What’s it? A novel Technique JRPG.
Anticipate to pay: £15.49/$20
Launch date: Out now
Developer: Dancing Dragon Video games
Writer: Freedom Video games
Reviewed on: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, 32GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 9 5900
Multiplayer? No
Hyperlink: Official web site (opens in new tab)
There is a easy delight to JRPG character customization. Prolong that to a whole squad of characters on a tactical grid? Now you’ve got acquired your basic Technique JRPG, like Fireplace Emblem or Ultimate Fantasy Techniques. Prolong it to a whole military of a number of dozen squads? That is the rework you get in Symphony of Warfare: The Nephilim Saga. Setting out a buffet of customization round your military and its generals is simply sufficient to shake up a style that was shortly changing into one-note—even when the in any other case generic story does it no favors.
Symphony of Warfare’s spin on the technique JRPG is all concerning the squad. Every squad is made up of as many as 9 models, every positioned right into a formation that you just create on 15 squares—and the boundaries between them—for about 15 distinct positions. Whereas different video games emphasize single people, solely essentially the most highly effective heroes can tackle an enemy squad single-handed in Symphony. As an alternative of customizing the exact stats of particular person individuals, you determine the squad constructed round them, tweaking composition and sophistication as you go, and pushing their management stat ever-higher to extend their max squad dimension. Gear additionally goes to the squad, with highly effective artifacts taking over each restricted gear slots and area that might be used for troopers.
However regardless of all that complexity, it is surprisingly simple to understand. There is a respectable in-game reference guide, and whereas some in-depth mechanics and the exact impact of stats—or how some terrain works—aren’t very clear, it by no means feels such as you’re held again by a lack of awareness.
#SquadGoals
All that core gameplay serves to make your military and its journey, relatively than any single character in it, the main focus of your consideration. In constructing your squads and shaping an general technique to your military, Symphony of Warfare seems like a genuinely special approach on the style, with the one comparable video games being the Ogre Battle collection—all now effectively over 20 years previous.
Recruiting promising rookies and mercenaries off the market, becoming them right into a squad, twiddling with their stats as they degree up, and pushing them additional up the big tree of linked lessons is a satisfying core loop, with loads of technique knobs to tweak and levers to drag. It is also structured in a method that encourages you to discover, letting you freely drop characters again a category tier to strive one thing new with none penalty.
Take Stefan, the roguish hero, for instance. He is a pure chief for a light-weight infantry squad, however might additionally lend his ambush experience to a squad of sunshine cavalry. The Knight hero Barnabas is a reasonably good tank, however he is additionally acquired traits that make his squadmates get higher at management themselves: His squad is an ideal incubator to make promising candidates into future squad leaders.
Some leaders are extra specialised: Basic Lysander will get a reduction on the area gunpowder models take up in his squad. He is an excellent chief for dragoon cavalry or a pike-and-shot tercio. These are management traits that exist not simply in your pre-made heroes, however in distinctive named mercenaries that pop up in retailers between missions, and even generally from skill-giving tomes dropped out on the earth.
All that customization is constrained by the gold you earn in missions and enviornment battles, which needs to be spent available on the market to get new models and artifacts. (You may wish to avoid wasting, too, in case you encounter uncommon Bazaars mid-mission—they have the perfect stuff of all. Like dragon whelps. All the time purchase these.) More and more specialised models additionally want more and more specialised sources, which it’s important to purchase from markets and retrieve from mines and villages throughout missions: Gem stones to make mages, horses for cavalry, iron for infantry, and rarer sources—sunstones, obsidian—the additional up the category tree you get.
Apocalypse Once more
There’s not a dearth of world to discover, both. There are 30 core missions, a handful of aspect quests, an enviornment system to struggle in for rewards, and a forthcoming infinite coaching mode. There is a melodramatically over-the-top story tied to all of it, too: your basic semi-apocalyptic finish of the world and attendant divinely-chosen savior stuff. Your essential heroes speak and type familial or romantic bonds between missions, displaying off a little bit of persona, although that characteristic may be very anemic in comparison with different video games. Do not count on a fully-fledged relationship sim ala fashionable Fireplace Emblem right here, only a tree of conversations to click on by way of at your leisure.
The story is nothing too advanced or grownup, however not so dangerous that it distracts from the enjoyable of truly enjoying. That is, to be pointed, not a style that many gamers come to for tremendous characterization and poignant storytelling and for all of the mechanical innovation you will not discover it right here both. The loop is to handle the military, learn some story, struggle, learn a bit extra, and handle your military once more.
That is not at all times completely executed. Generally the story steps in, taking away models for a couple of missions or limiting which forces you possibly can carry to bear—which is completed effectively right here, however is a pet peeve for a lot of. There’s additionally a notable failure to mix story and mechanics in a couple of elements by using comparable technique sport tropes. Stuff like using boring aims throughout a compelled loss mission, or forcing you to play out extraordinarily one-sided missions the place you possibly can’t lose.
It is all carried off in vibrant, cheerful pixel artwork in battles, and extra muted static character portraits throughout dialogue. The pixel artwork is definitely particularly good, and actually packs quite a lot of character and vitality into fairly small areas. Over all of it is a cheery soundtrack, and although it’s kind of skinny, the tracks it does have are fairly good—they seize the temper effectively.
Turning tactical
However what you are right here for is the techniques, and that’s the place Symphony of Warfare: The Nephilim Saga shines. Having constructed a military from what you possibly can and may’t afford, utilizing what commanders you will have, you now should take it into the sector. Every mission has a squad deployment restrict, typically starting from 5 to the late-game whole of 20. On the sector you’ve got acquired aims to seize, challenges to aim, and sources to pillage from mines. Sticking to a decent flip restrict, eliminating key enemies, and finishing these bonus aims enables you to elevate your faction rank—extra on that later.
That is on the face of it actually easy grid-based fight. One sq. vertical or horizontal is one transfer, no diagonals, and every squad strikes in a method decided by its majority composition. A squad of principally gentle infantry can ignore terrain penalties and assault from cowl for an ambush bonus, whereas cavalry can inflict morale-shattering Shock with a cost in open terrain, and whereas heavy infantry have neither profit, they do give bonus protection to models behind them on the squad format grid…
Oh, sorry, we’re speaking about squad constructing once more, aren’t we? It will possibly’t be helped. These two elements of Symphony are so totally and delightfully linked.
When your squad assaults an enemy’s on the battlefield map, we leap to close-up fight for 2 alternating rounds of assaults: Attacker first, then defender. Assaults like ambushes deprive your enemy of their first spherical of assaults. The assaults of most mages take time to cost up, so they do not do something on the primary spherical however lay out a robust blast on the second. Gunpowder models hearth on the primary spherical, however cannot hearth once more on the second. In brief, it is an autobattle the place your melee models assault the enemy in entrance of them on the grid and ranged models choose a goal of alternative whereas specialist models like healers, dragons, thieves, and mages do their factor in flip.
Battlefields of be aware
Broader tactical selections play into the fights, principally revolving round terrain, unit sort, and morale. You may strike from a hill to extend your vary, preserve to the woods to offer cowl from archers, or stick within the open to keep away from ambushing enemy gentle squads. I used to be a giant fan of utilizing powerful models of knights out within the open, simply two areas away from a forest or hill, then when enemies put themselves between my knights and the terrain catching them in an ambush by the sunshine squad attacking from the woods. I needed to watch the morale of these knights, in fact, as a result of a surrounded unit’s low morale causes it to take extra injury, whereas excessive morale can generally give models bonus assaults.
There are past primary fights particular tactical selections you possibly can acquire entry to: Types of assault like aggression to deal extra injury however take extra, or concentrating on the enemy chief to break their morale. They’re all attention-grabbing selections, the bread and butter of technique video games, however essentially the most attention-grabbing of those opens up a couple of missions in, and lets you try and drive the enemy to give up.
Enemies with low morale, whereas outmatched, might be given this feature. In the event that they take it they’re instantly wiped off the sector no matter HP, and also you get bonus faction rank and gold after the mission. If they do not take it you are caught out, they assault first, and also you lose a spherical of the following fight. It is a fully very good little bit of not simply mechanical, however storytelling taste: You are the great guys, you struggle mercifully, and also you’re rewarded mechanically for that.
Between missions you do all of the squad constructing and administration, however you additionally construct up your military in different methods. Faction expertise stars allow you to unlock new applied sciences, which might be as banal as rising morale injury for killing the enemy chief and as revolutionary as permitting gunpowder models to fireside twice in a single fight, or unlocking new models like dragon riders. When you’re like me you will simply spend as a lot time tweaking, planning, and optimizing your military as truly preventing with it.
Which is excellent. The guts of this style is having fun with the delicate interactions between sport mechanics, customizing your characters, and tweaking their gear record. It does not matter a lot if the story’s not the perfect once I thought, midway by way of the sport, that I might discover some set of construct choices subsequent time by way of. I hadn’t even completed and I knew I might play it once more.
