Resonance of Fate -- Anyone looking for some JRPG gunplay?

Resonance of Fate, yet another Japanese Role Playing Game that few have heard of, and that even fewer will play. This game was nigh-impossible to find. A month after the release of the game I was forced to go to three different Gamestops to actually find one, and I ended up getting the last one. I know what your thinking "If it's sold out, why did you say so few people will play it?! Deceiver! How can I trust what you say when you lie to us from the get go!?" Well, firstly I demand you quit thinking like that, and secondly; the search wasn't caused by people buying them all -- it was caused by Sega making so few copies of the game. I asked one Gamestop employee where all the copies were, and he told me that they only had three copies of it to begin with, which is incredibly disappointing to me, because this game is a hidden gem.

The game is set within the Tower of Basael. A mega-structure that all of humanity lives on after events of cataclysmic proportions that poisoned the earth [even turning the Earth's axis] causing most of humanity to die out, although those who survived built the giant tower that scrapes against the clouds, even with the poisonous gases and undrinkable water everywhere. The tower itself some how cleanses the air and water around it, allowing for humans to reside within it, but woe betide them if the tower was to ever break down, which is constantly on the minds many of the populace. The game is very steam punk, with gears and cogs everywhere, and the general look of things is gritty and dirty. The tower is made up of many different levels, the poorest living down in the dirtiest, lower floors of Basael, while the rich Cardinals stay at the top, a level called "Chandelier" for the lights given off from their mansions. The game's main storyline focuses on the trio of characters [Vashyron, Zephyr, and Leanne if you didn't read the caption above] and the missions they get as hunters, but leaves many things left out, or unexplained so you can't really tell what the hell is going on. The story isn't to grand, so don't expect something meaningful or awesome like Bioshock's story, but its pretty much standard JRPG fare, not too bad, but not the greatest either.

The intro cut scene is pretty when you first see it, but don't expect graphics like this constantly, but don't brush that statement off as me calling the normal in-game graphics bad, because in-fact, I think their excellent. It starts off with Leanne attempting suicide for a reason we don't know about yet, but Zephyr [Guess what, He's the guy who voiced Robin in Teen Titans!] swings in and saves her, and tells her not to look away while they fall hundred of stories down the side of the tower. Fast-Forward a year, and Leanne is now a living with Zephyr and Vashyron, and is now employed as a hunter, a person who does dangerous jobs that usually involve killing things, in order to get money.There are few cut scenes in this game, most of which occurring at the start, and end of every chapter, which for people who hate cut scenes, this is a blessing, but I for one love the team enough that I wouldn't mind seeing some more interaction. Most of the conversation between the team is while they're in story missions areas, doing battle. When you begin a battle in certain areas, the team will talk to each other about what has recently happened. Throughout the earlier missions, most of the time they'll be poking fun at each other, and trying to teach Leanne [Basically the Newbie of the group] new tricks so she doesn't fail as a hunter.

The game mostly consists of towns, the world map, dungeons, and dungeon maps. [Which behave just like the world map] In towns you can talk to NPCs, go to the shop to buy things, or go to the Tinkerer / Scrapper to make items to customize your guns. The world map has you as a cursor, walking around an Hexagon covered section of the Tower of Baesal. Most of the hexagons must be unlocked by Energy Hexes, and those are dropped from monsters that you kill. There are more than one type of hex, each one with a different shape, but all of them cover a four hex area. There's a small puzzle element here, but most of the time you'll have the hex required to fit the slot, so it usually isn't too bad proceeding through the maps.

There are also hexes that are colored on the world map, which require you to place a energy hex of the same color on them, to open the area up. These are only located on Terminals, Dungeons, Towns, and areas they want to block you from going until later in story, so even if you only have two colored hexes, most of the time you can open up the place you need to go. Colored energy hexes are fairly easy to come by also though, so you don't have to worry about them. In one of my above statements I mentioned something called Terminals, these buildings on the world map require you to hook up enough energy hexes of the same color to it for the effect of the terminal to take affect. As an example, say a terminal that has x2 Drop Rate, requires 30 energy hexes of the same color to be connected to it to be turned on. You could then put a red energy hex on the terminal, and just start placing them anywhere connected to the original in order to gain more hexes for it. These terminals are fairly useful, because if you can connect them to a dungeon, the entire dungeon [There's usually 2-3 locations you can go to inside the dungeon map] gets the affect. Also, you can connect more than one terminal to each other, but the amount of total hexes filled in goes up the amount the two terminals combined equals. [So one requires 20, the other requires 30, you'll need a total of 50 before it will be activated again if you connect them].

The battle system of this game is amazingly difficult. If you rush in without going to the arena for the Tutorial, you will die. The battle system runs off this thing called the "Hero Gauge", this gauge fuels your team, and your ability to do Hero Actions. These Hero Actions are a must for any battle,or else you'll be sitting there for 10 minutes. The Hero Actions involve your character running or jumping into the air, and pretty much shooting a barrage of bullets down upon their foes [or tossing grenades]. There are two types of damage in the game [along with two types of guns], Scratch, and Direct Damage. Scratch Damage, preformed by Machine Guns, hurts the enemy a lot, but are unable to actually "deal" any damage to the foe. That'swhen Direct Damage comes in, produced by Handguns [or grenades]. After you have dealt Scratch Damage to a target, you basically send your Handgun user in, to apply that scratch damage. Say your machine gun user dealt enough damage to turn the enemy's entire health bar blue [meaning its fully scratched], you can send your hand gun user in, and shoot the enemy once, and it will die, because it caused all that Scratch Damage to actually be applied.

Whenever the Hero Gauge runs out [which fills when you kill baddies, or you break their armour], your team enters Critical Status -- Which basically means your going to die in the next three turns if you don't get some of it back up, which is usually impossible. There's a "Retry" button, which gives you a nice penalty for death -- your money. It's usually a small percentage, so it doesn't hurt you too badly, and if you ever run out of Rubies, you can still use the option anyway. There's also another retry option, that lets you enter the battle with all your characters stats healed back to full and such, but it costs a ton [like, in chapter 3, it 100,000 rubies], and I mostly found this feature useless. The Hero Gauge also goes down every time you lose 1k HP or die, but thankfully, that isn't even possible until much later in the game, and by then you'll have everything mastered. Your characters usually are always at tip-top health during missions, because foes can only deal Scratch Damage to you, unless you enter Critical Status and get hit. Then your character is dealt Direct Damage, which lowers the persons health permanently, until you can use a Perfect Aid on them, or Rest, which means if you get into Critical Status, you basically should restart the battle and try again. The leveling up system in this game is odd, the level cap is 300. 100 levels for each type of weapon [Handgun, Machine Gun, and Grenade], the more you use the weapon, the higher the level is. Also, the higher the weapon is, the more you can charge it. The higher you'll able to charge it, the stronger it is, although I would only worry about charging on the Machine Gun, because that allows it to inflict much more Scratch Damage, and in later levels, stun targets, while the handgun only lets the target health bar be segmented more, allowing you to easily refill the Hero Gauge, but if you apply Scratch Damage first and then attack with the Handgun, the Hero Gauge shouldn't be to much of a problem.

Now, for one of my favorite things in this game. The customization. Early on in the game, you'll able to go to the Boutique, located in the starting city, to buy clothing, hair dye, glasses, accessories, holsters for your weapons, and colored eye contacts for your characters. At the start there isn't much to buy, but you'll soon unlock B type clothing, which expands your characters closet space by about three-fold. You also get clothing items by using energy hexes to unlock parts of Baesal. The only down-fall is that the Boutique is expensive. You'll be shelling out all your cash just to buy everything for your favorite character to make him or her like a  bad ass [or hot ass, wink wink] that she or he was meant to be. There is a massive amount of clothing items in this game, so if you and a friend compare what your Leanne looks like end game, they will probably look completely different in at least one aspect. But a heads up for people who are like "This is a Japanese game, so there has to be something super-perverted!" No, your wrong, most of the clothing is modern casual wear, and I have to say, it is stunning to look at. Most of the T-shirts and jackets are completely different from each other, but all of the characters have a shared Logo T-shirt, that each one looks fundamentally the same, so if you like that design, you could put all your characters in it. Also, besides the story missions there are Side Missions, which generally don't really involve anything hard, and give you good gold, and great items to attach to your gun.

Which reminds me... Gun Customization. This is just insane. Pretty much throughout the entire game, you'll be adding parts to your guns, scopes, sights, grips, barrels, giant ammo clips, etc. Towards the end you'll be carrying a six barrel, eight scope, twenty bullet sized clip monstrosity of a Handgun. Sadly, all of these are stat-boosting, and don't actually show up during battle on your gun.

The achievements in this game are decent, and are quite easy to get. There's only one downside... The games length prevents any achievement whoring, which doesn't matter too much to me, but for some people that's a negative. Although it is a RPG, so most people would consider that an auto-no for the chance of easy achievements.

Overall, this game is great. It doesn't quite reach godly status for its lack-luster story, but the character interactions, customization, and battle system more then make up for it. To me this game deserves a 7/10. Great, but it's not going to win the greatest game ever title anytime soon.