Battle Chasers: Nightwar, currently one of the selections available from the Humble Monthly Whatever They Call It Now, is a rather tidy jRPG with fixed characters and some funky randomization mechanics. I'm enjoying it more than the last few jRPGs I've prodded lately, namely Octopath Traveller and I Am Setsuna, though those are distinctly different in style.
Combat is pretty much rank and file, with two tweaks off the standard turn-based: Most skills take varying amounts of time to activate, so if you're trying to get off that heal in time, remember that you'll probably have to look a few notches lower on the turn order list, and basic skills generate temporary MP, which makes your MP economy a core mechanic. Combat kind of feels like it moves at a glacial pace though-- all abilities have animations that are in the seconds-long territory, and the way combat is here, you're unlikely to be able to just basic attack your way through everything unless you're way overpowered in gear and level for the area.
All hostiles show up on the map, so you can also use exploration skills to, say, throw a bomb at them which will do damage and have them start the battle with burning. Something I really appreciate here that isn't seen nearly enough: Damage a mob in battle, run away, heal, reengage, and it's still injured. Note that you won't get xp/loot from stuff you killed before fleeing though. Similarly, a lot of combats (even 'linked' groups) can be split up with careful play, so you can sneak through dungeons you're otherwise unprepared for.
The storyline's nothing to write home about (based on unlocks, I'm around halfway to 2/3rds through); it's the typical "we got stuck here, we want to go home, and to do so, go kill five rats kill the Foozle save the world?".
Graphics aren't bad, but are kind of oddly system intensive on my laptop... at least I can keep my nachos warm.
So: The aforementioned 'funky randomization'... dungeon maps, which forms upwards of half the play, are modularly randomized. For example, a given dungeon may have like 10 rooms, which are drawn from a pool of 30 different ones, which will then have randomized features within. There's different difficulty levels (mob levels), the highest of which resets the dungeon if you wipe. Which isn't quite as bad as it sounds, since you can freely leave and head back to town to heal up, though it is an exercise in frustration if you die in the second to last room. On one run, I had a puzzle room that was based on figuring out which door timers were longer, so you could run through them before they shut. Same dungeon, a different puzzle cropped up which involved moving platforms around. And, rather unusually, the later dungeons have much more interesting variations. (My most recent dungeon had a special crafting station and a locked event on the first run... the second run gave me a choice event for a unique item, a miniboss that's tougher than the actual boss, and the key for the locked event from the previous run, orz.)
By extension, this means that loot is randomized... but, thankfully, pretty much anything can be crafted, given adeqaute grind for resources... though I have yet to find the recipes for one of the most useful mods, mana regen every turn.
Less thrilling is that character growth is also partly locked behind grind: Killing bosses or other notables give special currency that can be used to purchase ancilliaries (skins, etc.), but also extra perk points, which are your form of build customization.
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Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 319813 times)