![]() ![]() Having to piece together a character’s birthdate or locker combination in order to move on can seem tedious at best, and absolutely maddening when you’re just trying to move the story forward. This results in a gaming loop that is halted only by strange puzzles that can be difficult to figure out from the ambiguous hints left around on a floor. A repetitive formula: unlock a new area, get a new character, learn their story, defeat another bad guy’s ideals, dethrone the baddie, and again from the top. ![]() While the story itself is quite immersive, there is a bit of suffering when it comes to pacing – and you can’t progress past a certain point without significant grinding. Fiends are incredibly customizable and you can unlock more cosmetic options as you progress through the game, including body types, hair, armor, voices, and more. While the party member abilities are locked, switching in your fiends can also impact the flow and tide of battle, allowing you to choose from a buffing type, a debuffer, long distance striker, or a more melee approach, for example. Different party members and fiends will round out your team and influence your play style rather heavily. ![]() The unique combat of classic turn-based battling is spun with a movement mechanic, allowing players to line up attacks and even hit enemies from behind for a boost to their accuracy. Where Dragon Quarter failed, Monark seems to only succeed. ![]() The combat system was incredibly familiar to me from the get-go and reminded me deeply of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, the ill-fated fifth entry in another popular RPG series. Spending Spirit to unlock and enhance abilities on your player characters and fiends alike will see you getting the upper hand in most battles. The more fiends you get access to, the more you can tailor combat to your liking. Eventually, as your growth in these areas improves, the player will unlock more fiends to use alongside themselves in battle, which opens up a variety of different play styles depending on how you plan to use them. The player can continue to grow using more psych tests along the way, each one adding a little bit to your 7 Sins depending on how you answer. As Ideals from these Pactbearers are to be shattered and taken down, so that more areas clear and the students can breathe a little better without the influence of oppressive ego. Our fiends may not be able to benefit from Awakening, but they can be directed into groups of enemies as they reach pique Madness as a bit of a tactical mission (which they may just happen to die on.) More on fiends, shortly.Īs we move through the opening act, taking down the Pactbearers seems the logical course of action to rid the Academy of the surrounding barrier and the mist that hangs on each affected floor. Awakened status for our heroes works similarly, just with the ability to retain control of the character as they lay waste to their enemies. While this can be used tactically, the character will no longer be able to be controlled and will attack the closest entity, be they friend or foe, with increased stats. Over using the Authority will result in a character reaching a state of Madness, where the character has used Authority attacks and built up enough passive Madness over the course of an excursion to reach 100% and go completely berserk. Balancing the use of these powers becomes incredibly important, and players used to using MP for casting spells will rely on a couple of special gauges to keep their usage under control. After gaining our own Pact, we are capable of continuing to grow our own ego and ideals, along with a unique power: Authority.Īuthority is an incredible power, boosted by your ego. After agreeing to help Nozomi find out what is causing the mist and why the Student Council is acting so weird, the player finds that the new Student Council leader is something called a Pactbearer – a being with strong Ideals that has made a pact with a strong daemon, a Monark to be precise. The main story is pursued not unlike any other RPG: talk to NPCs, explore a new area, solve a puzzle or two and fight the good fights that lead to the next boss and unlock even more areas to explore and people to meet. After gaining your bearings, the player is introduced to the Student Council and its ousted former leader, Nozomi Hinata. Rankings based on the Seven Deadly Sins will show your corresponding stats from the outset, and will determine which type of fiend you unlock first to fight at your side. Opening with a psychological test, the game will throw a variety of questions at the player that decides their opening stats. ![]()
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