Battle Chasers: Nightwar

I do not fancy a small boy smashing up demons with boxing gloves. Neither do I like final fantasy or JRPGs. They tend to be eye-candy with linear, repetitive gameplay with exponentially growing numbers. BC:N is no exception (2 stars), but I think BC:N is well worth a buy (4 stars) in case you like these games. BC:N story walks you through a set number of dungeons, a new one (+ area) opens after completing the previous. Each dungeon offers higher level monsters and higher level gear to slay them. Grinding low level dungeons will not make you particularly stronger, and neither should you. I found myself well prepared for the next dungeon after completing one twice. You start with three (total of six) characters to play. BC:N is not a grind, but may feel like one. The dungeons and skill books (that you give to individual characters) mean that you will likely pick your three favorite characters and go through hundreds of similar gorgeous spectacle shows. A show, or battle, starts with an intro where enemies walk, fly, crawl into the screen. You then kill them in a single round, and wrap up with flashing pop-up screens showing an experience breakdown and scavenged goodies. The intro and wrap up reminds me of an awfully slow coffee machine at work. They give an authentic sense of something good, grow old and finally are frustratingly annoying. Some battles are different, or rather visually amazing. These harder battles take many turns, in which you build up a lot of power (anime style) to use over the top kill frenzies. Animations are very well done in BC:N. In particular in these long battles, seeing a death knight being dragged into the ground by other skeletons after defeat is worth going through the many mundane battles. They could have added more enemy types, instead of having green slimes, cave slimes, rotting slimes, cursed green slimes, blood slimes, ice slimes, mana slime, cadaverous mounds (also slimes), sludge mounds and a king slime.

Let me recommend this game to players who like HOM&M, Disciples and simillar sort of games. Jesper Kyd's music, Joe Madureira's graphic, THQ former developers... This squad made the game really AWSOME. 5 stars with no doubt.

Review based on the patched version (v.23731) of Battle Chasers: Nightwar. The best part of this game is the combat system, it uses the tried and tested turn-based style with added twists that makes the game feel modern and unique. There is grinding and the amount of it wasn't too much or little, leveling felt just right to me. The fact that dungeon layouts are randomly generated makes repeating one still feel new-ish. There are a lot of systems in this game - perk skills, overcharge meter, burst, crafting and so on, but I never felt overwhelmed by it. The game did a good job introducing a system to me and then to further explore them. The pace of the game felt good, it never felt slow at any point nor too rushed. There's also a huge amount of side quests available, including a battle arena and fishing mini game that actually rewards you with something useful. There are short scenes triggered when resting at the inn at certain story points. These focus on the history and relationships between two characters at a time. I loved how these are fully voiced interactions and enrich the story behind our heroes. I chose Japanese audio with English subtitles and whilst I found it fine the accent was a little odd. I love the music in this game, especially the boss battle BGMs. It took me approx. 60 hours to complete and that is with me grinding to max level and dabbled in lots of side quests/battle arenas. My only criticism is the importance of character/enemy level. The side with the higher highest level has the advantage since they both hit A LOT harder and have more HP. At 2-3 levels difference you could potentially end the fight in the first round or be one shot. I was inclined to kept using the same three characters in the party for most of the game because of this. It would've been nice if EXP was gained outside of the party so I could plug in whichever member I wanted at any time. This game is a lot of fun and I would recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs.

When I first heard about Battle Chasers I wasn't interested, mainly because of the cartoony art style not being my thing. So I got it as part of the 10th Anniversary GOG bundle (bought it because of Kingdom Come: Deliverance), so I thought I'd give it a try. Soon I fell in love with it. The animations are amazing, the writing is kinda "kids show" like, but being based off the comic, that's to be expected. The gameplay is addicting and the combat is super fun, especially if you're into JRPG turned based stuff a-la Final Fantasy VII. My only complain is the progression system and the drop rate of certain items. I found myself redoing dungeons just to be able to survive the next one. Plus at a point in the game I had lots of coins, but for some reason the vendors wouldn't restock their shops and until much later in the game. After that everything returned to normal. All and all the game is super fun. I dropped about 40 hours in it and i'd gladly drop more if an expansion or a sequel was ever to come out. If you'are thinking about getting it, I'd say this one is a definite buy

It took me 40 hours doing mostly everything. I had a good time, but after 40 hours, I was done with it. The focus of the game is on turned based combat, and that's what you will spend the majority of your game doing. The story is forgettable, the characters have almost no characterization, the crafting is mostly pointless (except potions in the beginning). This game put all of its effort into the combat. That being said, the combat is fun, but slow paced. Animations look great, but are slow, and there is no way to speed them up. As for difficulty, there are a few challenging parts in the beginning if you pick harder dungeons. However, after a while you can start to steamroll things. There is an aspect of party composition, so you could use a party that might not be ideal to give yourself some extra challenge, but that would have to be self-imposed. I will say I found the last boss to be slightly difficult (took me 2 tries to beat), but I was also using a B-team party for the last quarter of the game. I'd recommend it, with the caveat being that you HAVE to enjoy turned based combat. There is also a new game plus that supposedly ups the difficulty, but as I said, after 40 hours, I was done. I can't comment on it directly.