Battle Chaser Nightwar
Timothee Cazares
Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an interesting marriage of an obscure fantasy comic book with the sort of gameplay one sees in early Final Fantasy games. Since JRPGsand comics are character driven, it seems at first glance to be a good fit. Battle Chasers disposes of the anime style art and child like characters of Japanese RPGsin favor of a hand drawn and painted comic book style which appeals to players like me, who play JRPGsdespite their art direction. And even though the game has procedural dungeons, crafting, and random loot, it is in many ways a nostalgic game.
I've never been one to put all too much value on presentation, but Battle Chasers really stands out here. Whether one finds the comic book style appealing or not, its well executed. The characters run across beautifully hand painted backgrounds. Story segments are presented in scenes that actually look like they could come from the pages of comic book, and both the character models and monsters are skillfully brought to life. Also the animations are dramatic and memorable. Even after you've seen Gully's quakefist or Red Monika's assassination attacks 100 times, they still look good. The game's cut scenes also look like frames of a comic book. Since World of Warcraft we've seen a lot of comic style art, but few games actually seem to even come close to the quality of artwork of a modern comic book or graphic novel. Battlechasers presents some of the best comic book style art I've seen in a computer game.
JRPGs present their story and characters like a storybook. There is no branching dialogue and no real choice in how the story is told. We are presented with a predetermined set of characters and follow them through their adventure. The advantage to this lack of choice and freedom is that we play well fleshed out characters with their own motivations, backgrounds, and relationships. This seems like a good match for a comic book, since a comic book's appeal is in its story and characters. Battle Chasers started as a comic book, and follows the story of Gully, a girl on the edge of puberty who has inherited the magical gauntlets of her father, a hero of legend. Her father's friend Garrison, a veteran warrior, acts as her mentor and protector along with the wizard Knolan, and Callibretto, the ancient war golem Knolan salvaged and rebuilt. Filling out the cast is the rogue Red Monika, and Alumon, a templar devoted to destroying undead and demons. At first glance this would appear to be an interesting cast of characters. Unfortunately, I never really grew close to them. Their interaction with one another is actually surprisingly limited. You occasionally get a vignette when resting at the inn, but in general their relationships and backgrounds or only hinted at. This story was probably well described in the Battle Chasers comic books, but I couldn't help feeling being plopped into the middle of a story without having read the beginning.
As it is, Gully and her friends start together on an airship which is shot down by pirates. They crash land, separated, on a strange island and find out that darker forces are behind the pirates. The story of Nightwar is pretty standard fantasy faire and is not particularly interesting or well written. The villains are much more interesting in their appearance than in their motivations or character. The protagonists also don't shine in the story, and the only character we really find about a decent amount about is Red Monika, who gets a lot of lore entries in the dungeon where she first rejoins her friends. This feels like a lot of wasted potential, especially since the better JRPGs, like the Valkyria Chronicles, Final Fantasy X, or Legends of Heroes: Trails in the Sky have such memorable stories and characters whom one really grows to care about in the span of their stories. Nightwar in contrast left me pretty cold. Not really good for a genre that thrives on good stories and characters.
Typical of a JRPG, you start Battle Chasers with only Gully and Callibretto, and gradually they are joined by the other characters until your party is six characters strong. You can only have three of them in your party at any given time, and those you don't adventure with don't gain experience. This encourages you to decide on a fixed party once all of the characters are on your team. There is no "must play" character. For example, even though Callibretto is the group's best healer, he can easily be replaced by Alumon, who is a slightly better fighter, but who has a full range of healing skills. Or you can play with both Red Monika and Knolan, who together have enough healing skills to get a group through combat. I ended up discarding Knolan because I found him annoying, and Garrison, because I didn't like him as well as Red Monika, and not for any mechanical reason.
Each character has a set of standard actions, which are fast basic attacks and defences, as well as slow put powerful abilities, and burst attacks which are fueled by a group gauge which fills with each hit and attack. They also have their own map skills, which are noncombat skills. For example, Red Monika can become invisible 30 total seconds between each rest and evade monsters. In addition each character gets perk points as they level up. Perks can be used to improve stats or improve specific skills. For example, once I decided to make Alumon the group's healer, I concentrated on perks which improved his healing skills and allowed him to heal the group at the end of combat. This means even though each character has their own distinct skills, you can tweek them to function better in a particular direction. Gully is a defensive fighter who can both shield the group and dish out good damage. You can develop her either way depending on what sort of strategy you think will work best in your team.
Battle Chasers also has a comprehensive crafting system. You can smith, enchant, and brew potions. A large portion of the treasure you find in the game are crafting components. The only way you can actually enchant items is through crafting and buying potions when you can craft them is very expensive, so there is no way around it. Luckily the system is pretty straightforward. You have a book of blueprints, and each one shows you whether you have the necessary materials. You can actually try to craft an item if you're missing one of the materials, but the chance of success is quite low.
Battle Chasers has a lot of components typical of classical JRPGs. You sport 3 heroes, your opponent fields 1-3 monsters. There are some battles with 2-3 waves of monsters. Monsters can basically be sorted into three types. First there are trash opponents like slimes, bats, and some categories of spider or undead. These aren't really much of a challenge even if they are a couple of levels more powerful than your character. Then there are tougher opponents like golems, some undead, and some pirates. These creatures can severely damage or even destroy your party if you meet too many, or they are a multiple levels higher than your party. Then there are boss monsters who you usually meet at the end of each level.
In Battle Chasers you slowly develop a large arsenal of ways to deal with battles. These are divided into actions, which are basically immediate attacks or defences. At high level you have 4 of these and using them creates overcharge, which is basically temporary mana. Then you have abilities which are slower and more powerful but consume mana. Lastly you have burst abilities which use a burst meter, which slowly rises every time you hit an enemy or are hit. Bursts are very powerful abilities, which can change the course of the battle.
I would say the fights in Battle Chasers are in general pretty fun, even though like in many RPGs I relied on maybe half of my abilities and favored 2 of my 4 actions and rarely used the others. Still there are a lot of battles in the game, and many of them are against trash mobs. You can use these battles to fill your burst gauge and to heal (at least if you are using Callibretto or Alumon who have perks which give you free healing before and/or after a fight) so they aren't totally a waste of time.
Success in battle is largely determined by your level. Non-trash enemies, more than two levels higher than your group can be quite challenging. If they are more than two levels lower, you can often destroy them with two or three basic attacks. A boss who outlevels you by 3+ levels can often one shot your characters, and even more powerful attacks often only put small dents in their health. Still in challenging battles, your choice of character attacks can determine victory or defeat, and these battles are quite entertaining.
I'd like to point out here, you only have one save, and while you can save and exit anywhere in the game, if you fail in combat you are returned to the inn, and all wandering monsters (luckily only outside, not in the dungeons) are respawned. Monsters who are too weak to give you XP will flee rather than fight you, but you might still have to fight through some opponents to get back to a dungeon if you die.
Like good JRPGs of old, Battle Chasers has a large world map, which opens up as you progress. Unfortunately for the most part, the outside world is quite boring. The map is broken up into regions. Each region has a teleporter, a major story dungeon, and usually a side dungeon (or rarely 2). The game features one town with an inn and a number of upgradable shops. Other than that there are combat encounters and crafting materials. So basically, you move around, fight mostly trash mobs and pick up much needed crafting materials.
The story dungeons in contrast are fairly interesting. The dungeons are to a certain point random. That is the first and last room of the dungeon are always the same, but the rest of the layout can be completely different, though the rooms themselves have the same traps, obstacles, and scripted events regardless of where they appear in the dungeon. Monsters can vary a little, but mostly there is a set list in any dungeon, and the monsters in certain rooms appear to be fixed. Dungeons have a lot to do in them. There are puzzles, riddles, crafting stations, lore books, fishing pools (Fish can be sold for shadow coins, a kind of currency that one gets otherwise only from slaying boss monsters. This does not make fishing mandatory though.), treasures, and triggered events with and without cut scenes, and some of the game's more interesting battles. The level design in the dungeons is for the most part well done, and they are the most interesting part of the game.
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