can use, and a 'side' profession of sorts that lends itself to gathering resources and crafting, earning bonus experience as you use it.  Thieves can steal from merchants and pick locks, tinkers craft tools (like said lockpicks), alchemists can brew potions to heal or harm enemies, fishermen can use a hook to catch fish for party meals, and so forth.  Each character can change their sub-profession freely, though it's best to stick with one whenever possible, as changing to a new one will cause all the experience earned in the current one to be lost.

Knowledge is another key mechanic emphasizing group dynamics.  As you explore the map and locate new areas, you'll gain Knowledge, and after hitting certain milestones you'll be able to purchase "Knowledge Skills" that benefit you in a variety of ways; these can be mundane interface improvements (being able to mark waypoints on the map to follow) to having your party ration food and take lower wages, to even things like letting your packhorses fight alongside you, giving you some decent (and free) support in combat.  You'll also unlock more useful crafting recipes, which in turn will aid you in numerous ways.  More will become available as the game progresses, and there are quite a sizable number of these perks to choose from, so even if your entire current party gets killed and replaced as you go, you'll still gain the benefits of Knowledge to make life easier for your future recruits.

As one would expect in a game of this type, combat in the game is a pretty frequent event, taking place in turn-based battles.  A few mechanics I haven't seen in similar titles do show themselves here, though.  One is that the player's turns aren't locked to individual units, instead letting them use any turn they're given to move any unit of theirs, so long as they haven't already that round.  Attacking a target in melee range will cause both friend and foe to be 'engaged' in a battle; one can break away from this at any time as long as they have movement left in stock, though the enemy will get a free 'attack of opportunity' on them if they do (this also avoids the player doing so by accident, as they must click a button and confirm they wish to move before doing so).  Each character also has special abilities depending on their class and level, which are activated by spending Valor Points, that can help to turn the tide.  Whether charging through multiple enemies, hitting a single target several times, or just getting some extra move range that doesn't trigger attacks of opportunity, using your limited supply of these well becomes an essential strategic element.  One point of frustration, as in many games of this type, are battles with computer controlled allies; particularly as one of them dying can cause you to have to restart the battle, and the none-too-bright AI loves to run right into disadvantageous situations or even straight into traps that can damage or kill them instantly; I had to redo one fight in particular several times because a character insisted on repeatedly running right into a lightning strike.

Managing one's party and reputation is a challenge in itself, though the game does a good job laying out exactly all of the mechanics in play and what one must do to stay on top of things.  The aforementioned Valor points are one; while you only get a handful at a time (necessitating that you spend them carefully), more can be earned by winning battles, completing quests, resting (especially at inns) or boosting the party's Happiness stat.  Happiness is pretty self-explanatory - your troops need to be well-rested, fed and paid, which is intrinsically tied to finding sizable hauls of goods or completing quests and getting paid for it.  Completing missions also earns you Influence, which serves as another type of currency, earning you more dangerous (but more lucrative) jobs or allowing you to recruit more characters and expand your ranks.  The aformentioned suspicion works somewhat like the Bounty in  system in the Elder Scrolls games; once it gets high enough, the guards in your area will seek you out and possibly imprison or kill you if you're caught, though this will slowly decrease with time as long as you avoid standing out or venturing too near occupied areas.  Finally, each major area in the game has a Fate meter, which will go up or down depending on which factions you choose to work with and complete missions for, which also serve as the closest thing the game has to an overarching storyline.  Completing all the quests for a given faction and filling the bar will cause the area to change in a pretty significant way depending on your choice.

All told, I was quite impressed with Wartales. The depth it puts forth in every facet of its design is quite impressive, constantly forcing the player to weigh their options carefully and try to come out better for it in the long run, even if it's not always possible to do so in the short term.  There is a fair bit of mission and resource farming involved, but the game gives you enough to do alongside it - exploration, job seeking, skill honing following various subplots - that it never feels like empty busywork.  Most games  of this type are also infamous for having prohibitively opaque mechanics and interfaces that make them impenetrable to all but the most dedicated gamers, but Wartales offers a simple, intuitive interface and explains its mechanics quite well without ever feeling dumbed-down.  It's similar to the modern XCOM games in that regard - streamlined in some ways to cut down on tedious micromanagement and player frustration, but not to the point where it subtracts from the challenge.  All told, a game that has a lot to offer despite still being in Steam Early Access, and I only see it getting better once it gets a proper launch.

Developer: Shiro Games
Publisher: Shiro Unlimited
Platform: PC
Released: 2021 (Early access)
Recommended Version:  N/A

Triangle Strategy

A medieval fantasy tactical RPG under the Square Enix banner, it certainly got people buzzing before launch, with many hoping it would be a return to the style of earlier Square hits like Final Fantasy Tactics.  But does Triangle Strategy slake the long-standing thirst, or does heavy competition from other serious-minded tactical RPGs just render this one irrelevant?

Artdink is a company I haven't had much opportunity to talk about on either of my sites; they're not a particularly prominent name in the west, haven't made many high-profile games in the RPG genre, and in fact I mostly remember them for odd, erm, software titles that debatably don't even qualify as games.  From the ocean-exploring experience Aquanaut's Holiday to the turn based robot-designer Carnage Heart (wherein you design and program a combat robot to overcome progressively tougher challenges, but never get to directly control it) to the railway building/logistics simulation series A-Train, they certainly live up to their name, having players approach their games more as complex projects or experiences rather than a source of visceral thrills.  Netchubiyori is a similarly obscure name, mostly working on forgettable licensed titles and the odd, not-especially-well-received theme park RPG called "Heroland", with very few of their games ever leaving Japan.

My point in all this is that I certainly didn't see either of these companies, let alone both, collaborating with Square Enix to create a turn-based tactical RPG.  However, the actual minds behind it were something of a secondary consideration - being associated with Square Enix, Triangle Strategy was also hyped up as the long-awaited proper followup to Final Fantasy Tactics, seeming to show a more serious-minded brand of storytelling and in-depth tactical combat and character management reminiscent of that game's in early trailers.

Well, if you go in expecting exactly that you're probably going to be disappointed, as Triangle Strategy's mechanics are not very similar to FFT's.  In fact, its gameplay more closely resembles something like Shining Force, emphasizing individual, unique units and skillsets over a largely-homogenized class/skill system, with subsequent upgrades mostly being stronger versions of their base class.  So if you want character building with a more mix-and-match flair, well, you're still probably better off with good ol' FFT, or modern games like Horizon's Gate or Divinity Original Sin II.

That said, the game does bring some new mechanics to the table to differentiate it from its closest cousins.  Some that become evident right away are tied to even your normal attacks - hitting an enemy from above (whether with melee or ranged weapons) deals extra damage, while from behind will deal a critical hit; and yes, these two effects do stack.  They can further stack with another mechanic - if you strike an enemy with an ally on the opposite side of them, that ally will automatically follow up with a second hit, doing a bit more damage and giving both of your characters experience points rather than just one.  Taking careful measure of your movements, being careful not to get surrounded, and using the terrain to your advantage whenever possible can and will turn the tide of battle.  In addition, these actions, as well as some others (like hitting 3 or more enemies with a single spell) will earn you "Kudos" - a special currency that can be spent at a shop to gain Quietuses (special buffs that can be used once per battle) or notes detailing other advanced strategies and plot threads.  Definitely worth taking advantage of as much as possible to gain an edge in future battles, as well as the current one.

Spells and skills offer some relatively unique advantages too.  There is no traditional "magic point" system in Triangle Strategy, but special skills are present and, as mentioned above, unique to each character.  These come in the form of passive bonuses or actively-used spells/skills, with the latter being tied to TP; each character begins with three of these, gaining more to their maximum as they grow, and they regain 1 spent point each turn, so while they can use a 1-TP ability pretty much anytime, they can't spam more powerful abilities nearly as easily.  Techniques are quite varied even early on, though - sword slashes that delay an enemy's turn, moving through and striking multiple enemies in a line, arrows that blind, buffs that raise stats, being able to build ladders to reach rooftops, setting traps, and so forth.  Spells act as your area-of-effect abilities, able to strike multiple enemies at a time, as well as occasionally leaving lingering effects; for example, ice spells will leave behind frozen terrain that slows movement.  In what's probably a nod to games like Divinity Original Sin II, these can also be further affected by later spells - ice can be melted into water by a fire spell, which can then conduct electricity cast from a lightning spell, potentially dealing greater damage to everyone standing in water at the time.  While it's of course not as big a central focus to the game's strategy as it was in DOS, it is nice to see Japanese companies stepping up their game in response to western competition.  Quietus is another thing that can bail you out of a jam; basically, you spend Quietus Points to do things like stop an enemy's turn once or move a unit up to 8 squares away; you only begin with one of these, and more are occasionally made available in the Sundry shop but are quite expensive to purchase.  Still, they can help turn things around if you're in a bad spot.

During and after battle, one also lays claims to "spoils" in the form of money and consumable items, as well as basic resources like Iron, Stone, Timber and Fiber, which led me to believe the game was going to have an in-depth crafting system.  That is somewhat true, but not to the degree I originally believed - instead, these are used as an avenue to upgrade your characters under the pretense of forging their weapons.  Basically, each character's 'weapon' has three tiers of power, each with several associated upgrades, and you spend money and resources to unlock bonuses like extra attack power, HP, defense, et cetera, with later upgrades on that tier costing progressively more as you unlock more things.  Fittingly, upgrading to a new tier of weapon usually requires some rare materials itself, and you cannot take some upgrades on later tiers without taking prerequisites (can't take the Level 2 attack upgrade without buying the Level 1 first, for example).  Some upgrades are also exclusive choices - if you pick one, you can't get the other, so you do have at least some opportunity to tweak characters to your liking.

Between battles, there are occasional free roaming segments where you can venture around towns, buy equipment, search for secret items and interact with NPCs - some just give nice bits of lore or comments on story events, but others may give clues that can benefit you later, even unlocking dialog choices in future conversations that you wouldn't get otherwise.  Some actions you take, as well as key choices in dialog scenes will also bolster one of your three "convictions" - Utility, Morality or Liberty - which will ultimately affect what characters you recruit or aren't able to as the story progresses.  However, these are all hidden stats and it's not always clear which option will boost which conviction - something I actually like, as it effectively removes all the tension when games do that and feels much more organic when the consequences of your choices show themselves later on.

Another clever turn is that while Triangle Strategy features a branching storyline, the choice that will lead you down a given path is not a unilateral one - your currently-recruited allies will all take a vote on the situation, with whichever option receives the majority cementing the decision.  However, you can attempt to influence characters during these segments through well-chosen dialog options; some can be swayed rather easily, others may require you to have seen a particular piece of dialog/plot thread beforehand, and still others you may not be able to change at all.  Definitely a creative idea, and one way more interesting than the flaccid "A or B" dialog choices present in so many western RPGs.  As ever, though, every road you take has consequences, causing you to miss out on opportunities the other path may have provided, so it's never an easy choice to make.

Triangle Strategy is the second game released to feature Square Enix's heavily-touted "HD-2D" graphics, and though it does look better than their first go-around with it (Octopath Traveler), I still can't say I'm a fan of the style.  Basically, it's a very awkward mix of low-res 2D and high-res 3D graphic styles, utilizing a 3D engine with modern graphical effects like bloom, filtering, high-quality textures, distance blurring and anti-aliasing, and even surprisingly realistic water effects with light refraction; however, some elements - leaves, grass, roof tiles, nets, et cetera - are just masses of large squares and stick out like a sore thumb next to other modeled objects. Other elements are similarly inconsistent - some background elements are very clearly 3D models with crisp hi-res textures, others have textures consisting of large blocks made to simulate pixels (not even the same size as the blocky grass, leaves, etc), while others still are highly-detailed sprites with no visible seams at all.  Characters are meant to simulate old blocky 16-bit sprites, showing nice animation and detail in that regard, but whereas the environments (and 2D world map) show much in the way of saturated color to make them pop, characters often appear too dark or overly bright and washed-out, making their details indistinct.  It only gets more jarring in battle, where they're slinging around spell effects rendered in high-res CGI with particles, flame trails and smooth animation.  Even the HUD falls prey to inconsistency, with crisp linework on windows and fonts and some wonderfully detailed pencil-drawn character portraits that wouldn't be possible in an old 2D game, but would fit in perfectly in an HD one.  I get what they're going for - an attempt to fuse multiple different eras and types of graphics together - but rather than having any kind of cohesive stylized feel, all of its disparate elements clash together and it just ends up looking tacky and distracting.  Games have successfully fused 2D sprites and 3D effects/environments before - witness Skullgirls, Indivisible, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Suikoden II, Xenogears, Grandia or even the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle - but "HD-2D" just doesn't get the mix right.  Maybe the style will be further refined by the time the Live-a-Live or Dragon Quest III remakes roll around, but for now I'm still not impressed by it.  Do spirites atop 3D renders or even voxels if you want a blend of old and new, but don't do this weird halfassed mishmash of a half-dozen different resolutions and styles. 

Other aspects of the presentation fare considerably better.  Voiceover in the game is surprisingly good for the most part, and the dialog is consistently well written - both enormously better efforts than their counterparts in Octopath, and a good thing as the game loves to throw 20+ minute marathons of cutscenes at you.  The soundtrack is quite pleasant, with some beautiful sounding orchestral tracks carrying the mood of any given situation, though I found it a touch loud on the default setting and it would occasionally drown out the dialog; turning it down to about 45% fixed that.  One also cannot close tutorial messages without scrolling all the way through them nor skip mid-battle dialog scenes, though the latter can at least be fast-forwarded through with the R button.

All told, Triangle Strategy is a pleasant surprise, especially because I was none too fond of Square Enix's other "faux-retro" RPGs like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler.  This one succeeds where those failed, however, delivering a solid tactical RPG wirh a well-told branching storyline in a fleshed out fantasy world, strongly written dialog, good voiceover and gameplay which, in a lot of non-trivial ways, is more involved and entertaining than Fire Emblem.  It's still not the Final Fantasy Tactics successor everyone's been screaming for since the nineties, and I don't much care for the dopey title or the "HD-2D" concept, but those are minor flaws I can easily overlook.  If everything I've described about the game sounds good to you, pick it up.  And if you're on the fence, try out the demo; you get the first three chapters of the game for free (roughly 4-5 hours long, a bit more if you decide to explore both branching paths), and it even carries over your save file to the retail version so you don't have to start from scratch.

Developer: Artdink, Netchubiyori, Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Switch
Released: 2022
Recommended Version: N/A

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

The original Ogre Battle was a novel combination of real-time strategy and RPG elements with plenty of replay value owing to its random elements and multiple endings. Tactics Ogre, first released a few years after, continued that philosophy but changed the combat up into a turn-based tactical system.  But does it prove to be a worthy sequel to a cult classic, or does it simply pale in comparison? 

Ogre Battle was a low-key hit on the Super Nintendo; though released in very limited quantities (reportedly only 25,000 copies were released in North America), it won acclaim for its open-ended design, numerous endings and the sheer amount of customizability the player could have for units - not just equipment and class, but they could recruit virtually every unit they came up against in the game to their party.  From dragons to zombies to vampires to werewolves to the Pumpkin Mage, you certainly weren't wanting for options.

Tactics Ogre, later released on the Super Famicom and Saturn, wouldn't see a western release until several years later, when Atlus once again released it in very limited quantities on the Playstation.  While a well-received game among fans and critics, it was overshadowed by Square's Final Fantasy Tactics (another Yasumi Matsuno creation) coming out the same year.  In fact, the series wouldn't get much mainstream attention until more than a decade later, getting a high-quality PSP remake several years after Square bought out Quest and Yasumi Matsuno made several other games under their label (including Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy XII).

As the name implies, Tactics Ogre trades in the real-time strategy gameplay of the original Ogre Battle for a turn-based tactical combat system.  Battles are also smaller in scale, with skirmishes of 6-12 units on either side duking it out until one remains or a win/lose condition is met (such as defeating a particular unit).  A few unique elements are present, though.  A notable one is that mages don't start with full MP and gradually decrease over the course of the battle; quite the opposite, in fact.  Their MP actually starts at 0 and will slowly regenerate over the course of battle, so if you want to get in spells early, using items is a must.  One can also recruit numerous special units, enemy soldiers and even monsters to their army, though with some restrictions - only two "large" monster units can be in the player's fighting force at a time, and those who directly oppose a player's alignment or reputation will be much harder or even impossible to recruit.

As in the original game, Tactics Ogre's narrative is one that is left in significant part up to the player.  The story does branch out at several points depending on the player's choices, and there are several distinct story paths for the later chapters branching from key choices in preceding ones.  Reputation plays a major role once again - individual units in your army may agree or disagree with your decisions or grow to like you less if you let them fall in battle, and if you become too unpopular with them, they may leave your army entirely.  As mentioned above, others will will be harder to persuade to your side or even refuse to join you outright depending on previous choices, and these of course play into the ending too, showing more scenes or alternate outcomes depending on your choices throughout (though considerably fewer in number than Ogre Battle's 20+ possible ends).

Character customization is once again a huge part of the game, and there are certainly no shortage of options in Tactics Ogre.   Almost any character can utilize basic classes like Soldiers, Wizards and Beast Tamers, but once stat and alignment requirements are met, stronger classes like Dragoons and Terror Knights become available, having unique and powerful abilities and often complementing other units (Warlocks can power up Golems, for example).  Earning new spells (especially ones that sync up with a character's elemental affinity) is also a challenge, and the PSP remake adds another layer to this in the form of Tarot cards - as in the original game, collecting one will raise (or lower) a character's stat, and they can be used as items in battle to grant temporary positive statuses on an ally or negative ones on an enemy.  A new Rogue class is also present in this version - a strong, but rather fragile unit that can turn cards into traps for enemies to spring, and disarm traps on the field to gain more cards.  Figuring out which cards affect which stats, and having appropriate units collect them, quickly becomes essential in this version.

As in most of Matsuno's games, learning the ins and out of the mechanics are mandatory to succeeding in the game.  The difficulty quickly ramps up, with many fights even early on being all but unwinnable unless you've spent a significant amount of time honing your team (particularly ones where you have to defend a single vulnerable unit from death throughout).  This is further enforced by the fact that the AI is almost too good - enemies will do their best to target highlighted characters (costing you the mission or a potentially useful recruit for future battles), mages always target your weakest fighters, and if left alone for any period of time, injured units will retreat, heal themselves and leap right back into the fight.  This might be the only strategy game I've seen where the enemies will try to win by sheer attrition.  This is mitigated to a degree in the PSP version, which allows the player to rewind up to 50 turns in battle, though they were smart enough to disallow "scumming" with this feature - rewinding after a blocked hit and picking the exact same move again will always have the same result, so it's not as abusable as you may believe.  Still, it's also a good idea not to rely on this too much, as fights will only get harder and just barely scraping by in each one with repeated rewinds will make winning in the final stretch of the game all but impossible.

Tactics Ogre, like all of Matsuno's works, is one that shows a love for storytelling and the mechanical elements in every facet - the narrative is a dark and complex one, the gameplay pulls no punches with its difficulty, and it's a very deep, complex experience that will require a lot of experimentation and fine-tuning to find your niche in.  Still, it's an ordeal you're glad to undertake because it's all so well-done; his passion shines through and gets you invested in the world he's weaved, ensuring that you want to puzzle out a road to success and see your way to all of the possible story paths and endings it has to offer.  Definitely not an ideal choice for beginners to the genre, but those who want to see an intricate tactical experience and some finely-detailed lore and worldbuilding will find a lot to enjoy in Tactics Ogre.

Developer: Quest, Square Enix
Publisher: Quest, Riverhillsoft, Atlus, Square Enix
Platform: Super Famicom, Sega Saturn, Playstation 1, Playstation Portable, Switch, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, PC
Released: 1995, 1996, 1998, 2010, 2022
Recommended Version:  The 2022 rerelease ("Reborn") is a marked improvement over the previous versions, adding in voiceover, revamping the UI and overhauling the leveling system so that individual characters - not classes - have levels, which greatly cuts down on grinding.  Your party's maximum level is capped but will gradually increase as you complete story missions (plus you can still train up weapon/magic skills in training battles), and you also earn and equip skills more organically in this version, not having to grind a ton of TP to unlock everything.  It still has some weird balance issues and slow pacing, though.