izigame.me

If I could rate neutral I would. I suggest get this only on a sale, if you have an FFT itch that needs scratching.

Most of the other reviews here are on point. The story is very mid. It's the age old story of cats versus dogs as written by middle schoolers. There was one line in the game that said no one remembers how the war started and it's probably as dumb as kids fighting on the playground. The story felt that way too.

If you've played FFT or Tactics Ogre, then you know exactly how this game works. So instead of doing a pros/cons list, I'll just list features/mechanics that I were different here.

3 class system
Class system is similar to FFT. You start with the basic classes and unlock more as you level them up. The big difference here is everyone has 3 classes. The main class and sub class, you can pick and switch as usual. What's interesting is each character's unique class is their 3rd class - meaning that class is always active for them.

Each character's main stats and available equipment depends on the main class. You get extra stats depending on the sub class. Both main class and sub class gain cp and level up. The only purpose of leveling up a class is to unlock new classes. When it comes to learning skills, it costs gold instead.

I definitely liked the idea of both main and subclasses leveling at the same time. Using gold to level up skills made it feel that there's no reward in further leveling up a class. Having the unique class always active is a huge plus.

Movement
This deserves a minor mention. Know how sometimes you move a character to a spot just to see what they can hit, then you just hit the undo button and they snap back to their original position? This game has the undo move too. But also you can just keep moving as long as it's within your original movement range. It's a novel idea with the small upside of letting you navigate around environmental hazards. But said hazards are minor inconveniences in this game so it's not really that big of a deal. But this is a feature I'd like to see become the norm in this genre.

MP
This one is similar to Tactics Ogre. Characters start the battle at 0 MP and recover MP each turn. You can increase how much MP you recover using gear/buffs that increase MPR. Your % MPR is what % MP you get each turn. So if you had 100 max MP and 24% MPR, you get 24 MP per turn. The thing is, once your max MP is high enough you can completely ignore MPR and still easily use your highest costing MP skills each turn. This also makes the numerous MP damage skills worthless at that point.

The extra weird thing about it is there are all sorts of weapon upgrades that work on normal attacks only. Except, why would you ever use normal attacks when you can skill spam.

New Game Plus
It's NG+ is the worst. It definitely felt like a lame excuse to extend your playtime. In order to see the "true ending", you have to beat the game once first and then play NG+. You have to do this each for the dog side and the cat side. The abhorrent thing about it is what carries over to NG+. All your equipment, items, and gold carry over. None of your level and more importantly classes carry over. Yes folks, you have to grind those class unlocks all over again and rebuy those skills.

What's sillier is you carry all your gear and gear don't have restrictions on them. So you're walking with near end game weapons as you smack level 1 foes all over again. Since the story branch for the true ending doesn't happen until around halfway in the campaign, it's a whole lot of droning mindless clobberfest as you replay that part of the game for no good reason or enjoyment. Personally, I would have rather they kept class unlocks instead of the gear. At least I would have had fun replaying the earlier stages using different abilities.