Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Some games just beckon to the player: "Wait for a dark and stormy night. Brew some hot chocolate and wrap up in a warm blanket, then boot up this JRPG and lose track of the time for the rest of the weekend." This is one of them.

While the core gameplay loop is simple and repetitive, Battle Chasers: Nightwar maintains its cozy and welcoming old school sensibilities from start to finish. As this adventure is chock full of secrets and side activities to complete, the obsessive completionists among us will find much to indulge themselves in here. Prospective buyers must love repetitive JRPG combat, which is the core of the game and most of what you'll be doing aside from running around the landscape with your analog controller.

Nothing precisely new or innovative is accomplished here, but the journey through endgame and NG+ is enjoyable and rewarding, and the graphics and characters are fun and engaging. I'm glad I gave this one an honest shot. It won me over with its atmosphere and dedication to self-paced fun.

I saw Battle Chasers : Nightwar on a list of games to play and the name intrigued me. Checked the Steam Store to see what the game was about, and what I found was a really cool-looking Turn-Based Rpg. I like Turn-Based Rpgs ! So I decided to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did.
Good looks always help, and this game might catch your eye like it caught mine. The technical side is just good, but the design is fantastic. After a quick search online, it turns out Battle Chasers is a series of comics, which explains why it looks so nice. But that's not all it has ! It's also a very good game, even if it doesn't stray too far from what other Rpgs offer.
The world map, of a decent size, will be how you get to dungeons and other places of interest, while coming across loot and groups of monsters to fight. Once in a dungeon, or an "exploration area" as they put it, the camera changes and you can move your character freely without following the road. This lets you explore, avoid traps, find loot and ambush enemies (or get ambushed) and will constitute your dungeon gameplay. Surprisingly they're procedurally generated, but it actually works and encourages multiple excursions on higher difficulties, for more experience or better loot.
There's a particularity to how mana is used in the game. Any action that doesn't use mana generates some, and you can use that "overcharge" in slightly different ways. Unfortunately, this mechanic is mainly used when you reach the mastery of a character's skill tree, which happens when you invest 100 points in one of the two trees available. Problem is, at the end of my first playthrough and with my characters at max level, they had access to 80 points... Now if you're as good at maths as I am, you can see that 80 is less than 100. It could be by design, to save mastery for New Game + after you've spent some time farming, but I doubt it. As the one fancy mechanic of the game, I would have liked to use it earlier, as it can change the way you use your characters.
There are 6 of them, but you can only play 3 at the same time. Good news is, they're all viable and different, and experimenting with the new skills they learn by levelling up is fun. They all have clear strengths and weaknesses you will have to understand to progress, as the game is not necessarily easy. You can play it risky and level up faster at the risk of dying (but not losing much), or safer at the risk of having to grind a little, up to you !
Regardless of the way you play, there's a good 30 hours of gameplay before you see the end of the game, and even more if you start to dabble in the side activities such as optional bosses called Hunts, side quests, a bestiary and a "fishiary" to fill, treasure maps, an arena, or the quest for each character's ultimate weapon... There's a lot ! And that's before talking about New Game +, which even if you take the time to prepare for it, will turn the difficulty up significantly. You will only keep your skills, perks and knowledge of the game for a different, but worthwhile experience.
Some people found the game and its animations too slow, but I didn't. And, well, Turn-Based games are not usually the fastest-paced games around anyway...
I do, however, think a few things would have benefited from a little tweaking. As mentioned previously, mastery of the skill trees is one of them. Another one would be the grind required at some points in the story, and lastly the potions, that are completely useless apart from the revival one. A medium healing potion restoring 100 Hp when my character has 12000 of those ? Go home, potion, you're useless.
Fortunately, those don't really impact the quality of the game, and I had a great time until the very end. Actually, that's pretty much all I played these last two weeks and now that I have beaten the game, I'm already starting to miss it. For anyone who enjoys Turn-Based Rpgs, Battle Chasers : Nightwar is a safe pick, and an 8.

Battle Chasers:
Nightwar delivers a satisfying JRPG experience, but its party management system throws a wrench into experimentation.
The core gameplay loop follows the classic JRPG formula: exploring the overworld, collecting loot, and engaging in random battles. Exploration areas add some depth with puzzles, traps, and additional character interactions.
Overall, the game excels at capturing the essence of the JRPG genre. It's a well-crafted experience that stays true to its roots. However, there's a significant drawback in how you manage your party.
The lack of experience gain for inactive party members is a dated design choice. Most modern JRPGs have moved away from this approach. While this wouldn't be a major issue if switching characters was easier, it becomes a bigger problem.
The limited ability to swap party members restricts experimentation. You can only change your team composition at inns, which requires a lot of backtracking and teleportation. This is frustrating for players who enjoy trying out different characters and abilities. If switching characters was a more streamlined process, the experience gain distribution wouldn't be as critical.

This game takes the best aspects of every single kind of RPG you know: the roguelike stuff, the battle systems, the character and class archetypes, the monsters and villains, the gearing, the talents/perks, the graphics and aesthetics, the music, and so forth. And of course the graphic novel style is just par excellence.

Hints from anime like Berserk and Full Metal Alchemist were also endearing.

It's an overall all-in-one classic RPG experience. I had this in my wishlist a good while before I was gifted it. I should have played it far sooner.

a nice and "short" RPG with a lot to see.
a very good turn based combat and well developed in every aspect.
totally recommendable!

TL;DR: Classic JRPG mechanics with Joe Mad art. Love it! A few kinks, but definitely recommended.
Pros:
+ I haven't played a jRPG in around 18 years and this felt like reliving a bit of my early gamer days.
+ I am a big fan of Joe Mad's art in games. Darksiders FTW!
+ Grinding - this is the main complaint I've seen, but at least on a regular New Game, it didn't bother me at all. It really felt like a part of the jRPG experience without dragging waaaaaay too long or being that boring (again - for a classic jRPG).
+ Combat mechanics - for sure they could have been more complex, but they felt just right to me.
+ Characters - cool and recognizable silhouettes with awesome animations
+ Game length - just right for my taste. May be one more dungeon would have been OK, but one more zone - no.

Cons:
- Combat experience can become repetitive as with any jRPG. I wish that there was a way to do run of the mill battles just a bit faster - may be with faster animations.
- The story is nothing to write home about
- Crafting is kind of boring
- Game manual is OK-ish, but I had to experiment and read online about several mechanics to understand them (attack, haste, heal being directly affected by Att stat, etc.)
- Installed a mod that lets off-party characters passively gain experience. Sure, I could have carried one or two during dungeon runs, but this helped me get things done faster and just saving time without feeling that I'm cheating. Otherwise this is a decision of the game design that I don't agree with.
- Combat logging and overall info is lacking. Even if you see numbers, usually they are not final so you either do calculations in your hear OR you just decide with a margin of possibility/error.
- NG+ starts slow and goes slow so I recommend it only for people who want more challenge and are willing to put the time and effort in repeating content just to get the best out the heroes and combat challenges.

Classic turn based RPG combat with Joe Madureira's (Battle Chasers creator) involvement in the game. The game is beautiful, although I don't really like the blur effect in dungeons.
As there are six characters it would've been great that some dungeons had one mandatory character or the final one had two paths forcing to raise all of them to max. I maxed them in the first playthrough, but didn't bother on NG+.
Also, the final boss is cool as a semi-boss, but it's underwhelming in it's own. After that fight it would've been cool to fight C'drall or Verus.
Pro tip: You want to complete the fishiary in the first playthrough, to be able to get it's reward again as soon as possible on NG+.