Battle Chasers: Nightwar

A gorgeous RPG, with expansive randomly generated dungeons, compelling combat, unique characters, and an amazing soundtrack. Teleportation across maps and within dungeons encourages exploration, and the ability to select dungeon difficulties, as well as the fact that essential game elements, such as crafting and fishing, can only be done inside dungeons creates meaningful replayability and naturally sends you crawling through completed dungeons again and again. Featuring animated comic panels, and avoiding long-winded lectures about history and lore, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an indie game which delivers a top-tier JRPG experience.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a good, surprisingly polished callback of a game that replicates a lot of the feel of classic JRPGs without bringing along most of their flaws for the ride. I have no idea how appealing it is to anyone who didn't spend 40-hour chunks of his childhood on Final Fantasy III, but for me, it's a pleasant combination of modernity and nostalgia. That's a tricky combination to pull off.

An excellent modern nod towards the likes of Final Fantasy, and a beautifully drawn, masterfully animated feast for the eyes. [12/2017, p.72]

Battle Chasers: Nightwar took all the familiar elements of Japanese role-playing games, removed the annoying parts like time-consuming grinding and random encounters, and polished the rest.

Battle Chasers is a game full of attractions that will last for more than 40 hours of fun. It's not important whether you noticed Joe Madureira's new game because of its jRPG heritage, its connection to a series of comic books or its extremely pretty graphics. All these reasons are good, because the game is good. Very good.

Atmospheric and very beautiful dungeon crawler with thrilling tactical and complex round-based strategy battles in a lively cartoon world.

The fact that sometimes you just can’t avoid grinding dials back the excitement, but doesn’t kill it. Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a fun game with extraordinary graphics, a real treat to a fan of the genre. [Issue#226, p.36]

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a gorgeous, challenging RPG that’s light on story but big on tactically satisfying battles.

Behind the generic title hides a more than decent dungeon crawler with influences from JRPG and a very distinctive comic art-design. If Airship Syndicate would have ironed out the difficulty spikes it would have been even better.

Quotation forthcoming.

Outside of the unorthodox pairing of gameplay and presentation, Battle Chasers: Nightwar isn't that remarkable of a game on paper. Many of the mechanics are largely borrowed from other games and the narrative merely exists to move the party from one dungeon to the next -- practical but not altogether captivating. That stated, Nightwar is a game that ends up slightly more than the sum of its components, partially due to the novelty of the package as a whole, and (admittedly) somewhat due to the nostalgia of the turn-based rpg at its core.

The grinding nature of Battle Chasers: Nightwar does not condemn it to oblivion, as all the other parts of it are nearly great and the game becomes often really entertaining. If you know what to expect, then invest without remorse in a remarkable but far from perfect RPG.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a well-put-together and challenging old-school RPG. There's something here even if you have no love or knowledge of the comic series. While there are whispers that this game might mean Battle Chasers will return to print, I'd honestly prefer another game for this cast of characters. Now I'll just wait for the Switch version so I can play it all over again.

There’s a solid 20-40 hours of game packed into Battle Chasers, more if you like to build characters, dungeon delve, and explore all the hidden nooks and crannies. For $30, there’s more on offer here than most modern AAA games..What it lacks in AAA flash and pomp, Battle Chasers more than makes up for with compelling gameplay and incredible story and art direction.

Battle Chasers: Nightwars’ combat and activity-dense world scratch the JRPG itch, even if the storytelling and character development leave a fair bit to be desired. Its attractive dungeons and outdoor regions are fun to get lost in, and there are just enough hidden treasures to claim to make exploration rewarding in a more than visual capacity.

Nightwar’s focus on style and character, coupled with a mostly excellent combat system, kept me hooked for much longer than I had imagined. Whatever your familiarity with its source material, this game builds a beautiful world with a surprising amount of depth just beneath the surface.

Classic but stylish, Battle Chasers: Nightwar has a truly inspired art direction and tons of good ideas; unfortunately, some bugs ruin the experience of a pretty unique RPG. Airship Syndicate needs to fix this, as soon as possible, so that the game can reach its true potential.

A great RPG with lots of content, generous duration and a great story. Technically simple but effective.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar makes you grind a lot, but it's a nice jRPG-style game based on great comic book series. If you like the genre, you will enjoy it.

As pretty as Nightwar is, the need to continually grind within the game creates an experience that is difficult to force yourself through. This is in spite of the truly engaging battle system, which offers layers of strategic combat that make it stand out from similar turn-based RPG’s. There’s a great world to explore in this game; if only it didn’t take so much grinding to properly enjoy it.

Like the original comic book series, Battle Chasers: Nightwar looks fantastic but feels a bit hollow. The game’s JRPG battle system and Diablo-style dungeons are rock solid but don’t bring many new ideas to the table. If you’re really into Joe Madureira’s art or grinding for loot, you’ll find plenty to like here, but the general RPG audience may find the game slightly lacking in flavor. Not bad at all, just a little flat. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a video game, based on a comic book, based on earlier video games feels like it’s spreading its inspiration a bit thin.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a fine example of how to iterate and improve upon a tried-and-true game genre wth its take on a modernized turn-based RPG. It’s far from perfect, but the combat system alone is engaging enough to warrant a recommendation for any fan of old-school JRPG-style adventures.

Battle Chasers Nightwar is a very interesting JRPG with high production values and a deep and rewarding gameplay. Too bad that the gameplay gets marred by awful grinding that basically ruins it and transforms many hours of fun into a repetitive chore.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is able to offer many pleasant afternoon gaming sessions. The depth of the lore, the strong characters and the decent presentation will keep dragging you back for a long time. Until repetition takes over, that is, along with the taxation brought by the unstable curve of difficulty. It may be, that you can finish it with pleasure or quit. Perhaps boredom will keep you away, perhaps the unique nature of its characters will leave you stranded on its mana-filled island. Whichever the case may be, you are assured to have a sweet fantasy gaming autumn, as long as you maintain a two-hour session every day.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar combines the classic turn-based RPG with action-RPG elements. This fun twist to the traditional RPG divisions enhances gameplay, strategy, and character customization. Despite a slow start, this title surely becomes more engaging and a quick favorite for RPG enthusiasts.

Hours upon hours, this little passion play repeated itself throughout my playthrough. Even after stopping everything to grind for experience, the next major area would present another drastic difficulty spike, with help nowhere to be found. Stacking debuffs on enemies was often the only effective recourse, forcing the enemy to unwittingly murdering themselves, rather than handle the task through my own attacks. While effective, it's also the least enjoyable way to experience a turn-based RPG.