Long Gone Days is a classic-style 2D RPG with turn-based battles. In terms of gameplay and mechanics it's very familiar and reminiscent of the 2D RPGs we're used to.
However, it's not just another medieval fantasy story that we've seen many times already. The story here takes place in a modern day world (possibly very near future). We start as part of a top secret special force of young soldiers who have been trained since childhood and who undertake important missions around the globe.
Although the story is for the most part rather predictable, and plot twists and revelations won't particularly catch you off-guard, I think the main appeal here is more in the characters, their interactions with each other and the world, as well as their overall journey and how they try to cope with reality of the unfolding events.
Another interesting aspect of story execution is what we don't normally see in such stories - the language barriers. Most of the game's events occur in Kaliningrad, Germany and Poland. So, our starting characters speaking primarily in English, struggle to understand the NPCs who ask for help or merely comment their thoughts out loud. And even if you may understand the NPCs who speak Russian, German or Polish, the main characters do not, and so they are unable to help the NPCs, until certain party members join the team who understand each of those languages and can help us progress the quests. It's a very interesting take on story-telling that often gets overlooked in majority of other story-driven games that span multiple countries or continents.
In each of the new locations we visit, we get given plenty of sidequests that we can do in addition to the main story. Most of those are merely ways to help NPCs and increase our morale. Now I didn't see the morale having any combat-related impact, but I am pretty sure the game promises it affects story events. It might be necessary to have multiple playthroughs of the game to really see these story changes though. The only one I am aware of is that it's very hard to get a good ending to the story, because certain conditions need to be met to achieve it, which was a bit disappointing, because the default ending you get doesn't feel like a satisfying conclusion to this long journey our characters have gone through.
The turn-based combat to me felt so-so. One aspect I appreciated was the chance to choose which enemy body part we can shoot at. Unfortunately this concept doesn't change much beyond the initial introduction, as all human enemies only have 3 points really: head, body and arm, with the head being the area you want to go for 90% of the time in order to maximise the damage (at a slightly higher chance to miss). There are a few machine enemies that have other types of parts we can aim for, but it's usually just a trade-off: hit a part with high def and low chance to miss, or try to go for a low def part with a higher chance to miss. Most times, the low def part is the better option. Unfortunately, the game never tells us what the % chance to miss is, which brings me to a wider critique of battles...
This critique is that we get very little numerical information about everything in battles - how high is the evasion rate, how high is an Atk buff worth or an Atk debuff, how many turns do status effects last, how much damage does bleed status do (and whether it's a flat amount or percentage amount), and so on. In fact much of this information isn't even shown on the battle HUD. You get told when you get a buff or a debuff, but there's no indication on characters if they have a buff/debuff active currently. You only see this with status effects, shown as icons.
In addition to lack of info on the battle screen, the battle speed is also very slow (I can't remember if there was an option to speed it up, but the default speed is slow). The main issue really is when buffs/debuffs are applied. If they're applied to a whole party, you'll have to wait for an individual message to show up about each of your party member, which takes a big chunk of time.
Generally, the battles left a lot to be desired, especially the boss fights, which mostly felt like regular enemies but with a 10x more HP, so just a much longer regular battle. To me the main challenge was in trying to deal as much damage as possible to make their HP bar deplete faster, rather than worrying about my people getting killed. Even with the special skills that our characters use, the damage was often not enough.
In the presentation area the game shines. It has a very beautiful and colourful art style, with both characters and environments being drawn beautifully. And the special cutscenes are even better, which felt like animated movies produced by a professional studio. Only minor gripe I'd say is with the item menu. It gets filled up with items very quickly, and navigating through it to find what you need can be a bit of a chore, especially because all the icons are the same colour.
Despite a so-so execution to the turn-based battles, which make up the major aspect of the gameplay, the game has a decent story and characters that's worth experiencing, and a high quality visual presentation. So if you're mainly looking for a game with good turn-based battles, this one will disappoint you, but if you want to go through a nice JRPG story that's unique and interesting, then I'd recommend getting it on a discount.
