Review : Resonance of Fate

I would have done this sooner but unfortunately I got very distracted after getting this game and frustrated by it as well, but in a good way. Well after many distractions and Game Over screens here's my review of Resonance of Fate.

Resonance of Fate is a game that doesn't like the person playing it... seriously I've seen the Game Over screen here more often then in some of the old NES games I've played over the years. The story also doesn't seem to make much sense either throughout the course of the game for the most part. It's also very hard to describe the story because of it's structure. Here is wiki's description of the story... even they couldn't figure out what's going on with characters and just figured out the main part of the story,
In the distant future, Earth has undergone a drastic change in the environment. For reasons unknown, poisonous layers of gases permeated the land, which resulted in near extinction for mankind due to humanity's inability to adapt to the new changes. The remaining humans built a gigantic device called Basel, an environment purifier buried deep in the ground, which cleanses the air in the surrounding land and hopefully the rest of Earth as well. Civilization began to reform around Basel itself, building a city around the tower. The upper classes live in luxurious apartments at the top of Basel while the lower classes reside among the many districts built around the base and stem of the tower. For countless years, all is well, until one day the purifier inside Basel begins to malfunction.
Yeah... as you can see they tried as hard as they can and I definitely can't... and I play JRPGs a lot! Story aside the voice acting is good for a video game and the characters are likable but I couldn't feel for them like other JRPGs. The games structure is pretty much chapter based with 1 story mission and 3 side missions per chapter. It's a nice package that gives you a good ratio of things to do without forcing you to seek out length for the game. The map is a pain to look at but isn't as bad as it seems and easy to get used to. Combat is the as hard as granite to get through and is fun to engage in, but a pain nonetheless. It's combat is also complicated to get through but it's easily rectified by going to the arena near the main town and doing the tutorials and basic level matches. The combat is turn based, but like Valkyria Chronicles has you getting shot at during your turn. In battle you can do a new thing called a 'Hero Action which is where you can do as many attacks as you can before reaching the destination on the battlefield you set and you can also jump to make combat look cool or to exploit the 'smack down' shot you can do if you get the target airborne while shooting it on the ground. You can even try for a bonus shot on the ground but it's random. In combat you can earn resonance points when doing Hero Actions but you got to go through the tutorial to learn how it's done and after your get used to it you can make the most out of the 'Tri Attack' which you need the resonance points for. As for the difficulty... you need money to retry and a lot of money to get full health if you went in with low health. Also even if you retry like that you can still see that Game Over screen.

Resonance of Fate is a good game... provided you like JRPGs and like a challenge... and you are patient. I like the game and can tell you it's not newcomer friendly. The game knows it's audience and and punches them in the guts! In JRPG standard it's the hardest I played other then MMORPGs and I like the way the game is. If newcomers want to play this, then go ahead and make us avid players look bad by getting good at it. I give it a 4/5 and a warning, don't play this if you want to try JRPGs for the first time unless your prepared for the Game Over screen to appear extremely frequently. A warning to veterans of the genre must also be issued, it will be hard and you should really be prepared for frustration.

Score 4/5