This is a very, very weird game. Fortunately, it's also a very cool one! At least from what I've played so far.
I read that review just the other day and decided on the spot I had to give it a shot, so I picked it up. Basically, it's a strategy RPG akin to
Final Fantasy Tactics or
Disgaea, except... that it's nothing like those at all. I'll try to describe it as succinctly as I can: take that general gridded-battlefield-SRPG setup, but make the units invincible and mostly stationary, make their attacks differ wildly based on what weapon they use, and then turn the stylus cursor into an incorporeal main character (which they call the Wisp - a soul, more or less) who
can get hit as he attempts to doge bullet-hell attacks from the enemies on the battlefield. It's an SRPG with a shmup thrown over the top of it, really, but saying it like that makes it sound really stupid, when it's actually quite interesting. You're literally battling within the menu system, as it were, as you attempt to get your units to do things. So the enemies are exploding and tossing things around the screen periodically as you're commanding your units to attack them, and you're dodging the madness happening onscreen while you attempt to drag items from the item slots onto your units so they can charge up attacks, etc.
It's really strange, but it's a pretty cool idea that seems to work really well. It's frantic because you're concerned with the actual stats of the allies and enemies on the field, but in just trying to see how Archer 2 over there is doing, you have to dodge stuff to actually get the cursor on him to read his info. Then if you see the perfect opportunity as several enemies move into a row so you can blast them with a powerful longbow attack, you have to get your cursor over to the item bar on the side and drag the weapon back to the character, then sit it on him for a sec so he can charge. Only then you get to watch him do the attack. And baddies are literally loot pinatas that explode into stuff you'll frantically send your wisp around trying to collect, like mana crystals or special items. It then gets more complicated because there are two "modes" you can be in - Law or Chaos. You can only use certain items in one mode or another, and while you can switch it at will, there's a dynamic that penalizes you for letting it sit on one for too long.
As mentioned, nobody has health in the normal sense. There's a timer in the corner that runs whenever you do anything with a character or allow the wisp to get hit with bullets. Thus you have a set number of times you can really charge attacks for each character before the "turn" is over, and taking damage as the wisp will reduce how many attacks you get. Your units do have a health of sorts, but you actually spend it in making attacks, not in taking damage from enemies, and enemy health regen is the big problem, because you'll have to spend more and more of your own unit's vitality to attack if the enemy regens a bunch of HP. And it doesn't reset between battles or anything, your units only get more VIT upon leveling up or getting fused with another character (you're basically commanding an army of ghosts, so you can sacrifice them into one another for boosts, and you can do a similar kind of thing with weapons, which also have a set number of uses before they'll get broken and disappear).
Anyway, it's pretty complicated to describe, but it's quite cool. If the basic idea sounds at all unique or appealing to you, you should give it a look. The art style is really nice, and the music is pretty fantastic. Atlus again came through with a really nice package, so you get a nice-looking outer box for the whole thing, and on the inside is the usual game box plus a music CD with a whole mess of tracks. Not bad at all.
I do really like the art. It's mostly just nice-looking sprites, but the environments and larger character portraits have a very dark, forbidding, and artsy look to them. Almost maybe like an anime-styled
Disciples II.
Sorry about the screens. It's hard to find anything that looks very compelling.
Watch this GameTrailers preview for a better idea of the thing.
