You're gonna have more holes than a beehive!
The JRPG genre has been pretty stagnant in my opinion since it's heyday through the PS1/PS2 era. Resonance of Fate still maintains a lot of that feel - you explore various town areas, talking to NPCs that say really weird, off the wall stuff, you visit shops, and you get into random encounters with strange looking monsters that look like they were pulled out of an M.C. Escher painting. And of course the plot ascends to the highest levels of ridiculousness, and yes, there is much talk of God.
That being the case, Resonance of Fate still offers a slightly modified experience to that of a normal JRPG. Most of the difference comes from the battle system, which I won't even attempt to describe in depth here. Suffice it to say that instead of magic, swords, and summons, your group uses only handguns, machine guns, and grenades to get the job done. The action is all very cinematic, and involves flipping through the air, doing action rolls, and various other ridiculous stunts on the part of your characters. Don't be fooled, however - this is anything but a shooter or an action game. The battles are turn based, and somewhat resemble a strategy RPG like Final Fantasy Tactics. You move your characters around the field and tell them who to attack, using what weapon, etc.
There are a number of meters and gauges that you MUST pay close attention to at all times during combat, and the complicated nature of the setup makes the game surprisingly challenging. Thankfully, more often than not, the challenge is the kind that is rewarding rather than annoying, and I enjoyed how the game allowed me to push my performance forward to a point where I was comfortable for just long enough before it smacked me back down, taunting me to figure it out this time.
Resonance of Fate also has a few other notable aspects outside of the usual JRPG formula. One area that I thought worked particularly well was the leveling system. Your character's total level is the addition of 3 sub categories: handgun, machine gun, and thrown weapons. Those sub categories level independently as you deal damage with each type, so while no experience is directly given by defeating an enemy, your characters level as they damage things. Your total level determines your characters health, and how much weight they can carry, but the sub levels determine how lethal you are. This gave an interesting twist to the debate of "Should I focus on one weapon type and be really awesome with it, or go for a nice balance to be more versatile and durable?".
I also really enjoyed the gun customization aspect, where you place your gun on a Resident Evil 4 style grid, and attach scopes, barrels, clips, hand guards, and whatever else you find in the most ridiculous ways you can think of. I literally had a machine gun with 7 barrels and probably 5 scopes, and that was amusing as well as helpful in combat. I also felt that the over world was more interesting than pretty much any other JRPG I've played. The game takes place on a giant mechanized tower above the remains of what used to be Earth, but in order to get from A to B, you have to restore power to different sections of the tower. This manifests itself in a large, multi-leveled hexagon grid that you travel across. As you progress through the game, you find different shapes and sizes of energy hexes that you use to restore power and progress around the world. This is both necessary to reach story missions, and also a rewarding way to unlock side missions, find hidden items, and unlock terminals which can be used to spread helpful effects around the map.
Ok, so all that stuff is great, but Resonance of Fate certainly isn't perfect. While I really enjoyed the characters, and felt that they had interesting back stories, and even though I thought the setup of the world was neat and different, the plot of this game is not only badly written, it is poorly presented in small, incoherent chunks. I honestly cannot tell you what this game was actually about outside of the character's personal struggles, and I think the intent was for there to be much more than that. The combat system, as fun and innovative as it is, also suffers from a lack of variety in enemies and environments, and the enemies across the board lack diversity in their tactics. They will just sit in one spot and fire at you as you flip around the field, and with all the movement that your characters undertake, you'd think they could be a bit more mobile.
Holy crap, this is a long review. There is still a whole lot more I can say about Resonance of Fate, but I think the main points are all given here. I thoroughly enjoyed my 60 hours with Resonance of Fate, but it is a game for a very specific set of people, and anyone who doesn't like JRPGs, or a serious challenge, should run and hide. For me though, its few problems and quirks did not even come close to overcoming its strengths, and I say bravo to the good folks at Tri-Ace.
