Okay, so I only finished one game in June, which is interesting because it's actually a fairly short game. But it works for me because there's a lot about this game that I want to say. As I mentioned before, I wrote a pretty considerable amount about this game that has, as of yet, gone unpublished. It was at a time in my life where I desperately wanted to break free from this malaise that I was feeling about creative output in general. But I was proud of what I wrote, as unstructured and unpolished as it was, because it represented a desire to break free of what I was feeling.
I think that sense of uncertainty, of apathy, of hopelessness--it's anathema to the creative process. But at the same time that creativity is so helpful in banishing those negative feelings, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard. I could have published at that time and I'm sad that I didn't have the wherewithal to do so then. But I will now, on this platform.
Children of Zodiarcs is a very interesting game. Broadly, it is a strategy turn-based RPG not altogether dissimilar to Final Fantasy Tactics in gameplay, but differs a in a lot of important ways. There are cards and there are dice rolls, which add an element of RNG which I'd typically greatly dislike. Some reviewers I read around the time I played this game panned it for its reliance on these random elements, but I have to wonder if these reviewers examined the game in the detail it deserved. I also wonder if they were setting expectations for the game that weren't warranted. To be fair, the game's Kickstarter page openly made comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics, which is a pretty lofty title to aspire to. And it's not the first game to make that mistake.
I have my criticisms of the game, to be sure, but it has so many fascinating elements that I can mostly forgive them. I don't regret my time with Children of Zodiarcs at all, and if there's any principal criticism I can give it, it's that there's not enough of it. It's not a long game and there aren't a lot of things you can do to really experiment with the game's systems. I would have loved to do more with it.
The game features only three playable characters, which of course I don't really dig. Other strategy RPGs that I really like feature a pretty wide cast of playable characters, including the games on which dev Cardboard Utopia was quick to draw comparisons, like Shining Force, Tactics Ogre, and of course, Final Fantasy Tactics. Even games like Fire Emblem and Disgaea afford you with the opportunity to experience a rotating roster of different characters. Zodiarcs instead focuses on three primary characters, but interestingly branches off in a few missions with guest characters over which you have full control but no investment in their growth as characters. You're not customizing them or leveling them up as you are with the primary three. I would have loved if these guest characters were full-featured members of the roster you could build at your leisure.
I would have preferred a little more content in the game in general, to be honest. It's independent developed, and I know resource allocation is a tough thing, but if I'm to examine the game for its strengths and weaknesses, then it's a fair thing to mention. Realistically, the assets necessary for more content are already in the game, though. Those guest characters all have their own skills and acquire new ones as they level--you just have no personal control or involvement in it. I would have felt much more invested in those characters if that was the case.
All of this sounds like heavy criticism for this game, but it really just emphasizes the fact that because I'm so fascinated by the mechanics, I wanted a lot more out of it. Some of the reviews I read even targeted what was described as the game's "paper-thin" plot. I don't personally feel this is an issue at all. Sure, the story is told in broad strokes, but I do feel it was effective. Protagonist Nahmi is a low-born thief skulking around the Shambles, a series of slums below the area where the high-born nobles live. This is a pretty generic statement on class that many games have done before, but what makes it a little more interesting is exactly the path Nahmi takes throughout the game and how she interacts with those she considers allies. Nahmi is pragmatic and willing to do what she must--including dirty work--to rise above the pauper existence she lives. The brash young mage, Brice, who serves as her impromptu sidekick early on in the game feels similarly, but as a contrast to her, is much less careful about how she achieves her goals.
Zodiarcs tackles the conflict between achieving one's goals and doing what is right as well as the consequences for making those decisions. Nahmi is put into a position where everything she is striving for is within reach, but she may lose everything to achieve it, including the support system she has struggled to build while subsisting on scraps in the Shambles. It wasn't a game I felt likely to be emotionally invested in but was surprised at just how much that was the case by the time I finished it.
The plot is certainly interesting, but it wasn't what attracted me to the game in the first place. I'm understandably wary of any game that compares itself to Final Fantasy Tactics, but I wasn't about to fall into the trap of taking those lofty expectations seriously. My expectation upon purchasing the game was "tactical game" and not "game on the level of quality of Final Fantasy Tactics" and I think that was helpful context as I started playing. Like many strategy RPGs I love, Zodiarcs rewards careful positioning and clever combos. It sets itself apart from other games with its customization.
I think a lot of people's eyes glaze over when you mention "card-based combat" because it's a mechanic that pops up from time to time and isn't always done well. I personally love card games, but acknowledge that they don't always mix with RPGs super well, even though I have a secret love for Baten Kaitos. Is it true, though, that the randomness inherent to card games is incompatible with strategy RPG, which reward careful planning and execution? Well, nope. There is ample stragegy involved in card games, as any experienced Magic: the Gathering player will attest. Even just building a deck is an exercise in ensuring what you need to happen will happen. This philosophy is precisely why the customization in Zodiarcs is interesting.
Each of the game's playable characters unlocks new cards as they level up. These cards have a variety of effects but they essentially serve as your characters attacks. No generic attacks exist in Zodiarcs, which is actually kind of nice. Each ability you use in combat has weight and meaning to it. Nahmi's staple attack is Blitz, which deals damage and grants a chance to take an extra turn. In most RPGs, this chance to take an extra turn would be a static percentage or it might be modifiable by your status. In Zodiarcs, there are ways you can absolutely ensure this bonus effect happens, which leads me to discuss the other mechanic in this game that makes me really enjoy it.
I've written before about how I intensely dislike randomness in RPGs, tactical or otherwise, evne in games I really like. I have a gut reaction to things like missing, critical hits, and status effects. It doesn't feel good in Fire Emblem (which features permadeth) to exercise all of your strategic acumen to reach the end of a tough stage and then die suddenly to a critical hit that had a 1% chance of occurring. Theoretically, your characters have that same opportunity to luck out and smash an opponent that's much stronger and that's exciting when it happens, but it's just as unsatisfying when you really need that critical hit to happen for your plans to work and it just doesn't happen, even when you've done everything you can to make it likely that it does.
I brainstormed solutions to the "critical hit problem" at that time and considered a mechanic called Critical Energy, which uses points that build up over time to unleash extra benefits to attacks. Attacks wouldn't normally miss or deal extra damage, but if this extra resource was expended, you could potentially add splashy effects to your abilities or even dodge the attacks of others. The excellent Cosmic Star Heroine has a similar mechanic in its Hyper system. I really like ideas like this because it takes steps to curb an RPG's reliance on randomness. Why, then, would I be wild about a combat system that not only involves randomly drawn cards, but dice-rolling as well? Well, it's because Zodiarcs takes a lot of steps to make sure you have as much control over it as possible.
Cards typically perform a certain function and frequently also feature a bonus effect that triggers based on a dice roll. And do you know what's great about that dice roll? It's not entirely random. It's not percentage-based. Unlike most RPGs in which these calculations are done entirely behind the scenes, Zodiarcs afford the player with the opportunity to physically roll the dice using the analog stick. It feels slightly janky, to be fair, but it is very satisfying to see the dice fall as they may. And you might say "well, whatever--even if you roll the dice, it's still just RNG." And that's partially true. But there's more to it.
I mentioned earlier that Zodiarcs is inventive about the way it handles customization. The primary form of customization lies simply in fine-tuning your characters' decks. You can have anywhere from 3-6 of a particular card in your deck, which makes it more or less likely to draw that particular card when you need it. Just like with Magic and other collectible card games, sometimes it's necessary to include several copies of a particular card to ensure you have it when you need it to execute your strategy. On the other hand, certain cards are more situational and you don't want it to end up in your hand every time. There are even bonus effects on cards that specifically pull a named card from your deck provided you meet certain conditions. This allows you to have maximum control over the randomness. Assuming you plan properly, you can make sure your character functions the way you want every time.
Let's talk about these dice. Just like the cards, these dice can be customized as well. You start out with two of them, but can eventually have six. Each of these dice has six sides, all of which feature different symbols. As you unlock more dice (by clobbering goons), you acquire the ability to customize which symbols appear on these dice. Lower level dice may not allow you to customize many of the sides, but as you progress, you'll be able to customize a lot more and the symbols that appear on them by default will be stronger. This is the other important part of the "controlled randomness" in this game. Although drawing cards and rolling dice are both random events, they are events over which you have control. They're not tied to a static percent figure. It's not "50% chance to get an extra turn," it's "get an extra turn if you roll a star." How do you roll a star? Well, it's partially luck, but it's going to become all but certain if you craft your dice so that you have 1-2 stars per die! And then what happens if you don't roll a star? You're allowed to reroll two of the dice at any point.
Zodiarcs tackles the issue of how frustrating RNG is in RPGs better than almost any other game I can think of. Bad draws exist and bad dice rolls exist, but it equips you with enough tools to fight back against bad luck. It ensures that if you do have bad luck, you were able to take a lot of steps to correct that, which minimizes the frustration of luck ruining your strategy. I cannot say enough about how much I like these mechanics. And of course, stars are not the only symbol on these dice either. You can craft symbols that cause you to draw more cards, deal more damage, reduce counterattack damage, etc. You have other options that allow you to fine-tune what you want your character to do.
This really brings me back to my original point, though, which is that the game lacks content. I absolutely love the toolbox it gives me for building my characters. So much so, in fact, that I desperately wanted to do it with more characters. I want more dice symbols, more cards, more characters. I want character classes, more maps, and secrets. I very much enjoyed the game as a contained experience, but I can see the mechanics (and even the plot) taking it a lot farther than where it went. I can't help but be reminded of I am Setsuna, another short game with an excellent c combat system. That game was even worse in this regard because it was never necessary to explore the depths of that system because there was never hard enough content to warrant it. Zodiarcs doesn't have this issue so much because it's frequently pretty challenging--but it doesn't change the fact that I do want more with which to experiment and more game to play.
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