Long Gone Days

Picked up on the cheap out of a humble bundle, and it's unfortunately the type of game I never would've tried otherwise.

Saw the cover, saw the trailer, something in it resonated with me - put it off for about a week, then gave it a try.

It is, at the time of writing this, 05:36 AM on a Tuesday morning, and I have just spent 15 consecutive hours playing this absolute masterpiece.
My only regret is that chances are not enough people will see this as it deserves, and those that do may not explore through every corner of the game and try to reach every sidequest to see every line of beautifully written dialogue.

Absolutely beautiful.

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.

Summary
Long Gone Days is a game where I mostly tolerated the gameplay in order to experience the story. Despite advertising itself as a modern JRPG, I would say the moment to moment gameplay was subpar compared to titles thirty years prior such as Final Fantasy I. While the story was intriguing enough to keep my playing, the short length made wanting a little more as not all the characters were as arc'd out as I would have liked.
Overall, I would give Long Gone Days a 6/10. Given the length of the game and its bog standard gameplay, I would say the game is worth approximately $10 to me.
Review
Let's quickly talk about gameplay before we get into the game's story. Despite being a JRPG, Long Gone Days has no exp or leveling with the majority of your stats coming from your equipment and a smaller amount from temporary buffs during battle. Abilities are only gained at certain moments in the story. Additionally, HP and MP are not ever recovered except through the usage of items or abilities. When you combine all of this, it results in fairly monotonous battles as you spam basic attacks because you either have no useful abilities or want to conserve your MP for boss battles.
Items such as grenades do help to compensate for the lack of abilities early on and while the game is generous in giving you more items, because there are no shops or ways to readily acquire more of the same items, you're always unsure if you should be wasting that particular item or not. Perhaps a way to barter items you have an abundance of for items you're lacking would fit thematically.
The one somewhat interesting mechanic of battles is the ability to target enemy body parts. Aiming for their torso will result in less damage but a higher chance of landing a hit while aiming for their head will result in the opposite. You can also aim at their arms for a chance to paralyze enemies and have them skip their turn entirely. However, I quickly learned that the chance of paralyzing an enemy is so low that it's never worthwhile to target their arms and the increased damage of hitting their head greatly outweighs the reduced hit chance.
Weirdly, one of the things I did enjoy about combat was being able to see each character's facial expressions throughout the battle. Seeing their determined expressions really made me feel for each character and the struggles they were going through.
Now onto the story. I adore how the game handled multiple languages and I especially loved how you couldn't understand certain NPCs until you acquired a party member that was capable of speaking said language. Rather than create characters that were walking stereotypes to reflect their nationality, using linguistics in this manner allowed the characters to shine through with their own, unique personalities.
I enjoyed the themes that Long Gone Days presented and many of them are relevant in our present day. Totalitarian governments, propaganda, and following orders, some of them hit a little too close to home. The characters were also a delight with it being funny at times seeing how Rourke and Adair were experiencing life outside of The Core.
While I am a fan of shorter games, I do think that Long Gone Days suffers a bit from pacing and could have benefitted from being longer. For example, the game begins in medias res, but we reach that particular point in the story again so quickly that it makes me wonder why we didn't just start the story from the very beginning as opposed needing a flashback. Additionally, the twist where Rourke learns the truth of their mission happens honestly surprised me. Not because I didn't see it coming, but because it happened so quick that I was flabbergasted that the reveal was already here. It's almost as if characters are a little bit TOO emotionally mature, overcoming their trauma and making life-changing decisions before I've even had a chance to get fully invested in their arc (if they even have an arc).
So yeah, while I did enjoy Long Gone Days, I do think it could use some gameplay improvements as well as a few more moments to develop the characters. For example, the various ship and train rides would have been great moments for the party to simply talk to one another and shoot the ♥♥♥♥. Get us invested into the merry little band.
While we're here, let me just list a few quality of life things I wish Long Gone Days had:
- The ability to see what buffs your party and enemies currently have
- The ability to see hit chances for basic attacks
- The ability to see hit chances for debuffs
- The ability to see exactly how much HP an enemy has
- The ability to sort items by type
- In-game explanation for what each stat does

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.

I'm in the middle of 100%ing this, but I love this game. There's so much charm and heart and soul in the game. The art style is wonderful and gorgeous to look at, the characters are engaging and believable. The story is heart wrenching in all the right ways. I adore this game, and highly recommend.

Great story, engaging dialogue choices, interesting characters.

A few specific things I liked:
-There are a fixed number of potential battles and no random encounters
-Being able to pick dialogue choices that visibly improve morale
-The balance between a linear story and free exploration aided by optional side quests

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...