I've played a handful of maps so far, and the vast majority of the internet critics are full of shit. Critics have been harping on this game for having "worse than PS1 era graphics", and touting that the camera makes the game completely unplayable, not to mention their laughable complaints about the game being "too difficult".

I could spend an hour complaining about the ineptitude of the reviewers covering this game at IGN and other places, but I'll spare you that.

Anyway, the game's pretty solid. Nothing mindblowingly awesome, but it's a decent effort form Success Corp., courtesy of Atlus. The graphics aren't going to melt your HD set, but they're well done and fairly colorful given the generic drabness of most military-based games. The dialogue so far is pretty natural sounding, and everyone has voice acting; as for that it's all very well done, several of the characters sound spot-on how I would figure they'd talk. There's a bit of wonky British dialect thrown in, but that's fine since they're all British soldiers and all that.


Edward has a pretty swanky accent.

The gameplay is pretty impressive, and it's fairly innovative if a bit slow. The game revolves around a "cover" mechanic, that allows your units to respond to other units on the battlefield performing certain actions. You can "Cover Move" to make your units sync up their running on the battlefield, or to make a unit dash into cover when a specific enemy makes their move, "Cover Attack" to make a character automatically fire their weapons when an ally hits an enemy in their attack range, and "Cover Ambush" which makes your unit fire their weapon at any enemy unit that enters their attack range, with a reduced rate of damage of course. This allows you to set up elaborate crossfire traps to take down enemy units, by having several units all concentrate fire on the same enemy, as well as take out enemy squads who march on your position. This becomes increasingly important as you go further in the game, as even in the early stages the Nazis often outnumber you 3-1, and these odds only get steeper.

Combat overall is pretty difficult at first, what with trying to understand how to co-ordinate your attacks and movements, and it's especially hard to co-ordinate moves with enemy units since you can't tell which units are which on the 'upcoming turn bar thing', but as you keep doing it it becomes easier and easier. As early as the third map I was laying down ornate covering fire schemes that had the enemy Shutzes utterly locked down.

One thing that threw me at first is how utterly fragile your soldiers are. Your characters have about 400 HP, and enemy attacks do in excess of 200, even on the first map. If you run into a tank, you can expect to see numbers into the thousands being inflicted upon your hapless teammates. The game gives you a skill very early on called "Auto-Restoration" that allows your units to use Health items on themselves when they fall below 20% HP, even if they should be dead. This skill is indispensable and should never be removed under any circumstances for the entire game. It helps to think of your HP in terms of how much health you can restore to yourself, as opposed to how much you actually have in your health bar.


Over 60K damage. Is this Disgaea or WWII?

There's a bit of an issue with the camera, but a lot of what's being passed around the internet is blown way out of proportion, IMO. As I played the first few maps, I had a little trouble adjusting to the way the thing moved, but as I slowly got the hang of it I had no problems finding units and measuring distances. I wish there was a better overhead map, but there's a reason I said the game wasn't mindblowing.

Overall, it's a pretty good game with a good grasp on what it wants to accomplish and solid battle mechanics that are a breath of fresh air to the stale SRPG genre. It's got some slightly messy faults but it's nothing one can't get used to with a little patience. If you like SRPG's and own a 360 you should go out and get it now. But I won't blame you if you wait to rent first.