Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Most other reviews for Battle Chasers: Nightwar are very focused on the issues of "grinding" and the difficulty curve. While there are some issues with these, I didn't feel like they detracted from my overall enjoyment of the game. I did have to replay through one dungeon in order to complete a set of "lore" books to boost the passive stats of the team, but other than that, I was able to steadily get enough gear and items to progress without much grind. Where the real grind comes in is if you want to keep all six of your characters at the highest level. Since experience is only shared among the three active team members, you will have to grind if you want to play with all six. You're not penalized by leaving three teammates behind... I was worried that there would be battles where you'd have to play with both teams, but that never happened. There also are some nice choices you'll have when leveling up your crew. While stats are automatically upgraded, you'll have a variety of perks to choose from and different kinds of accessories and enchantments to favor some stats over others. After playing with all six characters, I settled into three mains with specific perks and gear that made the rest of the game a cake walk, even on legendary. That's where the difficulty comes in... the game can be quite tough or quite easy depending on your characters, their gear and perks and what level of dungeon you pick. As long as you play at the level of difficulty your characters and gear is at, you shouldn't have too many problems. The art style throughout the game was well done, and I felt there were just the right amount of side quests and secrets in the game. I felt the game was well worth the sale price I purchased it at.

I really dislike JRPGs (just a matter of personal taste, no judgement there). I largely prefer European RPGs, and in many cases american ones. Battle Chaser is the exception. I love this game! Obviously, amateurs of japanese RPGs don't appreciate this one ; but don't let their reviews put you off if, you too, are allergic to mangaïsh-furrish-childish-looking japanese gaming culture. Battle chaser is a great turn-based combat and atmospheric exploration RPG with beautiful and mature art.

This game is surprisingly fun! Yes, there is some semi-mandatory grind, especially if you are struggling with tougher enemies mid-way through the campaign, or if you want to farm for random dungeon drops and events. However, the game is so fun and varied that I didn't mind that at all. In the end I only had to re-do a couple of dungeons and the random placement of rooms, monsters, and events kept it fresh anyway. The visuals, music, voice-acting and controls are all top-notch. Story is your standard fare D&D-style campaign with ancient demons, reanimated corpses, harrowing strongholds and whatnot. It is competently delivered but nothing special. But it's the moment-to-moment gameplay that got me hooked. The turn-based combat is fun and varied, thanks to the options in building your team and customizing each character's perks on the fly. Loot is fun to hunt for, there's fishing which is basically an additional way of getting upgrades from the Collector, and then you have the dungeons where the game arguably shines. These can sometimes get tense, there are traps, an element of randomness in room/enemies/loot and it's all consistently fun to explore! Your characters' dungeon abilities are a clever way of utilizing all the tools at your disposal to try and tip the odds in your favor or just navigate the dungeon in interesting ways. Nightwar is not GOTY material but it's a really well-made turn-based RPG with fun mechanics and a ton of stuff to do and discover (like treasure maps, world bosses, an arena etc.). If you can look past the necessity of briefly farming for better items/higher level around the 12-hour mark, there is a lot of good honest fun to be had here.

So I played the game all the way through to the end and found it fairly engaging. Yes it is (sort of) grindy, in that if you want to collect everything from the dungeons, you will have to play them multiple times - but most dungeons I played through twice...once with my main team and another time with the three other characters in the game. But the dungeons are pretty randomized so I didn't find it all that boring or too repetitive. It took me a little over 50 hours to complete the game, but I wanted all the ultimate weapons, so I had to do all hunts and arena battles. My only complaint about the game, really, is that it was too short. When I finished, I wanted more :) However, sometimes the game got slow when I found myself forced to fight battles I had zero chance of losing because I was 5 or 6 levels higher than the enemies I was facing. And you have to wait for all the animations before, during, and after every battle, so that is the only time I felt a little bored. All in all, though, it is definitely a game I would play again. It was very reminiscent of the Final Fantasy games, although not quite as epic and didn't have as deep a story. Which is probably why I was left wanting more in the end.

In the beginning, game is fun and well balanced. Interesting characters and battles are fun. After about third/fourth dungeon, you have to farm mobs and dungeons in order to progress further. Game becomes really repetitive at this point. Battles also become less entertaining. As you level up, your gears become weak and lack enough power to enjoy battles. You will need to upgrade your gears but this itself is also not so easy to do and requires additional grind in itself. For me, game became a chore after fourth dungeon.