[h1]The Only Thing Worse Than the AU is a Negative Review[/h1]
[h2]Story[/h2]
Rather than a typical demon lord story, this game has the player characters tackle a government conspiracy involving a fantasy version of the United Nations, which has more power over member states than the real UN for some reason. The majority of interactions consist of Versailles coming up with a conspiracy theory, Jack dismissing it out of blind faith towards the Atlian Union, and Versailles being proven right. I felt that interaction being overused towards the middle of the game, since I find it ridiculous for Jack to still believe in the AU after one of their commissioned scientists literally spilled the beans on them and connected them to a mind control zombie virus. Even if he was indoctrinated through his school and parents, his unwillingness to entertain any suspicion made him really unlikeable for a large chunk of the game. The good news is that Jack does get development, albeit a bit late, but the bad news is that Johann is left as the least developed despite being the protagonist. He's supposed to be bland and uninformed for the sake of receiving plot exposition from other characters and being a self-insert, but it doesn't make much sense for him to be like that when his family is supposed to be closely connected to the Himmelland royalty.
There are several endings to the game, with two of them being bad endings where you don't even get to finish off the final boss. As for the four proper endings, I would have preferred Jack or Versailles getting the leadership role in the president endings, since they have the most personal conflicts with the Atlian Union and are more knowledgeable about politics and current events than Johann. Johann doesn't seem like the type of character to have that kind of leadership ambition, making the non-president endings seem more in-character for him. For all of the endings, I feel like there are some plot threads that need more focus. In the president endings, we don't know how Johann intends to use his newfound power, since he could fix a lot of the flawed policies that screwed over a lot of member states. Additionally, the king of Himmelland warned against letting Versailles keep an important plot item, but we don't actually know the consequences of letting him use it, aside from maybe someone evil stealing it from him.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
For the most part, the battle system is well-balanced and follows a very basic turn-based formula. Everyone has defined roles, with Johann being the fighter, Jack being the healer, and Versailles being the mage. Though the endgame gives way too many powerups to Johann compared to other characters. Also, maintaining buffs in long battles gets harder in the end because Jack has to handle both healing and group buffs. I kind of wish there was a fourth party member who could handle dedicated buffing.
In the mid and late game, random battles can deal heavy damage to the party, but at the same time, it's possible to wipe them out in one or two turns, essentially turning the gameplay into a "he who strikes first wins" contest. This can make it hard to conserve MP, which makes things difficult in the midgame when enemies don't drop much money, but easier in the endgame when the party can easily farm MP items.
Bosses in the endgame also get really tough, since they can use most of the player's favored buffs and debuffs against them. It becomes important to immunize against both stat debuffs and ailments, though it's also possible to cheese a lot of fights with Jack's final defensive skill.
The mapping of the game is easily the worst part though. Most maps are extremely bloated in terms of space and can take a long time to navigate, and the size of each new map seems to get bigger as the game progresses. This is especially bad in dungeons, which use random encounters with low fleeing rates, meaning the long navigation and high encounter rate can make it a slog to dungeon crawl. It got to the point where I simply gave up on opening chests in the final dungeon, since most of them did not justify the effort to find them. IMO, big bloated maps are only advantageous if the player can dodge encounters, and even then, they only need to be big enough for dodging.
[h2]Verdict[/h2]
5/10
The story is scuffed and the mapping style is practically a crime. The only thing the game has going for it is the average-at-best combat system.
Yes, this is my first negative review and therefore will be controversial, but I did try to be detailed about it. This is also why developers should never send me keys, since if they're going to receive negative reviews from me, they shouldn't waste a potential sale. Fortunately, I bought this one fair and square.
