Long Gone Days

Long Gone Days is a classic-style 2D RPG with turn-based battles. In terms of gameplay and mechanics it's very familiar and reminiscent of the 2D RPGs we're used to.

However, it's not just another medieval fantasy story that we've seen many times already. The story here takes place in a modern day world (possibly very near future). We start as part of a top secret special force of young soldiers who have been trained since childhood and who undertake important missions around the globe.

Although the story is for the most part rather predictable, and plot twists and revelations won't particularly catch you off-guard, I think the main appeal here is more in the characters, their interactions with each other and the world, as well as their overall journey and how they try to cope with reality of the unfolding events.

Another interesting aspect of story execution is what we don't normally see in such stories - the language barriers. Most of the game's events occur in Kaliningrad, Germany and Poland. So, our starting characters speaking primarily in English, struggle to understand the NPCs who ask for help or merely comment their thoughts out loud. And even if you may understand the NPCs who speak Russian, German or Polish, the main characters do not, and so they are unable to help the NPCs, until certain party members join the team who understand each of those languages and can help us progress the quests. It's a very interesting take on story-telling that often gets overlooked in majority of other story-driven games that span multiple countries or continents.

In each of the new locations we visit, we get given plenty of sidequests that we can do in addition to the main story. Most of those are merely ways to help NPCs and increase our morale. Now I didn't see the morale having any combat-related impact, but I am pretty sure the game promises it affects story events. It might be necessary to have multiple playthroughs of the game to really see these story changes though. The only one I am aware of is that it's very hard to get a good ending to the story, because certain conditions need to be met to achieve it, which was a bit disappointing, because the default ending you get doesn't feel like a satisfying conclusion to this long journey our characters have gone through.

The turn-based combat to me felt so-so. One aspect I appreciated was the chance to choose which enemy body part we can shoot at. Unfortunately this concept doesn't change much beyond the initial introduction, as all human enemies only have 3 points really: head, body and arm, with the head being the area you want to go for 90% of the time in order to maximise the damage (at a slightly higher chance to miss). There are a few machine enemies that have other types of parts we can aim for, but it's usually just a trade-off: hit a part with high def and low chance to miss, or try to go for a low def part with a higher chance to miss. Most times, the low def part is the better option. Unfortunately, the game never tells us what the % chance to miss is, which brings me to a wider critique of battles...

This critique is that we get very little numerical information about everything in battles - how high is the evasion rate, how high is an Atk buff worth or an Atk debuff, how many turns do status effects last, how much damage does bleed status do (and whether it's a flat amount or percentage amount), and so on. In fact much of this information isn't even shown on the battle HUD. You get told when you get a buff or a debuff, but there's no indication on characters if they have a buff/debuff active currently. You only see this with status effects, shown as icons.

In addition to lack of info on the battle screen, the battle speed is also very slow (I can't remember if there was an option to speed it up, but the default speed is slow). The main issue really is when buffs/debuffs are applied. If they're applied to a whole party, you'll have to wait for an individual message to show up about each of your party member, which takes a big chunk of time.

Generally, the battles left a lot to be desired, especially the boss fights, which mostly felt like regular enemies but with a 10x more HP, so just a much longer regular battle. To me the main challenge was in trying to deal as much damage as possible to make their HP bar deplete faster, rather than worrying about my people getting killed. Even with the special skills that our characters use, the damage was often not enough.

In the presentation area the game shines. It has a very beautiful and colourful art style, with both characters and environments being drawn beautifully. And the special cutscenes are even better, which felt like animated movies produced by a professional studio. Only minor gripe I'd say is with the item menu. It gets filled up with items very quickly, and navigating through it to find what you need can be a bit of a chore, especially because all the icons are the same colour.

Despite a so-so execution to the turn-based battles, which make up the major aspect of the gameplay, the game has a decent story and characters that's worth experiencing, and a high quality visual presentation. So if you're mainly looking for a game with good turn-based battles, this one will disappoint you, but if you want to go through a nice JRPG story that's unique and interesting, then I'd recommend getting it on a discount.

Games taking place in the real world, even more so using actual existing countries as such, are surprisingly rare. Add JRPG into the mix and you get Long Gone Days. Is it worth it?
After a very brief in medias res opening we assume control of soldier 716 deep within the underground Core base since he's been selected as replacement leader after current sergeant got himself injured. Not knowing much beyond the fact you serve Father General, you're transported away with your unit on a brand new operation. All wearing Polish army uniforms to Kaliningrad in order to "de-escalate the situation". Well, our boy is a sniper and he quickly discovers those aren't military insurgent heads he's been popping. Inadvertently involving a company medic, our pair pieces together the Core isn't exactly being altruistic, end up on a blacklist and have to flee to save their lives. As they join refugees in the city they adopt names – Rourke and Adair – while hoping to save themselves and get the word out as to what's REALLY happening. Military machine marches on across Europe with both overt means and subterfuge wherever it can.
Don't get me wrong, there's some heavy handed political and moral preaching involved here, especially when you get to Germany with a newly rising political party, but I think the novelty of taking place in our real world is enough to carry a rather straightforward story. It's the kind of setup where antagonist is rather obvious and his "you are the sacrifices I'm willing to make" approach to realize his own idea of world peace is nothing new to genre aficionados. What works is plot taking you across multiple countries, where you're at first lost because your characters only speak English until you find a local, where you get to see the fallout firsthand. From population displacement as they flee an approaching army to a city that's under martial law. Somehow, this makes distractions like side quests all the more cumbersome when someone asks you tear down posters or find lost pets.
Your cast gradually expands as you advance, but aforementioned Rourke and Adair are main characters since everyone else rotates in and out depending on story relevance. I'd say Lynn is the strongest supporting character although that could just be my bias given I picked her for bonding scenes. No hidden agenda on my part, no sir. On unrelated side note: game did not deliver on the romance front if that's what you were looking for. What's available aplenty is survivor's guilt, PTSD and everyone struggling to do something against this seemingly overwhelming organization even governments seem to be in cahoots with. All the while trying to stay chipper. For my taste? It's a bit too much on the activist side where everyone is irrationally eager to jump into the thick of it. Even pick up weapons as normal civilians let alone help total strangers when they admit they're turncoats from the very enemy.
I wish there was more to say combat-wise here, but it's classical turn-based affair presented in first-person perspective. Grounded setting means the most outlandish enemy you'll fight is a drone, but what enemies exist are neatly presented. Character art gets a budget bump compared to typical pixels you'll see in the game world. If there's something worth pointing it's that encounters are fixed and there's no concept of leveling up. Most battle rewards include a choice between a curative item or restoring SP which you use as resource for skills. You acquire skills when story progresses past certain milestones. What I'm trying to say is, Long Gone Days isn't some systems-heavy dungeon crawler, but rather quite the opposite. Just remember to stun and/or blind enemies for easy wins, even boss battles with their enormous HP pools. You do get to play around with character equipment as far as customization goes, but you'll have to make do with what you find out there.
Would I recommend Long Gone Days? Well, I was on the verge of giving a proper TL; DR review, but quickly realized it would be a padded overkill on my part. Taking about ~10 hours to finish, and getting a bad ending because I think I concluded some battles too fast to get dialog choices, this is not a long investment if you're remotely interested in the premise. As the opening splash screen will inform you, this was made in Unity Engine but you could've fooled me and said RPG Maker was involved in how it plays. Some really nice assets and even higher fidelity "animated" scenes for pivotal moments.

There was a lot of potential with this game and the idea and while some of it is executed upon, I found the overall package to be a little lackluster. Its a decent game and not too long, but a game such as this lives and dies by its writing and the writing here left something to be desired

Good game. The description calls it a JRPG, but I would argue it’s more of a visual novel with JRPG-like presentation exploring for items and NPCs with limited turn based combat. I like that it’s a tight story without being longer than maybe 10-12 hrs. It doesn’t waste your time with filler. I love that. It’s also a very prescient story in our current day.
More enjoyable for the story and atmosphere than the battles. Battles are fine, but more of a stylish add-on (you don’t earn exp. so no grinding) with a set number of fights and a few opportunity to do active sniping with a target reticle while targets move.

A very nice JRPG/VN. I would say it is a VN with some light RPG mechanics, so if you want a JRPG first, this might not be for you. The JRPG mechanics are all decent, nothing spectacular but good enough to stay interesting.
The story and characters for the first 2 acts were great, I really enjoyed the party in this game. The third act regrettably feels very rushed, and even though I got the good ending, it felt over too quickly. Despite that, I really enjoyed the game! The language barriers presented in Russia and Germany were really cool, needing to find a translator to actually get around is a neat idea; it is a little shallow, but for a short 10~ hour indie game, I find it acceptable.
The load times were really long on start up, so that was definitely an issue, but once in game I didn't notice any technical issues. I played through almost all of it on steam deck and had a great time, so ignore the attached system specs, I played about an hour on my desktop.
I would get it on sale, which it is at the time of posting this review, but I did enjoy the game enough that I would pay full price (in fact I did buy the collector's edition and some shirts after finishing.) I think it's probably a 6 or a 7/10 overall, but it really resonated with me, so I am going to go with an 8/10!

It was a good game with nice story and characters. Liked it. Though i had to leave the game since i wasn't able to defeat the boss. But nonetheless, i do know the game's story and its one of the best pixel games. Wish it had some chance for Romance...

Long Gone Days wonderful game with beautiful art and a captivating story.
To be honest, I don't think the story is going to surprise anyone, but it's a story excellently told and thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless. We follow Rourke, a young man bred from birth to be a sniper for a secret military group. Rourke learns about the reality of the outside world and the truth of his upbringing, and goes on a journey to essentially find peace. Unfortunately, conflict is unavoidable, but I think a key part of the story is that some things are truly worth fighting for, and anyone is capable of fighting for those things.
I loved the story and the characters, and the game had me hooked from start to finish. Rourke is a more interesting protagonist than he looks, and the game executes the "stranger in a strange land" aspect of him and his buddy Adair excellently. Every character is endearing (and their designs are gorgeous), and I loved how they were all able to find commonality in such hard situations. The fact that characters come from different countries and are unable to understand one another is a neat hurdle to overcome. Atiye is probably my favorite character, but I won't deny that part of that is probably because she's so pretty- though she is also funny and very charming.
Combat looks really interesting, but I found it to be a bit too easy. You don't have to face every enemy on the maps, and there's no experience or levels. As long as you keep equipment updated, characters will learn new skills as the story progresses, so there's a pretty steady curve of difficulty. That being said, I think the curve flattens out pretty early; only the first boss was really intimidating. During boss fights, there will be some dialogue which connects to the alternate story paths possible. I think that really adds to the vibe of the game and takes the presentation up to a really stellar level.
Overall I think it's a wonderful game with a relatively concise story. My only real gripe is that the controls on keyboard are a little weird, but you don't have to be very dexterous to play this game. I highly recommend this as a very charming and captivating RPG!