Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga (2022) by Dancing Dragon Games

The Nephilim Saga is a breath of fresh air for those of us who've spent the past three decades wishing and hoping that turn-based tactics games like Ogre Battle and Fire Emblem would make their way to our beloved PC gaming platform.

PC has long been a platform dominated by real-time strategy and turn-based strategy, but woefully bereft of quality entries in the turn-based tactics subgenre of strategy games. While consoles and handhelds saw the fantastic Fire Emblem, Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, and Final Fantasy Tactics series flourish, we watched from afar. Total War, Starcraft, Command and Conquer are fine games, of course, but there's just something about a good turn-based tactics game that scratches the itch like none other for those of us who love the subgenre.

Enter Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga. This game brilliantly blends Ogre Battle's classic squad-based unit formation with Fire Emblem's general aesthetic and grid map, and it does it wonderfully. There is something superbly satisfying about building your squads and then watching them in action. If you've played a Fire Emblem game before, you will more or less know what to expect here. If you haven't, but you're looking for a solid turn-based tactics game, The Nephilim Saga will be a good place for you to start.

There are a number of complaints I have with the game, though. This game is the first in a new series by a small indie developer, and it shows in some respects. Although the sprite art in the combat screens is absolutely fantastic and certainly inspired by the old GBA Fire Emblem games, and the Sage Frontier-esque super-deformed narrative sprite art is quite compelling, there are certain instances in which the art direction of the game falls well below the standard set by many gorgeous indie titles of the modern day. A prime example is the character portrait art that pops up during narrative scene alongside speech boxes. It is so amateurish that it looks more like a Playstation-era render of a player character; very plain, very wooden. It pulled me out of the narrative so strongly that I wished I had the option to turn off the portraits and just leave a plain speech box, so I could instead focus on the sprite characters. I hope there eventually is an option to turn them off, or a mod to replace the character portraits with better art.

Although the sprite art in the combat screen is really phenomenal and gives you a distinct appreciation of promoting your units, the animation is unfortunately quite limited. Fire Emblem had a real weighted feel to its animations; watching a General attack in the old GBA Fire Emblem games led you almost to feel the weight of their armor and the power of their swing. Unfortunately The Nephilim Saga lacks this same sort of satisfaction; it settles instead for flinging its characters across the screen and having them whack lightly at their enemies, which is a bit disappointing considering how good the sprite art is otherwise.

In addition to this, the user interface is really poor. It's extremely ugly and very clunky to use. There is no option to set resolution, leaving the player only fullscreen, large window, or small window. Additionally, there is no way to rebind keys, which is unfortunate. But even more damning is that there is no way to view keybinds at all, leaving the player to blindly stumble their way through what the controls are in the first place. It took me ages to figure out how to scroll down the right side of the screen in the Tutorial screen, for example. The mouse wheel being functional would be another nice thing to see.

I would also like to see some achievements added. This is a relatively minor complaint, but the achievements we currently have are rather limited and bland, and having some quirky ones thrown into the mix would be a delight for a game as challenging as The Nephilim Saga has it in itself to be.

Despite these complaints, this game has it where it counts. It's got a lot of heart and it gives you the strong dopamine kick that comes along with turn-based tactics in the form of building your units, promoting them into utterly bad-ass looking high-level sprites, and granting you the satisfaction of a proper strategy working out well. There is also the option to turn on permadeath, a la Fire Emblem, should one prefer it.

This is a fantastic first effort and I look forward to future developer support in the form of patches to smooth out some of the rough edges, and I sincerely hope that this series sees some sequels down the road, because this is a greatly enjoyable game once you get past some of its quirks. Rejoice, turn-based tactics fans, the subgenre has finally come to PC!

⭐⭐⭐

Citizen Sleeper (2022) by Jump Over The Age

Citizen Sleeper is regularly compared to Disco Elysium and is undoubtedly inspired by the 2019 title, but I'm not so sure the two really benefit from being compared. They share similarities, of course; they are both focused on exploring the pitfalls of post-modern social organization and how human connection can serve to sustain us in times of hardship, and both are strongly inspired by pen-and-paper roleplaying games. And both clearly have an emphasis on telling impactful, emotional, human-centered stories—which is ironic, considering Citizen Sleeper's player character is not human. But Citizen Sleeper has its own vibe and does its own thing; it lacks Disco Elysium's penchant for bleak humor, and is far more cerebral throughout than Disco Elysium is.

I did have a few complaints regarding Citizen Sleeper's writing, which aims high but falls into its own rough patches here and there. In certain instances its writing team seems curious hateful of the comma, resulting in oddly paced, juddering prose and dialogue that reads stiltedly. This isn't a regular thing, but when it does pop up, it's extremely noticeable. Additionally, Citizen Sleeper falls prey to several instances of writing gaffes, including on of my least favorites: The all-time video game classic, "this is only a twist because two characters didn't have a simple 30-second discussion which would have naturally occurred by any human being who wasn't dumb as a rock". These criticisms being said, the writing does meet par quite frequently and is enough to keep the player motivated and continuing onward. I found some of the characters quite likable and their subplots, for the most part, threw in a few interesting twists and turns I didn't see coming. The writing hits it high points where it matters, though: In its endings. The multiple endings are superbly constructed and all leave the player reeling from the emotional impact. One of them, in particular, is a clear high-water mark for the game in terms of writing, in my opinion, and left me near tears.

Writing is a touchy subject. Some folks demand it, others don't care either way, and it's intensely subjective. Overall, Citizen Sleeper is well-written—for a video game—and the effort places it in the upper echelon of games, though probably not among the all-time greats such as Disco Elysium, which it seems doomed to be compared to.

In general I greatly enjoyed my time with Citizen Sleeper. It succeeds mostly on account of the way it crafts its resource scarcity early in the game, and allows the player to eventually learn enough to scale up and overcome it, giving a real sense of progress and agency in its world. In the beginning, the player is a dirt poor refugee, barely scraping by, their body literally decaying as they slowly starve to death, living in an empty shipping container. And the game succeeds in using its mechanics to make the player feel this pressure. There were several moments early in the game when I was barely scraping by, and more than once I had the distinct feeling of "Huh, so I'm gonna lose this run, huh? That's OK, hopefully I'll learn enough for a second run." But I never saw a game over screen. I'd skirt by, by the skin of my teeth, barely making it through. Whether or not there even are game over screens, I don't really know. But it doesn't matter. That feeling of tension and pressure is crafted carefully enough just by what's happening to the player character and in the narrative that I didn't really need the threat of a fail state to keep me immersed and impacted by what was happening.

Illustrator Guillaume Singelin's hand drawn art is also superb. Each character illustration is so deeply woven I'd find myself staring at them for a few minutes when introduced to a new character. Their faces are relatively minimalistic, but their outfits, their gear, their clothing are given so much depth in detail that I couldn't take my eyes away. The bold lines, the muted color palettes were just wonderful. I understand the benefits of the developers using polygons, but very early on I found myself wishing they had gone all-out and hand-drawn the entire game. It's that good. The art in this game is to die for. I can't say enough about it.

There's a very careful attention to crafting its mood that I often appreciate in games I love. Its quiet, sparse polgyonal visual ambience certainly carries a lot of the weight, but Amos Roddy's excellent original soundtrack picks up the slack otherwise. The muffled, minimalist music glows in the background, floating alongside the player as they make their way through each cycle. Each song is mellow and more than a bit sad, but with minor upturns in note that leave the player feeling hopeful more often than not. It suits the game exceptionally well.

The only criticism I can level at Citizen Sleeper's atmosphere is that it often feels intensely lonely. This is obviously often by design; your Sleeper lives alone and a large part of the game is creating human connections for the player character, which is great! But there are also scenes in which we are meant to be on a crowded space station, packed with writhing masses of the working class as they go about their day. In these scenes I felt a jarring disconnect with the game, as there is only ever what is basically a permanent establishing shot camera view of the exterior of these buildings from space, and Singelin's art—although wonderful—typically only depicts one or two characters on the screen at a time. So while my mind's eye attempted to picture the crowded tubes and walkways my player character was moving through, and the loud, packed bars and restaurants in which the scene was taking place, but my actual eyes were constantly hampering the experience by resting on a static shot of the outside of a gray, dead building floating through space, accompanied by only one character portrait on the screen. Again: I know why developers use polygons, but it would have been nice to have had some hand-drawn backgrounds done by Singelin for these scenes that actually gave us a detailed view of how crowded these places actually are.

In summary, what begins as a relatively straightforward pen-and-paper-inspired RPG eventually allows the player to peel away its layers to reveal a surprising amount of depth both in its mechanics and its narrative, and a heart and careful attention to mood at the center of it all ensures that the game is utterly worthwhile, even if it doesn't surpass the high water writing marks set by other games in its genre. It's not the best RPG out there, but it's so promising a title I find myself hoping the developers continue to build on this foundation with an eventual sequel. I need more of this art and more of this world. Highly recommended.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 27 hours

Vampire Survivors (2021) by poncle

The indie scene is so strong for video games right now. For every complaint one might hear about predatory practices in AAA gaming, failed promises, broken launches, abuse of fear-of-missing-out mechanics, there's a small indie game which comes along that completely blows one's mind in its compelling simplicity. Vampire Survivors—which is basically Castlevania meets Cookie Clicker with some bullet hell aesthetics thrown in the mix—is a prime example of the golden age of indie games we're currently finding ourselves in.

Vampire Survivors was probably never meant to be anything profound. Although surely the developer has labored a great deal over the balance, it's a relatively simple game. It appears to be a bullet hell, but in reality, there's very little twitch input required from the player. Your player character fires off their attacks automatically so you're tasked mostly with choosing which upgrades and build paths to pursue, while occasionally moving the player character around the map in order to avoid enemies. Enemies have no projectile attacks of their own; they're relegated to contact damage only, which is a great choice that ends up facilitating this more passive style of playing. So describing this as a bullet hell game, while it might appears accurate from the game's aesthetics, is not really all that accurate. This is a more passive, casual experience in which you are mostly tasked with planning rather than taxing your mechanical skill as a player.

Personally, I love that. I'm not a huge fan of bullet hell, and roguelikes are often unappealing to me because I dislike their randomness and the lack of any permanent, long-term upgrades most roguelikes eschew in favor of appealing to the crowd which prefers RNG and chance coming together to facilitate a successful run. Vampire Survivors does have a built-in permanent progression system of unlocking stages, player characters, weapons, and permanent passive upgrades. This all serves to dampen what I dislike about roguelikes, and drew me in to Vampire Survivors even further.

In the beginning you'll find yourself mostly bewildered as you experiment with new weapons and tactics, but as you grow more familiar with the game you'll begin to gravitate toward specific playstyles, and putting together the pieces and acquiring evolutions becomes intensely addictive and rewarding.

If any of this sounds the least bit compelling to you, then take a shot on Vampire Survivors. Although it's in Early Access, I believe the game currently offers more than enough to warrant the $3 USD price tag, and I'm shocked the developer has kept the game at such a low price. It's an absolute steal with at least twice as much value as the current price tag, so there's really nothing to suggest against purchasing this. I'd go even further and urge anyone considering this game to jump on it now before the developer comes to their senses and raises the price.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Playtime: 40 hours