Fractured Core

A charming little RPG. Pretty good if you like chunky RPG stats, upgrading equipment and improving them through mods and such. Mostly solid turn based combat gameplay, with the caveat that it can feel a little unbalanced at times. It feels as if certain characters are just blatantly better than others, but since you're never locked out of using any party member, it doesn't really matter. I really only have two complaints: 1. There's a fair amount of pointless backtracking in certain chapters. You contact a character, they tell you to come meet them, then they send you right back to where you started. Seems like a lot of this could have been avoided if the characters just spoke to each other over the vid phone thing. 2. The story has some pacing issues (there are four chapters and the first two feel like extended tutorials) and the story unfortunately ends right as it's getting interesting, with a fair amount of plot threads left hanging. Sequel bait, I guess, which I'm not fond of. Still, this an enjoyable game that I personally recommend anyways. Give it a shot.

✍️Overview Fractured Core is an ambitious Cyberpunk-inspired JRPG, especially since this is the first game made by this new indie game developer. Unlike the typical RPGMaker products, this game is developed via Godot engine, which shows how much does this developer plan to invest in their pioneer title. 🖼️Graphics When you start the game, you are immediately dropped into a Pixelated typical cyberpunk city environment, countless of skyscrapers, neon lights, floating signs, floating modern cars, and few variety of fantasy-like human races wearing futuristic clothes. Once you go through the story, you are led into several level / stages that can vary from typical espionage high story offices, into half-destroyed & scorched laboratory, and even church catacombs. Mind you, all of those are manually drawn, with few to no repetition. 🚶‍♂️Characters The main casts’ design are typical anime-like, not the blob-kind, but more of the shonen mature style. In the battle, you can choose 3 from 5 available characters, ranging from all around unit, fast speedy dps, ranged dps / debuffer, melee bruiser / tanker, and spellcaster / nuker. Yet, those 5 mentioned roles could be specialized even more by the in-game Mods and Psionic features. Mods works similarly like materia from ff7 which passive skills can be slotted into equipments, while psionic is more of slotting tetris pieces containing active skills into available grids. Combined, these mimics the skill tree / attributes in cyberpunk / witcher series. 🐲Enemy Staying consistent to each environment you came across them in, the enemy designs, while not entirely unique, varies enough to let you be immersed into the world. I am quite fond of the boss designs, especially considering that the game only costs $12. 🎮Gameplay Not much to say on the the overworld gameplay, as you could just walk around enjoying the futuristic sceneries, coming across item / equipment vendors, and obtainable consumable / key collectibles in “sparkle” form. When you encounter enemies, the battle works just like typical JRPG with option to basic attack, use skills / psionic abilities, use items, and flee. There are two depletable bar on each enemy, one is the typical HP bar, while the other is “break bar” that can be depleted to stun the enemy while providing brief period to nuke them (similar to FF16). ⌨️ Story Disclaimer, I haven’t finished the story yet, trying to savor the game slowly while walking around admiring the setting. From what I experienced so far, the game does dive in quite deep into cyberpunk genre, involving body modifications, AI, robots / cyborgs, and Megacorporate involvements in daily lives. Michael, as main protagonists belong to Athena PMC as special force / mercenary, leading his comrades as team lead to perform espionage, abductions, item retrievals, eliminations, and other increasingly dangerous missions as the game goes by. By progressing the story, you will unveil conspiracies, dark secrets, and crimes that the megacorps wants to keep hidden. I will probably update this system if there are any other twist / change in genre down in the future. 🎶Audio While not the main focus of this game, the music is original enough and not disruptive. And considering the price point, there is obviously no voice acting. The sound effects of the character skills, menu navigation, conversation jingles, etc are actually quite nice, and helps with the immersion. 💭Conclusion As an avid enjoyer of JRPG genre, with the price point of $12, this game is definitely up in the scale on what the game is able to provide (if compared to other indie games of the same price point). Fractured Core might not provide genre-breaking features like in Expedition 33, but more of paying homage of old school classic JRPG features, tickling your nostalgia bones if you grow up playing RPGs since late 1990s or early 2000s like me. I would definitely recommend this game if you love indie games like CrossCode.

Amazing music and an interesting character grid ability system. You can specialize a character with one type of magic for increased damage, only give few spells so spells cost half per use, or overclock and give them a wide variety of spells but at twice the spell cost. (Maybe other combinations later in the game) Story looks pretty interesting but I'm still near the beginning. Combat has a viewable turn order and a stun mechanic, pretty simple but enjoyable. Although I said it already the music is pretty good and was one of the main reasons I checked the game out.

Having fun so far, it'd be better if there's auto forward on conversation even though there's no voice-over yet, it just feels right. Battle is quite simple, you attack, you stun, you usually win the game easy after stunning. And I'm okay with that, most of the times, simpler is better. Items are abundant, but you won't need it on the start since you'll level up and the characters fully-recovered. There are some bugs, but it's just funny, not gamebreaking, like civilians suddenly appeared after conversation or the auto-save on the top-left sometimes big sometimes normal. The soundtracks is amazing! I might consider buying the standalone soundtrack so I can vibe around outside the game, but maybe later. I will come back to this review after I finish the game

A JRPG using a cyberpunk setting, that is set in European countries (which is quite unusual when you think of cyberpunk, not many other games done that)? A JRPG that has mechanics that go beyond the regular formula? With great pixel art that stands out from other indie games? And with a good story on top of that all? If you're into Deus Ex/conspiracy theories, you can expect that (and even more). The answer is yes. Good game, enjoyed every minute of it, worth the full price.

If you love turn based games and you’ve got a soft spot for pixel art, you’ll probably have a good time with this one. I'm in Chapter 1 and the whole vibe already screams cyberpunk! the graphics look awesome for a pixel art style, plus the soundtrack slaps!

Hard to say no to this game because I can tell it was born from a real love for classic JRPGs, but it was undone by tedium and too many things that just didn't work for me. First thing I noticed: the game is plagued with constant grammatical errors, way too many to list here. I found it sort of endearing and nostalgic at first, but it gets pretty distracting down the road. Exploration is not a great experience. In sprawling areas with roads and tall plants and such, you're limited to walking on very specific terrain and the boundaries are sometimes unclear, especially when the fixed isometric view obscures a path you [i]can[/i] walk on. I felt like some areas didn't have enough interactable NPCs, and that makes the world feel lifeless despite the nicely detailed and animated pixel art. And then there's the exceedingly dull random encounters. Enemies pose very little threat, but they also have lots of HP for some reason. I usually try to play these games conservatively, but I had to spam my strongest skills just to end fights reasonably quickly - and that meant repeatedly opening the menu to heal SP. Bosses are very easy for the most part, and sometimes even quicker to die than regular mobs. The gear/skill systems are fun enough to play with, but stats & balancing in general feels wonky...how in the world did I hit the level cap during chapter 2?! The story is decent, fairly typical cyberpunk stuff that weaves in more JRPG-ish elements as it goes on. The 5 main characters really carried the game for me. Despite being a bunch of cyberpunk mercenaries, they have the fun banter and camaraderie of a proper JRPG party and they're all likeable. I would play a sequel just to find out what happens to them. But as far as this one goes, the annoyances pile up too much for me to recommend.

Absolutely no mouse support. The default control scheme is painful and off-putting. There is no tutorial to teach you the key-bindings. When there are thousands of other games that can get this basic feature right, it's hard for me to justify spending time on this. The graphics, writing, and sound are enjoyable, however. If some QoL features are added, I will buy the game again.

just finish first chapter and it's kinda remind me to classic jrpg in GBA, PS1 era. Recommended.

no controller support at this time. game doesnt tell you certain details like button layout. go to community hub if you dont know what to do.