The DioField Chronicles overview – emblematic issues

Sq. Enix makes an attempt to tackle Hearth Emblem at its personal sport, with a extra fashionable, real-time strategy to fight.

Through the late 90s and early 2000s, real-time technique video games like Command & Conquer and StarCraft loved large recognition. They usually gave you management of total armies, from gathering the uncooked sources that went into developing automobiles and plane, to directing particular person items in battle. All the pieces from provide strains to techniques was below your aegis.

Slightly than being proof that mainstream players aren’t focused on technique titles turn-based technique video games have grown in recognition similtaneously real-time ones have fallen away. Which is ironic, as a result of initially real-time technique video games had been meant to be the cool, new action-based evolution of a as soon as staid style.

The Hearth Emblem collection is among the major beneficiaries of this transformation in fortunes, a collection which The DioField Chronicles owes an apparent debt of inspiration to. Sq. Enix’s sport tells the story of a group of spiky-haired anime mercenaries in a fantasy setting, alternating between prolonged conversations involving members of your increasing band and precise fights, which happen in discrete battlefields nicely away out of your HQ.

Despite the fact that it apes the appear and feel of Hearth Emblem, battles are dealt with fairly in a different way, as they’re not turn-based however favour a semi-real time strategy. The sport pauses as you difficulty orders to a unit or group, earlier than routinely resuming, creating an basically hybrid strategy. The opposite change is you can take solely 4 items into battle, which is helpful as a result of there are precisely 4 character lessons.

Troopers work at shut vary, cavaliers transfer extra rapidly on horseback, sharpshooters are archers, whereas magickers heal, buff, and supply lengthy vary harm dealing. Issuing orders is so simple as clicking on a personality or encircling a bunch, then clicking to direct them, both by way of a few waypoints or straight in to assault an enemy.

Whereas the latter is beneficial, you’ll additionally want to consider how your items are positioned, as a result of there’s a sizeable harm bonus for ambush assaults that strike enemies from behind. That normally means utilizing a unit or two to assault a bunch of enemies from the entrance, whilst you ship your cavalier round for a flanking manoeuvre.

Every unit additionally has a set of talents, which you’ll add to improve utilizing the sport’s ability tree. Particular talents have a cooldown to forestall you from spamming them, however that’s balanced with their stage of effectiveness, which usually does make a distinction to the move of a battle – permitting you to adapt to circumstances or unexpectedly highly effective foes.

Enemies arrive in waves, so after dispatching a bunch, extra seem on the map, offering a short respite to heal and reposition your troops for the subsequent skirmish. There’s an inexpensive selection to missions, which embody escorts, defending single factors, and taking up quite a few configurations of enemies. There are additionally bosses, though they develop into not more than arrow sponges, their a number of vitality bars including nothing extra fascinating than the truth that it takes loads longer to kill them.

One other layer of techniques comes with selecting adjutants, who act as assist troopers whose expertise you need to use, however who don’t really flip up on the battlefield. You’ll be able to swap them in for items who’re about to die however can solely do {that a} restricted variety of instances per battle. Extra essential is to pick adjutants whose talents complement the talents of characters in your group.

Lastly, there are additionally large Closing Fantasy-style monsters you possibly can summon, which have their very own step by step accumulating activation factors to forestall overuse. All of it provides as much as a stable system whose mild reinvention of Hearth Emblem’s fight works advantageous, proving straightforward to know and immediately interesting. The issue is, although, that the techniques you study within the introduction are precisely the identical ones you’ll be utilizing within the endgame over 30 hours later.

That lack of depth extends to your get together as nicely. Though adjutants earn expertise factors, your core group earns extra, so when you get comfy with a group there’s little incentive to alter your line-up as you progress. Conditions and mission sorts provide little sufficient selection in problem that you simply’ll not often must stray out of your standard group.

One other difficulty that reduces the sense of novelty is the absence of terrain results. Though battlefields usually have buildings and our bodies of water, there aren’t any execs or cons to something, so your motion, assault, and defence are unaffected by the place you’re standing. It makes for a actually stage enjoying discipline and has the unlucky facet impact of constructing battles really feel much more samey.

Exterior battle the information will get worse, with interminably lengthy, largely conversation-only minimize scenes interspersed with different text-only chatter. You haven’t any alternative as to what anybody says, and whereas the voice appearing is mostly first rate, the script is unutterably boring. As if that weren’t off-putting sufficient, at one level the sport additionally railroads you into supporting your boss as he goes about annihilating an emergent pro-democracy motion. To say that undermines any sense of your group’s righteousness is an understatement.