Netflix recently fired from all tubes and has built up a strong series portfolio. One of the best in-house productions last year was the prequel series for the Jim Henson doll film The Dark Crystal. It's a shame that the accompanying strategy role-playing game was not worked out half as well as the original. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is more fan service than a serious genre representative.
Genre aficionados can see it at first glance: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics is strongly based on the tactical role-playing games that celebrated their climax in the 32-bit era. Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Shining Force 3, Vandal Hearts and their names. In itself a nice thing, because there could be more of such games. Especially since the setting fits like a fist on the Augra… ere eye, after all it's about a wonderfully rolled out high fantasy story with mystical heroes and villains.
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Anyone who has followed the Netflix series knows every single character. The plot follows that of the series without exception – albeit with some difficult to understand jumps. All battles correspond to scenes from the original, with a little too deep in the inspiration pot here and there, see for example the battle in the library. The series is about a peaceful exposure scene for one of the main characters, the game is about a battlefield where librarians are killed, who are declared opponents for no apparent reason. Relationship: zero. Too bad, because the series is certainly not lacking in exciting conflicts.
Classic rules
If the game classics mentioned are foreign to you, then this is not a broken leg, because the game system is quickly explained. It is a series of role-playing battles with several party members who face evil adversaries in strictly limited arenas. Battlefields consist of square tiles, which, similar to the chess game, visualize the position and range of the fighters. For example, if a soldier is to attack an opponent with a sword, he must stand one space next to him – that is, at sword length. Ranged fighters and magicians, on the other hand, have a range of several fields and can therefore be in the second or third row.
Differences in height and the nature of the subsoil also play a role. Especially when it comes to the freedom of movement of the individual figures. The order and range in which you can move your figures in rounds depend on their speed value, with muddy or sandy surfaces making it difficult to progress and thus shortening the walking range.
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The Dark Crystal adheres to these genre basic rules without exception, but unfortunately shows little wit in the execution. Apart from minor environmental influences such as gusts of wind in the desert that throw uncovered heroes back a few fields, or pits with aggressive gobble plants, the game hardly takes advantage of its environment. Most battlefields remain flat and rarely have more than two or three levels.
This could possibly be due to the fact that mountain slope battles would be difficult because the available three character classes lack the appropriate skills for most of the season. The majority of the heroes belong to the Gelfling race, which is divided into three classes: the melee-experienced warriors, scouts with ranged talent and healers. Certain heroes of other races, who bring their individual skill set, are the exception. Among them is a podling called Hup, who is portrayed much more in the game than in the series.
As soon as individual figures have reached a certain level of experience, they can adapt skills of a second class as a subclass, but the number of selectable talents remains limited. Only the game designers know why. While the heroes of other tactical RPGs can access a growing arsenal of attacks thanks to their talent tree, Brea, Deet, Rian and Co. have to assess what skills they could use before a battle.
The abundance of selectable figures, from which you can choose when starting a skirmish, does not make things tactically more valuable nor more comfortable. This regulation only increases the compulsion to complete additional grind battles so that you can get all the characters to about the same level of experience.
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Either way, there is a lack of widespread attack methods that one would expect from a typical wizard or summoner class. Most of the conflicts are fought by the heroes in close combat. Only the great benefit of buffs and debuffs is comforting. Marking opponents, sharpening blades, casting protective spells – these are the small but subtle elements that often determine the outcome of a battle. Not that the game designers came up with outstanding magic. It's about genre home cooking, but what is available in this regard has a hand and foot.
For fans of the series, not the genre
Given the beautifully drawn 3D graphics, which is always shown from an isometric perspective, and the solid, if rarely imaginative, rules of the game, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics can confidently be described as an entry-level role-playing game with nice fan service. The fun of the game draws more on controlling the series favorites than on the battles themselves, whose level of difficulty increases in a flat and manageable learning curve. If you lose, in most cases it is clear why and what to do on the next try. In the worst case, a round of grinding helps – if only to fill up your wallet. That stretches the playing time a little.
After all, professionals who work their way through the plot with as little grind as possible and possibly with the highest degree of difficulty are not fed off with a snack. The campaign dwells on almost every decisive branch of the series and therefore offers a satisfactory scope. Nobody gets away without voluntary additional rounds, because money (the currency is pearls) quickly becomes scarce.
Fought pearls can be exchanged for new armor, weapons and accessories that give more strength, magic points and defense values in the shop, which can be reached at any time with a click of the mouse on the world map. If you expect complicated statistics and puzzles when upgrading, you are completely wrong. The few attributes that can be influenced are subject to gross increases, which were kept as crude as the prices in the shop. Anything that has about the same attribute level costs exactly the same price, regardless of what type of object it is and for whom it is suitable.
With the 04.02.2020 the release date of The Dark Crystal: Era of Resistance has been fixed.
This underlines the impression that The Dark Crystal Tactics was created less for gene lovers than for semi-casual players with a penchant for series. From the perspective of this target group, this cannot be cited as negative criticism. What contradicts this, however, is the menu system: unnecessarily nested, confusing, with buttons that are too large … You might think that the game was designed for smartphones. Even simple comparison options, such as displayed character values when selecting a new armor item, are completely missing and have to be called up laboriously via a separate menu.
