–PORTABLE BACKLOG UPDATE–

I got this game as a birthday present back when it was new. At first, I tried to play on the hardest difficulty, but eventually realized that it would take me too long to beat the game on that difficulty, so I switched to normal mode (I did manage to beat the first couple maps on that difficulty, though). However, I had to put the game on hold when my DS’s battery lost its ability to hold a charge (seriously, it only lasts, like, half an hour on a full charge), then I continued to put it on hold when I got my 3DS since you can’t get Street Passes while running a regular DS game, but today, I finally got around to beating:

This is a turn-based tactics game. You have a group of soldiers on the board, each with their own abilities and stats, and you have to move them across the board fighting enemy units. Each soldier, including the protagonist, is its own unit, and to clear the map, you have to get the protagonist safely to a designated tile on the board, which is usually guarded by a more powerful enemy soldier (you know that these soldiers mean business because they have mugshots, while the normal soldiers just have abstract caricatures of their unit type displayed instead). When you command a soldier to attack an enemy unit, you get to see your and your enemy’s percent-chance of hitting, as well as how much damage you and your enemy will do if the hit is successful (and if your hit percent chance is below 80, you’re probably going to miss). Different soldiers can use different types of weapons: swords, bows, spears, magic tomes, axes, etc., and there are different tiers of power to these weapons (for example, physical weapons have iron -> steel -> silver) The more a unit uses a specific type of weapon, the more its weapon level goes up, and the higher a solder’s weapon level, the higher-tier weapons it can use (iron -> steel -> silver, etc.). You might think that weapons like the swords, spears, and axes have an inherent triad weakness assigned to them, and while the game really wanted to have this (given that you’ll sometimes see red down arrows and green up arrows), the numbers often don’t reflect this (in fact, in my experience, the weapon with the red down arrow usually deals more damage). Where the real weaknesses come into play are when there are weapons that deal bonus damage to certain units (indicated when the damage number in the battle preview is green instead of white), as the extra damage is usually significant (like 25 damage instead of 10). There are different terrain units, like plains, forest, and mountains, but these really just serve to slow units down since they barely provide any additional evasion. Sometimes, you’ll find forts, and if you have a unit stop on a fort, the unit will regain health. As the battle maps get longer, you’ll start to see glowing circles, and if you stop a unit on one of them, you can create a permanent save mid-battle. Even without them, you can still create a suspend point if you have to stop playing right now (it gets erased when you load it, though).

This series is known for having perma-death: if one of your soldiers dies, that soldier is dead for the rest of the game (unless you reset). I don’t know whether or not the game will adjust its difficulty depending on how many casualties your army sustains, but what I do know is that there were a surprising amount of powerful weapons that dealt zero damage to the final boss, including weapons that are supposed to be effective against dragon units (spoiler: the Shadow Dragon is the final boss). If that isn’t reason enough to try to keep everyone alive regardless of how many resets it takes, there will be certain enemy soldiers who have mugshots that aren’t the boss of the map, and if you have the right unit in your party, you can order said unit to talk to them and convince them to join you.

Although it’s a good idea to keep everyone in your party alive, there is exactly one part of the game where you have to get someone killed: the tutorial. Basically, a swarm of enemy soldiers comes from behind, and you have to send one soldier to a designated fort on the map to create a “distraction” (the only time in the game something like this is used) to lure the enemies away. While I get what they were going for, I would have liked if there was secretly a way to fend off all of the invading units without getting anyone killed (especially since the rest of the game always provides an alternative).

As a side note, the game will let you change a soldier’s class (presumably to mitigate any difficulty spikes due to the perma-death, though I’d imagine they’d start at the lowest weapon level and you’d have to build them up, which might be rather difficult in the late game)

This game, perhaps infamously, also has enemy reinforcements. In the middle of a map, after you’ve moved your army forward and killed countless enemy soldiers, new ones will suddenly appear in various locations at the end of the enemy’s turn. This might seem like a way to screw players over for winning as they come in suddenly and unexpectedly, throwing a wrench into whatever plans you might have had, and while it kinda is, there’s usually some indication that a map will have reinforcements. For example, if you see a cluster of forts, chances are there’s going to be reinforcements coming from them (forts don’t normally come in clusters since they heal units resting on them). Plus, if you put your own unit on top of where a reinforcement will appear, you can prevent said reinforcement from appearing.

There were a couple things that annoyed me about the game. First, certain weapons may seem pretty good in the early game, but you’re punished for saving them for later. For example, the Levin Sword gives swordsmen a ranged attack (even if it’s only one unit farther than a melee attack, you can still avoid a counterattack from other melee units), but by the end of the game, it only deals 3-4 damage, making it all but useless. Second, there are shops throughout the game so you can replenish weapons (since weapons have stamina and can break if used too much), but even late game shops won’t sell silver weapons, even if you have the item that supposedly lets you access more weapons in the shops. Needless to say, I was really rich when I beat the game since I didn’t have anything worthwhile to buy.

Despite these hiccups, if you like turn-based tactics games, you should check this game out. It’s a pretty fun and challenging game, even if not all of its ideas affected the end product much.