Welcome to our review of God Wars, the new tactical RPG released by NIS!
A long time ago, there was a beautiful land made up of three nations: Fuji, Izumo, and Hyuga. This land was called Mizuho. The people of Mizuho disliked conflict, honored their ancestral spirits, and lived in harmony with nature. However, over time, they began cultivating crops, forging and using metal, fighting wars, destroying nature, and neglecting to honor their ancestral spirits.
In the meantime, various locations in Mizuho suffered from natural disasters like flooding, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. In order to stop a destructive eruption, the Queen of Mizuho, Tsukuyomi, sacrificed her beloved daughter Sakuya to the mountain, confined her other daughter Kaguya within a bamboo seal in case of future disasters, and then disappeared. 13 years later, Princess Kaguya has grown into a beautiful woman and her childhood friend, Kintaro, saves her during a riot. She rises against her “fate to be a sacrifice,” and in order to follow her own path, they both escape from Fuji and journey across Mizuho to discover the truth behind Tsukuyomi’s decision.
God Wars is a tactical Role Playing Game so for those unaware of what this genre entails, you are basically moving around on a preset playfield with squares on it, you can move a preset amount of squares and then hopefully you are in range to attack the enemies. You control a group of players usually and it is your duty to win according to the level conditions which usually involve staying alive!
On top of that, there are loads of mechanics to decide how strong or weak your attacks are. Attacking from the top ground or from down below influences things. You can die in battle but there is a meter indicating how many moves are left to revive a crew member, … There are states like poison, … In short, a lot of stuff is going on in a single battle. The big bonus, you can choose to have the fighters use an AI.
The AI is not that great, it thinks completely different from a human brain obviously and can thus do unexpected or even annoying things. I dislike their actions, but I enjoy the fact you can at least set it up for some of the crew. My personal preference was to have one or two supporting characters at all time, acting independently from anything I did.
One thing that should be mentioned, this game appears to be fully voice acted. I am yet to encounter a single line said by any character that was not outright spoken. While the voice acting has some cringe-worthy moments, it is very amazing that every line is spoken though. A feat you rarely see.
So how does it play?
Quite well really, aside from the slower tactical approach by the AI, this game lives up to any other tactical RPG. In between the battles, there is a world map where you walk around from preset mark to preset mark, sometimes interrupted by a surprise attack. But nothing makes this game really stand out, lovers of the genre will enjoy it, but as a more casual enthusiast of the genre, it never fully captured me.
In conclusion, NIS did deliver a decent game but nothing outstanding. Lovers of the genre might get more out of this than me, but that is only to be expected. I enjoyed the voice acting more than expected and I do think it looks pretty for a pixelated game. The art style for cutscenes are nice to look at too, I love that anime style mixed with manga panes.
