LogFAQs > #965271744

Battle Chasers: Nightwar (PC)

Really, really solid. This is a little out of my standard fare considering that I usually prefer my JRPGs to excel in story and characters above all else and those two aspects are by far the weakest parts of Nightwar, but Airship Syndicate clearly wasn't going for a grand, epic tale here. It was meant as a tight 20-hour adventure and it nailed that. Everything about it just feels polished; I love the artstyle in particular but the OST, while mostly atmospheric and low-key, had a couple standouts that really took me by surprise as well.

Combat is the real prize, though. All of my favorite turn-based battle systems involve an action timeline where characters act independently of each other and you can see all of the upcoming turns ahead of time, and Nightwar does that to perfection, but I was also impressed with the overall balancing. Very few battles felt like thoughtless "mash X to do basic attacks and win" ordeals because even normal enemies are pretty dangerous and require smart use of abilities to get past effectively. I actually died more to random mobs than I did bosses. There's six playable characters and not only do they all feel very distinct from one another, but their individual toolkits don't have a lot of useless fluff in them - there weren't many abilities in my main party that I didn't get plenty of use out of at different times.

This is one of those indie JRPGs that wore its inspiration to make a modernized old-school game in the genre on its sleeve, but it succeeded where a lot of those have failed. It feels like an actual inspiration instead of just a soulless ripoff. They took the reliable turn-based skeleton and made it their own, then threw in some other fun ideas to produce something that scratches the right itch without just making me feel like I'd be better served dusting off an old system and playing one of those older RPGs instead. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but Nightwar clearly had a lot of love poured into it and the result was very enjoyable. Shame it didn't ever really get much attention.