![]() It has taken a safe, familiar genre, done absolutely nothing but the most straightforward, safe application of it, and thrown the Dark Crystal license over the top, but it has in no way tried to do anything interesting with Dark Crystal. For decisions to matter, the game would need to have a plot to follow, anyway.ĭark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is cynical. There’s are times where you’ll get to select which battle you want to do next but don’t let that fool you, Age of Resistance does not offer one of those branching path narratives where your decisions matter. The game’s equipment store is a menu that you pull up between battles, but otherwise, the only other thing you can do from the game’s world map is select the next battle location. There’s also a dearth of anything to do outside of fight. Because the levels are so small, they don’t really add to the sense of world building within the game, and the cut scenes and narrative elements, as disjointed and painfully brief as they are, are very cheaply produced – either a couple of lines of dialogue bookending a level, or the occasional comic strip sequence. Strategically, Age of Resistance is very dry indeed.įor a world with the vision of Jim Henson behind it, I found Age of Resistance Tactics to be surprisingly uninspired in just about every design element. I never felt that level of tactical depth in Age of Resistance, and even as I started unlocking new job classes, I found myself relying on the same characters, with similar skills combinations, doing the same thing from one battle to the next. In a really good tactics RPG, these crossovers are minimal, to encourage players to carefully structure parties around particular combinations of skills. Magic users will have ranged attack skills, and front-line fighters will be able to take care of their own healing. ![]() There are only a couple of skill trees to choose between, and characters can actually develop a secondary skill tree, meaning that there’s almost certainly going to be some crossing over between each character, and the tactical depth they bring into combat. The other issue is that there’s far too much homogenisation between characters. The careful, chess-like movement of pieces around the board that we see in most tactics RPGs is inhibited by the size of the board itself. Most of them are tiny, and while I do suspect that was so that the small number of units would be able to get in and do their fighting in the most efficient way possible, it also means that there’s very little actual tactical depth to Age of Resistance. ![]() One issue is the size of the battle maps themselves. Sadly, there are so many limitations to Age of Resistance that you just have to wonder about where the effort went in making the game. The basic mechanics are all perfectly functional, too – movement around the maps and selecting the right attacks to use are all nice and intuitive, and I do give the developers props for the general UI. There are a wide range of different characters that you can recruit into your party, and a nice range of different – fantastic – enemies to fight. This is exactly what Stranger Things 3 did as well, but thankfully one thing that Age of Resistance Tactics does have going for it is that the base material does work with the tactical RPG format. There are a couple of moments here and there where there’s the opportunity to experience a side-story beyond the show, but because these are presented in an equally brief manner to the rest of the plot, they fail completely to add anything to the base material. Those snippets are also presented in such a disjointed fashion that, if you’re not an existing fan of the show, you can forget about following along, much less enjoying the characters and battle scenes. Dark Crystal doesn’t really tell a story of its own, and instead relies entirely on you having knowledge of the television show, with tiny snippets and cut scenes here and there to remind you of the point in the narrative that you’re up to, and have already seen during the show. Don’t even expect the simple, cheap mobile charms of Mercenaries Saga. ![]() Don’t expect the incredible world-building of the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics or God Wars, though. Remember back on the early PlayStation and Nintendo consoles when a “licensed game” (Goldeneye 007 aside) generally meant something quite unpleasant to play? Those days are back it seems, which is both oddly nostalgic, and deeply disappointing when the material being misused is as wonderfully rich as Dark Crystal.Īge of Resistance Tactics is, as the name suggests, a tactics RPG. Between the Stranger Things 3 game, Narcos, and now Dark Crystal, it seems that Netflix television shows are driving a new renaissance in that kind of cheap, low-budget licensed cash-in game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |