Perception is an interesting thing. What one person may see as a good thing, the person sitting next to them may see it as a crime against humanity. The reason I say this is because I looked at the box for Resonance of Fate, the latest RPG from TRI-ACE and SEGA, and perceived game that is very Japanese and not Final Fantasy and therefore a game that is not very good. Oh, how wrong I was.
Resonance of Fate tells the story of Vashyron, Zephyr and Leanne, three hunters in the world of Basel – a giant city built around a large central core that houses the remnants’ of human kind. The setting is one of the most evocative and interesting worlds to ever be placed in an RPG and sets the scene for a great game, though unfortunately one that will fly under the radar of most people.
The game’s brilliance, however, is not easily apparent. The opening cut scene sets up a very cool world, as close to a playable high octane Anime film as your ever likely to see, but the initial excitement fades quickly when the game kicks off proper and gives absolutely no instruction or direction about what to do.
If you leave the starting area and end up outside of the town, vulnerable to random encounters, you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed and unable to figure out why your characters cant attack or what the battle mechanics are. Indeed, I lost a good hour of progress because I was killed during a fight I couldn’t figure out, and there were no instructions on how to save either. This information could be in the games manual, but the review copy I played was devoid of such items so that was useless.
Upon starting over, I was able to find the Arena, which just so happened to have an NPC who controlled the tutorials for combat and how the world works. A couple of hours later I was starting to get a feel for navigating the hub world and blasting through combat with only myself to blame when I died.
Resonance of Fate is like no other RPG. There are monsters of course (that includes the obligatory slime creature), but not one character uses swords or magic – its all about the guns. This makes for a hugely refreshing change and makes the universe much more grounded while making the action – rather strangely – more visceral and entertaining that other RPG’s.
The combat system is, and this is being nice, complex. This provides two things: a great feeling of satisfaction when you absolutely tear through foes in a few seconds flat, and, secondly, a large amount of frustration when you can’t. This is due to the fact that the system is so complex it can be difficult to remember how each part of it works, and this will then put you in a position where a simple move has put your characters in harms way of several enemies and there is nothing you can do while they pound that character until the chilling words ‘Critical Condition’ appear on screen and all attacks are halved in power and your characters can actually die.
As I said though, when you remember what everything does and how best to utilize the system, tearing through foes is a blast. The game uses the Tri-Attack battle system (patent pending, I think), which means when one of your characters moves between the other two you rack up a ‘Resonance Point’ and building up enough of these allows you to unleash a powerful tri-attack where all three characters run in a triangle and just pound an enemy into the ground. It really is great when you can end encounters in a few seconds by hitting enemy leaders with everything you have, while also pirouetting through the air in a deadly ballet of gunfire and wisecracks. There is nothing to match it.
There can be some great banter between the characters during fights, and there is a great sense of humour here, with Leanne saying something relatively innocent like ‘Do you want me on offence or defence?” and Vashyron countering with ‘Leanne goes both ways, good to know’. If you like quick witted characters, Vashyron is certainly one of the best and that may in no small part be due to the fact Nolan North provides his voice.
The graphics in Resonance of Fate are a little strange. For the most part they are fantastic, especially in the animation and cut scene departments, but when travelling around towns and dungeons, there can be a strange white outline to some of the backgrounds and characters. It is forgivable, but it is also noticeable to enough to make me mention it here. The art style is very different from something like Final Fantasy, with a dirty and gritty feel that, again, makes the whole game that little bit more grounded and can really draw you in.
The sound is great as well, with the voice acting fitting the lip syncing and ambient noises really fitting the world. Weapons pack a real punch and battles sound fantastic, adding to the already fantastic visuals to really give off a cinematic gun battle in progress. The voice samples can repeat at an irritating rate however, which does distract from the overall experience.
I said earlier that the combat system is complex, and to be honest, that extends to every facet of the game. The world is broken up into hex grids that must be laid down into order to move around, so you can travel to a part of the city and not be able to go anywhere apart from the lift that took you. That’s until you earn ‘Energy Hexes’ which are dropped by enemies in battle. Then there are special hexes with specific colours that must be used to open new towns and dungeons as well as activate terminals that confer different effects such as reducing enemy encounter rate by half. There is another type of hex as well that allows you to save and rest when away from your base but that can only be activated on specific hex types. Like I said, it’s complex.
There are the standard RPG staples of elemental weaknesses and weapons and ammo that deal elemental damage here, but it rarely becomes much of a problem if you don’t use those weapons. The most intriguing thing about the genre regulars is the experience system, which this game uses to unique effect for levelling up. While characters gain experience through performing actions, weapons gain experience as you use them, and the sum total of the three available weapon types’ experience combine to make your character grow.
This means that one character may have all of their experience from using one weapon, which means that it will take much longer to level up. However, if you swap their weapon from say a handgun to a machine gun, they can jump four or five levels in just two battles because their machine gun experience was so low. Again it’s complex, but it doesn’t take long to figure that in order to maximise a characters potential, you have to keep changing their weapons every so often.
Overall, Resonance of Fate is single handily one of the most complex, stylish, visceral, funny and down right great RPGs I have ever played. The few early problems give way to an engrossing story and universe that provides something genuinely fresh and unique in the crowded RPG market and, though not for the faint hearted, it will provide a great gaming experience to any willing to give it a try. It is with a heavy heart then that I concede that most people will pass this one by in favour of more well known RPG’s, but I highly recommend that they dont, for they will be missing a great RPG that surpasses many of its kind.