Hey all I’m back with a review for a game that that harkens back to the good old days of turn based JRPGs! It’s Battle Chasers: Nightwar! Now, this one is headed straight for the Nintendo Switch in a couple weeks, but for now, our play was with the PlayStation 4 version, which we assume will be little different from the pending Switch serving for gamers.
Plot Synopsis: A girl named Gully has taken a pair of magic gauntlets, along with a motley crew consisting of a sellsword, a wizard, a swashbuckling bounty huntress, and a kindly robot, on a journey to find her missing father. The crew gets shot down from their airship over a mysterious island with serious problems of its own. Supposedly, the island is home to a motherlode of mana, which has prompted something of a magic-based gold rush.
Plot: The plot is what keeps this game going, and that’s a good thing. It’s engaging and fun, but given that this is an extension of a late ‘90’s comic book series written and drawn by the famous Joe Madureira, that shouldn’t be surprising.
Characters: The entire cast is great, although Garrison, the sellsword is a bit off-putting with his attitude. However, my favorite character is probably Calibretto the War Golem. The fact that this huge lumbering mass of metal is also the team’s defacto healer is just icing on the cake.
Gameplay: There are some gameplay issues however, and that’s with the ramp up of difficulty that occurs from the third dungeon onwards. Normally you’d just grind for a bit outside a dungeon to get some more levels and move on.
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But that is extremely inefficient and the most efficient way to get more experience is to rerun previously cleared dungeons, which while procedurally generated still end up with you killing the same things over and over again.
The good news is that the battle system is fun, although I personally have gotten a bit tired of the turn based systems used so frequently in JRPGs. The fun comes from saving up the Overdrive mechanic to power abilities and special attacks. However MP is rare and infrequent and even late into the game it’s not easy to get a bunch of.
Art: The art is great, which isn’t unexpected given what this was based off of. The map movement portions are good, although they aren’t as good as something like Tales of Berseria, and certainly not even close to Final Fantasy XV.
Music: The music is good, but not extremely amazing like you’d get in a Final Fantasy game.
Overall: A solid game, and well worth the money if you have a craving for a turn-based RPG.
For those who like: JRPGs, Fantasy, Steampunk, Turn Based Combat, Excellent Plot, Great Cast of Characters, Awesome Artwork.
Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.
Developers: Airship Syndicate
Platforms: Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Steam, Xbox One