Airship Syndicate pulls from the formula of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", fusing Japanese formats & western culture into a perfect intro for those getting into the RPG genre
"Battle Chasers was my introduction back into gaming after a very long hiatus and it was the perfect game for me."
Whew I just looked at my game time and I put 106 hours into Battle Chasers, a game which I never though I'd get that into. Battle Chasers was my introduction back into gaming after a very long hiatus and it was the perfect game for me. You can go at whatever pace you want, the combat has some depth to it, but not enough where you'll feel it's overly complex. Graphics are your standard fare, nothing standing out apart from the obvious JRPG styled scenes.
There are 6 dungeons, all of which are randomized upon entry so each play-thru is never the same. There are 3 dungeon difficulties and a 4th one that is unlocked in New Game +. Dungeons for me on legendary difficult usually took about 1-1.5 hours to complete mainly because I usually went in kinda under-leveled so the difficulty piled on. The enemies get recycled A LOT. You'll eventually notice that new dungeons simply mean mostly the same enemies, just a different element (fire, blood, ice, earth, poison, mana, etc.) The only enemies that seem to scale throughout the game are the airships which for me have a pretty surprising Easter egg that comes out of nowhere.
Skills have some depth and matter. Every character has two different perk trees depending on your play-style, but you can mix and match which looks to be the best way to do it as both perk trees have things you definitely can't pass up on. Albeit in the end, I just stuck to maybe two of the most useful skills per character. There's also crafting, enchanting and different shops you can go to (one special shop has quest items that unlock high level quests.)
"I never fully got invested into any of the characters and the swordsman (Garrison whom I dubbed "Guts" due to his uncanny resemblance to the main character of Berserk) was particularly dull..."
Battle Chaser's story is pretty standard. The voice acting is great although you can obviously tell they didn't have the budget for it as only about 30% of the game is actually voice acted. One cut-scene is voice acted and the next is not, it's random and weird. The characters themselves are pretty stock. I never fully got invested into any of the characters and the swordsman (Garrison whom I dubbed "Guts" due to his uncanny resemblance to the main character of Berserk) was particularly dull. Most if not all of his dialogue were completely obvious statements which lead me to dub him "Captain Obvious" as well. There were one or two heartwarming moments (one of them being an Easter egg concerning a certain mouse), but overall the story was something I'd seen a million times (an ancient evil is planning on resurfacing and a band of heroes reluctantly come together to stop it.)
Overall though I'd recommend this game. It is like Secret of Mana back in the day, nothing stands out about it, but it's a pretty solid entry for an RPG. If you're looking to introduce someone to RPGs, this would be the perfect game.
4 out of 5 Stars
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