Battle Chasers: Nightwar

First up: If you are looking for a continuation or a retelling of the original Battle Chasers story from the comics, you won't find it here. The entire game takes place on a seperate island and offers more of a side story. Nightwar combines typical JRPG combat with randomized dungeon crawling. The dungeons are quite varied, never too big and can usually be completed within 30 minutes. some dungeons have a few different unique mini quests or puzzles, but you won't see all of them on your first (or even on the second or third) try, which keeps explorations interesting when you're revisiting a dungeon. The characters themselves have pretty unique abilities and it's fun coming up with different party setups as you unlock more characters, perks and equipment which brings me to my biggest complaint: The balancing is really off. I think that's mostly because there isn't really enough equipment for all levels, but equipment has a huge impact on character strength. There are always gaps between important levels (13->17 or 17->21) where your characters are severely underpowered due to outdated gear, but you are already using the best weapons and armor available at this point in the game. Another problem with this system is, that the effectivity of healing and support skills is tied to the attack rating. So some (slow and painful) grinding is required to keep up. Also, only the characters currently in the party will gain experience. Technically the game looks and runs well. The environments are varied, the art style and especially the animations are very good. The Soundtrack is also really nice and I'm always happy to hear Jesper Kyd's work. I encountered some minor bugs (like non stop gamepad rumble until i plugged it out and back in), but nothing game breaking. The game is about 30 hrs long if you include side quests and thoroughly explore the environments. Overall I'd recommend the game, if you can look past the uneven pacing/progression.

This game is a turn-based RPG with a combat system I really like. Many RPGs have their "fire attacks", "ice attacks" and stuff that isn't really original. This game has attacks like those too, but they have different effects. The same happens with physical attacks. There are plenty of them, and each one has a unique effect, so no attack overwrites the previous ones, all of them have something different that gives them utility. Aside of that, I like the overcharge system, and attacks feel very satisfying. The dungeon exploration is fine I suppose, I don't usually like exploration so I can't say much about this part of the game. Each character has some abilities to use while exploring but I don't use them much. There's a crafting and loot system. I don't usually like those, but in this game is fine I suppose, you don't have to grind for materials. Talking about it, grinding is not very useful, since killing low levels enemies don't give you any exp. This is something I like, I hate grinding based RPGs. Some things I would say need improvement are the following: -You can only see 8 of your abilities at the same time. I think there's plenty of room to see all of the abilities, or at least some more of them. -The walking speed could be faster. -The party members that don't participate in fights don't earn experience, and in order to change your lineup, you have to go to specific locations, so mixing your party isn't a good option. In this case you might have to grind a bit, which sucks. I'm playing with a controller, but some reviews say that keyboard binding are bad and that you can't rebind them, so be aware of that. In conclusion, I'm liking this game a lot, but it's not perfect. Many of these things could be improved in an update, so I wouldn't say they are deal-breaking.

TL;DR: fun enough, but the exp curve and pacing are off and you will be redoing a lot of content and grinding in order to progress. When you first start the game, it feels pretty balanced, once you finish your second dungeon however, your characters really seem to lag behind and fights get tedious. Since all crafting stations (until you have the cash) are located randomly in dungeons, it makes it very irritating to try to keep your gear level on pace with the content. Add to this the fact that there seems to be some +/- %variable to damage based on level difference, and the game become something of a chore. The skills are really neat and there is a lot of synergy between party members, but the fact that you are forced to grind (either to find crafting stations or for exp) more than a little to feel like you are making progress really ruins the game for me. As a rule, i enjoy grinding, but the animations are SO SLOW that it really becomes a time sink. Even if you go into the first dungeon again at level cap (for crafting stations and random events), you will have to fight all the battles over again. Even though the overland monsters are smart enough to leave you alone when you are a certain level higher than you, it seems that the dungeon monsters exist only to artificially stretch out the time spent playing instead of having actual content and fun things to do.

Difficulty: The normal game works really well, even though it is ridiculously easy even without grinding, which contradicts the genre. New Game+ is very enjoyable: the enemies get +3/5 level boost (for reference, the game has 30 level, and every 2-3 levels doubles the difficulty of a monster), while you can keep the perks, and unlocked bestiary/skills/etc from your original run. This means the fights are much more difficult (sky pirates gows from easy xp/shadow coins to a constant menace). Good: The graphics and music are almost perfect. My only problem with it was the inconsistency: the map itself is hand drawn, the dungeons and battles uses the same well-made graphics, but during bursts the 3D animations are very immersion-breaking at the beginning. The combat system is intuitive and very enjoyable, all 6 characters have synergy between them and can fulfill different roles based on the party composition. The map design is almost linear, yet at any point of the game you find multiple things you can and want to do. The randomized dungeons makes the grinding way more exciting. I especially like that the game doesn't think you are dumb: the side missions and puzzles are to be solved by reading the item descriptions, not by following stupid arrows and indicators popular these days. Bad: -Resources are divided to zones/tiers -Shops only restock if you complete a dungeon These 2 things together means that you can't separate the grinding for items and XP from each other: if you want better equipment you need to go to the last dungeons, which also increase your level. It also means that the collected lower-tier ingredients are useless after unlocking a new zone. This is especially bad in new game+, where you will use equipment 8-10 levels below you most of the times, and will be limited by parts which spawns in small amounts in shops, yet you need hoards of them to craft. The character limit on these reviews is a nonsense.