If you’ve ever heard J-Rock, you know that Japanese musicians don’t care about genres. There’s an introduction to radio rock, and then they’ll say a little, then yell, and then repeat it three more times.
A New Square Enix Strategy RPG World DioField Chronicles Kind of like, but for British history.
You have medieval knights collecting their gear from 17th-century plague doctors, then heading straight out of the Victorian workhouse at the behest of gentlemen in tweed jackets to fight Londoners in stovepipe hats. Then some skeletons appeared along with a couple of armored trolls. where it goes.
These characters all have funny names that seem to be derived from the formula: the devil from Charmed + the town of the football team = the name of an entirely real person.
Izelair Wigan and Iscarion Colchester are my favorites, but Waltaquin Reddich is also a strong contender — a complete Sleve McDichael thing like a ’90s Japanese baseball game meme.
Emerald Empire or Kingdom?
The “epic” story is just as interesting, though, and clearly heavily influenced by Game of Thrones, which seeks to foment political intrigue by following the conspiracy of rival noble factions, business interests, and religious orders.
On the Isle of Deorfield is the kingdom of Altan — basically England — that has prospered in peace for centuries. However, the war between the Alliance and the Empire on the southern continent for a magical resource called emerald is threatening to sweep the world.
With the rich emerald buried on the DioField, the tension will only increase further. Andrias Rhondarson – Soldier, bodyguard and one of four leaders of the Blue Foxes group.
In the demos I’ve played, its ambitions haven’t been very successful. With the limited number of characters on screen, it feels more like watching the opening credits of Game of Thrones than the actual show.
All the factions and cabals are neatly labeled in decent comic book-style cutscenes, but with so much information to absorb without knowing who’s actually involved, it’s a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.
DioField Chronicle also has big ambitions in its aesthetics, and you can tell from the Yoshitaka Amano-inspired Final Fantasy-inspired logo that you’re looking for something art-directed and highly stylized.
Essentially, the action takes place on a giant game board, like you’d see at the Games Workshop, complete with pipe cleaning trees, and when you use special moves or summon giant summons like the classic Bahamut, You can see their sides.
Square Enix calls it the “Diorama” style, and I really like the art and craft, tabletop vibe it gives DioField Chronicle – but I think the developers at Square Enix and Lancarse could have leaned more towards it.
Every game board I’ve ever made has clumps of paint on the grass, sawdust and sand caked on the surface and pulled out of Styrofoam objects. Everything in DioField Chronicle is very fluid and the characters are very moving. If things had more texture – like they were actually painted – it would be something special. But clearly, that quote doesn’t appreciate how scary the task is, and for now, it’s still fine.
This is probably because the game runs on almost every platform. There are some compromises that work on Xbox Series X, PS5, and Nintendo Switch, and I believe Pixar’s smoothness is one of them.
knight to king 4
Gameplay-wise, I think strategy games are the hardest to demo. It can be overwhelming to have players throw too much into the deepest, but give them too much babe in intermittent tutorials and icy rhythms that chill everyone. But after a pedestrian starts, things get better when magical and fantasy creatures start getting involved.
You control a team of four heroes with different roles and abilities. Basic warriors that attract aggro, mobile cavalry, ranged archers, and healers who can area enemies.
There’s no isometric grid, everything happens in real-time, so you’re constantly staggering around, firing special abilities, lining up new routes and combos to hit bad guys from behind.
It’s good, it’s fun, and you’ll soon run into really difficult big bosses that need to dodge attacks and coordinate party members to avoid getting knocked down.
The “command all” button is a nice quality of life feature to dodge attacks and is useful, as I found the character selection to be a bit sticky and squirrelly – often flying towards the closest person instead of the one I really wanted. But I also feel like it’s a kind of user error button that resolves itself when you play more than just the demo.
This is another place where I feel that Square could play more of a role in the look of the desktop.
While the action is intense due to the number of heroes on screen and the number of moves required at once, the rink’s fluid environment and relatively slow movement make every character appear to be doing runners compared to running animations. I almost feel like it would look better if they had a model base because it kind of spoils the dynamics of the fight.
Despite these nitpicks, DioField Chronicle seems like a fun romp, even if some of it is a bit basic. To see it for yourself, the same demo I played — which includes a chunky chapter of the game — is available for download starting August 10.
DioField Chronicle will release on September 22 via Steam for Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and PC.
