Yggdra Union: When Ideas And Ambition Exceed Execution

We've now descended beyond the surface of the Sting video game iceberg. Baroque certainly isn't a name with universal cachet, but it's well enough known in diehard JRPG circles that it only needs a brief introduction for those "in the know." Riviera: The Promised Land, as I discussed last time, has been re-released enough times and resembles a normal-ass video game enough that it, too, bobs ever so close to the top of the iceberg. But Yggdra Union? No, now we're jumping into true "sicko shit." The only people who remember this game or will come out of the woodwork to defend it are a special type of JRPG fanatic, and to be honest, I'm one of them, as, at least to me, this game speaks to an era or type of JRPG that does not exist anymore. Other than the biggest names in the video game industry or random indie developers on itch.io, where can one see a mainstream developer on an established platform or marketplace look at the template and blueprint for the RPG genre, grab it, immediately throw it out the window, and replace everything considered established genre norms with the most random amalgam of bullshit? It's simply unheard of these days!

Good to see a game for once that supports unionization in the gaming industry!

If any of you reading this article end up taking up the challenge of playing Yggdra Union, I strongly recommend you at least check out the Beginner's Guide on the Steam Forums. Even the author of that guide correctly points out that, despite the game's nearly two- to three-hour tutorial sequence, Sting still lets whole game mechanics, gameplay strategies, and concepts slip through the cracks, which can only be discovered through RNG or trial and error. The good news is, like Riviera, the Steam port of Yggdra Union is likely the version you should get. This version improves the mobile game, which was an updated version of the PSP port, which was an updated version of the original GBA release. The Steam release allows you to undo moves without resetting an entire battle or chapter and, more importantly, lets you unequip items, which the GBA version didn't allow. In the GBA version, once you gave a piece of equipment to a character, they were locked into using it with no recourse, which leads to a lot of min-max save-reloading for absolutely no goddamn reason. Likewise, the original game didn't even display enemy HP on the combat screen when you attacked them, which is a really dumb design decision from Sting. All those points aside, Yggdra Union is a game Sting clearly has a lot of fondness for, since they've made multiple efforts to bring it to new platforms and consoles, and the game also has three spin-offs: Yggdra Unison, Blaze Union, and Gloria Union. The first is set in an alternate universe and features twelve protagonists vying for your attention; the second is a prequel to the original game; and the third features pirates and has nothing to do with Yggdra Union even the slightest bit.

But what will really throw anyone who plays Yggdra Union for a loop is its bizarre genre mishmash of ideas. It's a grid-based tactical RPG, but the grid is displayed like a Metroidvania world map, with the spaces characters and enemies occupy being color-coded squares, with their entrances and exits marked as small appendages. Possibly because Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and the Pokémon TCG were huge at the time of its development, your movement depends on cards you draw from a deck. Oh, and your movement is shared across all your characters, so if you bring a low-value card into a map and realize you need to retreat quickly after miscalculating, you might be fucked. Beyond tying your movement range to cards, what most reeks of TCGs is that you can only attack once per turn, no matter how many units you still have standing on the map. Do you have four units against one during the final phases of battle? Hopefully you can merge them all into a powerful union, because otherwise you'll probably spend two to three turns chasing them down just to end the match. The combat relies on attacking and counter-attacking, and it liberally draws inspiration from Advanced Wars. Seriously, look at some of the screenshots below and tell me someone on Yggdra Union didn't play Advanced Wars at some point; I double-dog-dare you. But instead of Advanced Wars' beautiful simplicity, charges and counter-attacks depend on your character's stats AND a weapon wheel where certain weapons and character classes are more effective against others. Like the Total War franchise, units have scale: large-sized units have only 4 members, whereas standard-sized ones have eight.

Most of your time will be spent looking a screen that looks like this. This is the format for every single battle map.

Yggdra Union has so many oddities that it's hard to know where to start. To highlight one such oddity that really lays out my case that Sting was absolutely off their rocker for trying to do the opposite of what everyone else was doing with the tactical role-playing game genre, consider how you change Durant from his normal Knight class to his elite Dragon Knight class. First, think about how you progress characters toward their advanced class specializations in other mainstream tactical RPGs. Sometimes it's as simple as reaching a level cap or making a choice between one or two class paths or tech trees. Sometimes advanced classes are a bit esoteric and develop after you've sunk points or experience into a variety of skills or character attributes. In Yggdra Union, things depend on your actions with certain characters on specific maps, and those specializations are often limited to only a few in-game battles before characters switch back to their original state. To return to my example of Durant, you first need to use him during Battlefield 43, and JUST THAT BATTLE; then, in the preparation screen at the start of Battlefield 44, you need to equip him with the "Stray Dragon" to trigger his Dragon Knight transformation, and keep in mind, this only lasts for three maps before he reverts to being a normal knight. His ultimate form, which is crucial in beating the final two bosses? Yeah, it's an unexplained upgrade you can completely miss, and worse, it essentially has a timer before you lose it. What the fuck, man?

Sting's Notorious History Of Making The Worst Tutorials In JRPG History

During my article about Riviera, I mentioned that it had a fairly in-depth tutorial that very narrowly avoids being overwhelming the way most Sting tutorials end up being. It also dodged the pitfall that even Baroque makes: not teaching you critical mechanics. From Yggdra Union forward, everything that Sting makes ends up committing every single cardinal sin of bad video game tutorial design. The game structures the first twenty or so missions around communicating essential mechanics, and given how many there are, that's necessary. The issue is that this structure stretches the tutorial to about three to four hours. Because how much of the game outright throws out the tactical RPG blueprint, you actually have to give Sting some credit; they do need to break down how their bespoke movement system works, the process of collecting new and better cards, and how to form Unions. It's just that it takes FOREVER before the game finally lets you use everything it has in its toolbox. The clearest example is its Union mechanic. It's the namesake of the fucking game and the big gimmick it prides itself on, so you might be surprised to learn you complete damn near three to four battles before you get to use it. And even when you do get to use it, one of your characters, Yggdra, is absolute dogshit at leading battles, and you have to be careful not to accidentally kill her because she has so few viable matchups for almost the first half of the game. On top of that, it's an even longer wait until the game unlocks your ability to use skill cards, which are some of the coolest and most powerful abilities in the whole game.

And the fact that some units take to to three attacks before they lose all of their Morale is a real drag.

And yet, despite how long the tutorial is, it outright fails to teach major concepts, or the text is so dense it's easy to miss critical information. One such mechanic appears in the later versions of Yggdra Union: you can unequip items. In these versions, items often work the way they do in Riviera, with a limited number of uses before they break or shatter. What the game does not tell you, or maybe I missed this after the previous tutorial fried my brain with information overload, is that characters can eat items, and doing so right before an item breaks can bestow MASSIVE stat buffs. One example I found involves having Yggdra eat her Silk Corset, which will give her 4,000 Morale, which is downright absurd! Worse, the tutorial doesn't really give you a sense of effective combat tactics or an idea of how to handle advanced mid- to late-game battles, where the game really stacks the odds against you. Handing out your own Break Outs and limiting the number of times enemies gain pips on their Rage Meter, which unlock harder-hitting moves for enemies, is critical. The game doesn't really communicate that every battle is effectively a timed mission, as enemies unlock more devastating attacks you are exponentially less likely to deal with. Other missing information is just bizarre. There's no excuse for the game not mentioning that magic-focused characters like Rosary, Nietzsche, and Roswell add an element to their attacks when they rage, which means they always win mirror matches, or that you shouldn't attack enemy units that are close to achieving a Revolution.

And then there's the game's readability problem. The iconography on each unit's character screen almost necessitates having a cheat sheet on standby. For example, check out Yggdra's stat sheet and tell me what you think it's trying to tell you.

Don't worry, I'll wait for you. Take your time.

Well, the stats are the easiest part to explain, so let's start there. "Gen." improves a character's defense and morale, meaning they can survive more defeats without breaking or retreating from combat. "Atk." improves the damage your character does once they are in combat. "Tec." improves the effectiveness of charges and counter-attacks as well as the Break Out ability of cards. "Luk." improves your critical hit rate AND improves the item drop rules. If you're wondering about the stars, the small stars track your progress toward a new stat point, and only the big stars count toward your stats. That's right: it's actually EASIER to improve your character's stats in the late game, since you have fewer empty slots to fill to get your next pip! And then there's that box with circles and an X in it. That box says Yggdra has a combat advantage on Golems, gets a significant stat buff when standing on a fort tile, and is immune to holy damage but also incredibly weak to dark magic. This is how the game communicates the unit-specific abilities and gimmicks FOR EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER! FUCKING, WHY?!

Gender being a key gameplay mechanic is such a weird addition in this game.

More insultingly, there are concepts the game completely yada yadas which it absolutely should not. The time of day is the example that immediately comes to mind. Battles use a day-night cycle, and the impact this has on the map is no joke. Villagers will only interact with your characters during the day, whereas your necromancer and assassin are far more effective at night. In snowy environments, ice tiles melt during the day, instantly KOing units that cannot fly or swim. And for narrative reasons, almost the entire end-game takes place at night, which means if you're not prepared, your deck will be partially inert without nighttime buffs and bonuses. And then there's treasure! Hidden treasure is only available if you place a unit on a tile and have it sit there for an entire turn. Walking over these tiles will NOT let your character pick up these items, and these tiles are completely uncommunicated to you, which is why I strongly recommend using a guide if you play this game. There are also treasure chests on the map, and unlike any other tactical RPG, once an enemy opens a treasure chest, whatever was in it is gone forever. Killing the enemy that opened it won't let you steal the item back. The game warns you about both of these points, but what it doesn't tell you is that this loot is key to being able to progress the game, as the in-game merchants only sell partial equivalents to what you could pick up on battlefields, and only at exorbitant prices.

So... How Does This Game Play? That's A Tough Question.

Yggdra Union is horribly guilty of ye olde JRPG design foible wherein you can slop through maybe a third of the game without really grasping any of its intermediate or advanced gameplay mechanics. However, lo and behold, a boss or battle will come where, if you still try to slop through the game, it will simply crater your skull. Nevertheless, it is shocking how the first third of the game can be played fairly straightforwardly, with you only really needing to grapple with the Union mechanic and having a few good cards, and nothing more. And before we continue, let's discuss that Union mechanic. When you use it effectively and get all your characters in the right arrangement to one-shot an especially tough unit, it feels great, and the animations are flashy enough to keep your attention. And you'll need to pay attention and not go into autopilot like you would in Advanced Wars or Fire Emblem because the game requires you to switch between one of two combat modes to either press your character's initiative during a battle or to take a more defensive stance, and timing your use of this meter can genuinely switch what would have been a guaranteed loss into a draw or victory. The fact that the Union grids are gendered, with male characters having Xs and female characters having +s, is definitely a weird choice, but one that isn't completely alien to me. But needing to be strategic about where you place units so you can have three stacked units against a lone enemy, or maybe just two, is great when things work as intended.

The fact the cards get more complicated over time just puts more on your already crowded plate.

That last part is the real kicker, by the way. Sometimes you'll misjudge unit placement and force characters into unintentionally bad matchups that then KO them. Some of your units also have unique movement rules, which makes placing them in prime spots incredibly difficult. Roswell is the clearest instance, as he ignores terrain but can only step on every other tile. That leads to the other big problem with Yggdra Union: a lot of its esoteric game design reeks of "The Cones of Dunshire," with shifting rules and limitations you need to memorize, or else certain combat moves will never unlock. Consider the way Skills Cards work. To use these, you'll need to max out the skill gauge by going into Passive Mode for a bit during an attack. Next, hopefully before the battle starts, you checked the Union Leader to make sure they match the "Ace type" of the card you're using during your turn in combat. On top of that, you'll need to see whether any card-specific conditions tie that card to a single character, or whether the card skill can only trigger during nighttime or daytime. But the weirdest rule that again reminded me of "The Cones of Dunshire" is the fact that some card skills, BUT NOT ALL OF THEM, can only do damage if the Union Leader's Tec stat is greater than the enemy's Gen stat; otherwise, the enemy will perfect guard the move, and the skill card ability will do jack shit. Now, thank merciful fuck the Steam version has an undo ability because if there's something I hope you pulled from this article thus far, it's that there are way too many moving parts and shifting stats for any reasonable person to process all at once in Yggdra Union.

To the game's defense, many of its mechanics interlock with others, making most of them unavoidable or recurring elements in your playthrough even if you missed them during the tutorial. Your combat mode bar reminds you of your character's Tec stat and forces you to review your card options before starting your turn. Very often I had to mentally juggle whether a turn would be movement- or attack-oriented, and there's something about that I find oddly interesting. I also thought it was cool that there's no "Defense" skill and losing a battle is just part of the process and isn't the immediate death of a unit. In fact, sometimes sending a unit into a matchup you know they're going to lose is necessary, or an easy way to let them gain experience. It's a decoupling of the tactical RPG genre I was on board with. The card play also falls into that category, but with one major caveat. It's always great to have a new shiny trinket to show for a long battle, but at some point, as is often the case with most card-based RPGs, you do create a deck you're comfortable with or have two or more keystone cards that are just outright better than anything else, and they never leave your deck. I would even say by the game's midway point, you'll likely be mostly settled on which cards you bring into combat, with a few changes here and there depending on the most common tile type of an upcoming environment. Also, huge props to Milanor for being this game's version of Hector. He's a heavy-hitter who can carry bad party compositions for damn near half the game, and he only slightly loses his luster when the main characters start getting the cool shit that makes them the most powerful units in your army.

If this game played like a normal tactical RPG it definitely would be less memorable, but also more fun to play.

But Yggdra Union has too much going on for me to recommend it to most people. On top of everything else I listed, you still have to worry about equipment for each of your units as well as their morale. When the game started talking about how to take advantage of "FATAL Damage," I felt like Homer Simpson with a toy monkey in my head smashing away on cymbals. Apparently, if you match weapon types and their elemental affinities with your character's elemental affinities, their attacks will do way more damage than normal. As with most games of this type, you'll discover this when it's possible and ignore it when it isn't. But what really gutted me about Yggdra Union is that it is a thirty-to-forty-hour RPG that does not justify its length. I get why they limit you to one attack per turn; otherwise, you'd murder every enemy before they get a single attack. But FUCK MAN, it slows even the most basic battles to a crawl, and when more complex forces are at play, assessing your priorities becomes one of the biggest time sinks in every combat encounter. Mentally juggling base stats, combat bonuses for your characters and the enemies, and other short-term and long-term effects is daunting even for the most skilled JRPG aficionado. When reviewing Riviera, I cautioned that those at risk of analysis paralysis should think twice, and I feel like such a fool for saying that when that warning is clearly better suited to this game than to Riviera.

Oh Right, Yggdra Union Has A Story

Yggdra Union's story is deceptive and, in many ways, classic Sting doing what they do best: pulling the rug from under you when you least expect it. The game boots with a flashy anime opening to the tune of a typical J-Pop opening theme, and everything looks like mid-2000s JRPG slop. The game is the second entry in Sting's "Dept. Heaven" franchise, which I should caution is barely a franchise and more a shared anthology of games. Later releases of Yggdra Union make the connection between it and Riviera more overt. The PSP ending shows the Royal Army attacking Ragnarok, the cataclysmic event that sets into motion the world the characters in Riviera exist in. But be warned, the rest of this franchise is a loose confederation of shared proper nouns and parts, with Knights in the Nightmare and Gungnir putting in way less effort to make things a shared universe. And I want to make this clear before I continue: you don't need to memorize the events of Riviera like the back of your hand for the story in Yggdra Union to work. Yggdra Union is enough of a standalone story and experience that you could, though probably shouldn't, play it and only it and get your fill without feeling like you're missing something.

I do think they've done a mostly good job at updating the visuals with the Steam port.

Unfortunately, Yggdra Union really coasts on its tropes and vibes far longer than it should. Like its mechanics, the story stretches to a breaking point in the first half, with most battles becoming one character or unit introduction after another. It also doesn't make a great first impression, with a plucky shonen action-hero bandit helping a princess deal with an assassination attempt and coup. Your party members have interesting backstories, but the game unfortunately pushes them to the periphery and often doesn't resolve their storylines until the last two acts. Too many of these party members also feel like JRPG template characters. You have a grizzled war veteran who joins you after the Empire kills their lover, much like Cyan in Final Fantasy VI. There's a shady assassin type who only joins you because they feel like they owe your main character a life debt after they saved them. The only real novelty in the early stages comes when the game juxtaposes your party with the characters leading the Empire. The game clearly lays out why they're doing what they're doing and makes the point that none of them are insane dictators or evil wizards trying to summon a giant eldritch abomination to destroy the world.

But then the game reaches its final act, and that's when Sting does something genuinely interesting. Near the end of the game, Yggdra largely reclaims her throne and assumes her position in uniting the whole world under her control. And rather than being a benevolent leader, you watch her take power and then immediately become a dictator. Yeah, the cute anime girl on the front of the box art just outright starts committing war crimes in the name of rooting out those who tried to usurp her sovereignty, and she just murders them. There's a branching ending wherein you can force her to continue ruling the world, but under the promise that she will uphold justice, or you can force her to give up her super-powerful sword that has the world on edge to achieve world peace. Nonetheless, we finally have a game that toys with the idea of characters asking, "Were we the bad guys all along?" and definitively saying, "Yes." And this isn't a sudden twist, either. The game eventually peels back some of its saccharine, anime-esque veneer to give you interjections from the forces of "The Empire," and they all make the point that the sword Yggdra carries can blow up the planet or make her a god empress. On top of that, multiple scenes give Yggdra options for how to treat forces that have surrendered to her or what to do with towns or castles that sided with the Empire, and she always opts for a war crime rather than diplomacy or empathy. I really hesitate to say this, but it's kind of cool to watch happen.

Even when the story takes its dark turns, Yggdra Union still has weird interjections of humor like it's trying to be low-rent Disgaea.

Conclusively, Yggdra Union is a game with "ideas." Sting tried things no one before them or after them has ever endeavored with a tactical RPG, and you have to tip your hat to them by default. However, it's just too much video game in a single package. If Sting had limited itself to three core mechanics instead of everything they ended up cramming into this game, it would have been a better playing experience by an order of magnitude. And yet, we still haven't touched the Sting title that really is their most audacious experimental work ever. I know it's fallacious to continue to call this feature "Summer of Sting" when we are well into Fall, but there's one last game I must talk about before the end of the year:

Knights in the Nightmare

Also, if you liked this article, consider giving the podcast I guest on that talked about this game a listen.