Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a true indie gem, a love letter to the JRPGs many of us grew up with, brimming with beautiful graphics, stellar music, quirky characters, and a whole lot of mysteries to uncover. While the Switch release suffers from some slower load times, the probability combined with rebalanced gameplay makes this a must play for those who love dungeons and the heroes who crawl through them.

Battle Chasers: Nightware is pretty typical as far as turn based RPGs go, but its tight combat, beautiful production values and faithfulness to its source material make it worth checking out on Switch.

Technical issues aside, Nightwar is an excellent well-crafted modern take on the classic JRPG style from a Western developer.

Atmospheric and very pretty dungeon crawler with tactically thrilling and complex turn based fights in a living cartoon world.

A game that pays an homage to the old RPG genre while still being innovative in some ways. Sadly this port isn't perfect.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar on Nintendo Switch is a highly engrossing experience, which JRPG fans, raised on the likes of Final Fantasy and Suikoden, will savour every minute of. In interactive form, Joe Madureria's universe has been brought to life in a whole new way. Strengthening and upgrading its endearing characters is a very enjoyable process. The world is atmospherically rich and aesthetically gorgeous, and is supported by a great soundtrack and voice acting.

Take a moment to step back and appreciate Battle Chasers: Nightwar as a whole, and, looking beyond the game’s clear inspirations, it strikes out with enough of its own identity to deliver a stirring and memorable adventure. There’s still some room for improvement, especially in the unavoidable grind as you reach your quest’s later stages, but it is a promising start for Airship Syndicate that has made me excited to see what comes next.

Battle Chasers: Nighwar is a beautiful tribute to the original comic book. It does not only bring back Joe Madureira’s art, it is also an ingenious RPG, demanding and well crafted.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a good game that, while not surprising in the genre, is tremendously entertaining. Its artistic design is a delight for the senses, being very faithful to the comics of Joe Madureira and its turn-based combats turn out to be a success combining strategy and artistic taste.

Beyond the challenge of combat, Battle Chasers is sustained through the strength of its story, a rollicking tale that takes our heroes literally to hell and back.

Despite a title that suggests it came out of a name generator, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a satisfying slice of JRPG that forges a confident, colourful character of its own from formulaic ingredients. The approachable comic style, plus a couple of neat mechanics that encourage experimentation, give it a freshness that belies the age-old systems at its core, and it doesn’t waste your time with filler. Depending on your skill, you’ll probably spend around 30 hours on the critical path – comparatively breezy in RPG terms – though there’s plenty of side content to occupy you beside the main quest, plus a trio of heroes you’ll probably shun on your first playthrough.

The Switch version of Battle Chasers Nightwar is a 1:1 port of the other console versions updated to the last patch available, with slightly longer load times and little hiccups on the frame-rate. Therefore, if you love classic JRPGs with a western visual style, this is your cup of tea.

Battle Chasers: Nightwars is a damn good update to JRPGS of old, carrying the genre into 2018 without sacrificing what made it so appealing to begin with. The fact it’s now portable on the Switch just makes it better still.

With striking visuals that feel like they were lifted from the comic book pages which inspired it, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a welcome throwback to the classic turn-based RPGs of old with some appreciated new twists.

Even though the content updates from the other platforms are included from the get-go and make this a decent port of the tactic role-playing to Switch, there is still too much grind, too many fights against weak opponents. Plus you encounter performance problems that were not present on other systems.

Battle Chasers is one of the most powerful JRPG of the last year, now on Nintendo Switch.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar comes to improve the RPG catalogue of Nintendo Switch, and does it in a particular way. It doesn't innovate in any of its aspects, but it's a solid game able to be liked by any RPG fan that would like a simple offer.

It doesn’t look like the developers had to sacrifice anything in the game to bring it to the Switch. However, it doesn’t look like they added much either. That being the case unless you absolutely must play this game on the go I’d recommend sticking to Steam, PS4, or the XBox One where you can get Battle Chasers for under $20 instead of paying $40 for this port.

Overall, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a solid port on the Switch with a great presentation and familiar gameplay mechanics. The gameplay is solid, and the environment has changed up just enough to warrant another look for fans of classic JRPGs. If you haven't yet had the opportunity to play Nightwar elsewhere, you'll be pleased to know that it looks just as good on the Switch, with little compromises in visual presentation.

It’s not going to be for everyone, but for people who hate the direction modern RPGs are going in will be able to get some old school RPGing.

I still believe this game is best on Switch because of the genre but I’m not happy with how the release has been handled and unless patches improve the performance, it isn’t worth getting at full price.