Battle Chasers Review: Just One More Turn.

A girl and her war golem.

Battle Chasers: Night War is a delicate high wire act. It has grand ambitions and a vanishingly small crowdfunded budget. Personally, it's one of the most pleasant surprises in a year filled with them and is definitely on my GOTY list. But it might not be on yours. Let's talk about that.

The burning question is how much repetition, level grinding, material hunting, and palette swapped enemies can you endure for the best turn based combat you may ever ever play? Because I made it 60+ hours over 2 weeks. I fell madly in love with it's combat and mechanics. Going to the ends of it's earth to trick out my party in the best possible gear. That meant replaying dungeons at least once and hunting down all the optional bosses. I can see how some might find that tedious but I liked the ways the game itself tried to change it's pace.

When you start a dungeon you can choose an easy or hard mode. Finishing it on either difficulty gets you a loot box, naturally harder modes get you better loot boxes. Yet it goes deeper than that. Harder versions of dungeons (which are all randomly generated as well) spawn puzzles. Good ones. Miniature adventure game quests that are way more inventive then they need to be. Settling a score between rival weapon dealers, solving decent riddles, programing a war bot to love, and those are just my favorites. They take maybe 5 minutes a piece and were much more meaningful discoveries to me than just another loot chest.

But I'd put up with a lot more just to get to the combat. Which is inexplicably good. Your character's roles are starkly defined. Your tank needs to draw fire, your rogue needs to kill stuff as fast as possible, and your healer... needs to heal. Some deviation from that plan is fine. Gully, the tank, has some neat shielding abilities if Calibretto, the healer, is busy. Garrison, the rogue, can make enemies bleed which can lead to multiple battle winning gambits. There's nothing like watching an enemy bleed out just before he kills one of your own. But too much deviation, like 2 turns worth, can be devastating in the simplest of battles. You can never take your eye off the ball and I love that. I can't say much for the rest of the game's 6 characters. Except for Red Monika but we'll get to her. I had too much fun with the starting 3 to feel like switching up. I also didn't feel like level grinding for characters I hadn't spent my perk point books on.

Speaking of!

The amount of time I've spent on this screen is... abhorrent.

I need to give a shout out to the perk trees. The game's secret sauce that kept me hooked for weeks. They all have 2. Offensive and defensive. Although those seem to just be guidelines. You'll flip back and forth weighing options. Do you go all in on one tree and get mastery bonuses? Or do you trick out your favorite skills by spreading the love around? Certain builds work great for dungeon crawling but are crap for bosses. The opposite is also true. You will never be completely satisfied and yet you are being drip fed perk points constantly. Playing the game smart can get you points faster but not fast enough! The PP economy is genius, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

But as for Red, well the phrase "chain mail bikini" doesn't do her justice. She's a relic from a darker time. She's an obnoxious pin up that chafes with the rest of the game's glowing design choices. I know this is based on a comic book series from the early 2000's, but jeeeeeze. Can't I get her to equip a sweater? Or some pants?!

Regardless, this is a damn fine RPG from Kickstarter and all that entails. The end game nearly collapses under the weight of a thousand palette swaps and the final boss disappoints. But Battle Chasers was really all about the journey and I had a hell of a time. A solid number score escapes me, but I would have gladly coughed up $50 for it. If and when they start crowdfunding a sequel I am DOWN.

Now who wants some wallpaper?