My favorite shared aspect of a number of Indie RPGs I've played in the recent past, this week's Battle Chasers: Nightwar included, is they're built with a certain degree of restraint borne partially of the developers' limited resources and time. Because every monster encounter and party member and dungeon location takes time to plan out and balance, the developers have to keep the game's design as lean and deliberate as possible, and this does wonders for mitigating the amount of fluff and grind that often drags out a twenty-hour story into an eighty-hour RPG odyssey. I don't have too much of a problem with long games - my parsimonious nature would prefer I make the absolute most out of a purchase before replacing it, as true for games as it is for tubes of toothpaste or clothes that haven't completely fallen apart - but there's no denying the appeal of this slimmer and more "all-killer, no-filler" approach to RPG design.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar, based on Joe Madureira's '90s dark fantasy comic about a group of ragtag warriors beset from all sides, isn't quite as svelte as, say, a Zeboyd game but exhibits the same attitude about maintaining a level of challenge that carefully adjusts itself as your party advances in level and acquires new abilities and skills in their repertoires. It's also inspired to some extent by more technical JRPGs like Bravely Default or Megami Tensei, in that the player should be looking towards maximizing their damage output with a mixture of charge moves, buffs, and debuffs, synergizing with their team and taking into account what their current opponents can do. Though the game has six characters, they essentially occupy three roles between them - tank, healer, and DPS - and while it should suffice to have those three roles occupied at all times, the true gains come with figuring out specific strategies with the team you have. For instance, using one character to hit an enemy with a "sundered" debuff then following it up by having a different character use a skill that specifically targets those with the sundered status for extra damage. As characters level up and gain other abilities, along with passive boon "perks" or the limited "burst" abilities that are strong enough to change the tides of a battle, there's more variables for the player to juggle once they've grown accustomed to the basics. One innovation the game's combat system features is "overcharging," which accrues bonus mana after less-powerful "actions" which can then be spent on the stronger specials without drawing from your finite mana pool, though you can always cast the more potent stuff from the outset if a precarious situation - like a boss fight - demands it.

While the battle system is deep enough with its versatility and carefully-considered difficulty curve, the rest of the game is no slouch either when it comes to determining the best way to frame its original story and deliver what appeals most to RPG fans: exploration and treasure. To that effect, the game has these partially procedurally-generated dungeons that are comprised of multiple pre-generated nodes connected together in a random fashion with a random assortment of treasure, enemy encounters, fast-travel teleporters, lore, and even places to fish. Battle Chasers also adopts more contemporary methods of "gamification", awarding the player for multiple milestones with in-game global passive gains, like a party-wide attack boost for eliminating fifty enemies of the "beast" category or a rare curative for completing a connected set of lore entries. Dungeons can be configured to be as tough as you'd like, with the highest difficulty resetting the entire dungeon if your party should fall partway through, and there's ample opportunities for crafting new gear or healing items with the materials you keep finding if you've hit a wall, though it might also just mean a change in tactics is in order. It feels like a fully-featured RPG, and a moderately lengthy one too, without either overstuffing or excising the content that matters.

Finally, you have the game's excellent presentation. It's very much in tune with its comic book roots, with fonts and styles for its speech bubbles that is very reminiscent of its original medium - similar to how Marvel Ultimate Alliance or Freedom Force delivered its narration - with some wonderfully-animated and chunky (in a Torchlight sort of way) cel-shaded character models and static images for its interstitial cutscenes inspired by the source material. The unfortunate side-effect of creating this cross-media side-story within a much larger narrative is that it doesn't provide the characters an opportunity for a whole lot of personal growth or furthers their own stories out of respect for the comic book arcs, and a fifty-hour-plus RPG plot without that sort of character development can make it challenging to maintain the player's interest. I also suspect a big difficulty spike is on the horizon where I'm at in the game, with enemy damage growing to the point where I really have to rely on tanking and healing more, and thus must the face the reality of longer, drawn-out internecine combat. Still, the game's various hooks are compelling enough for now that I'm going to stick with it, for a little while longer at least.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)

Did they ever patch in a battle speed slider?

The game was really cool, but I also remember my main issue with it being that the combat encounters started to drag more and more as the game went on with most time just spent watching the animations. Eventually I had to resort to using Cheatengine to x2 and x4 the game speed in order to remain sane on the road to finishing it (without that option I was considering putting it down).

Oh man, I don't know, but I hope so because I got this on the Xbox and I fell off because I just couldn't take the slow speed of the grind. I'd give it another shot if I could speed things up.

This game is good as heck and absolutely worthy of anyone who wants a battle focused Super Mario RPG-like. Though, the last boss suuuuuuuuuucks.

Been meaning to play this one for a while, but it keeps getting pushed back on my list. Good to hear it'll be a good time when I eventually get to it, though. Good read, mento.

Just beat it on Steam and it's a damn fine game.

Get it on Switch!