Rime Berta

Quick conclusion. Do I recommend this game? Not at full price. People talk here like it's "Like Final Fantasy Tactics or the Fire Emblem or Disgaea". Well they are not completely wrong, but they are not right from another point of view. Everything I will say, is according to my playthrough (2 floors cleaned 6,5 hours played on hard difficulty), achievement analysis, and screenshot analysis. Lets talk in numbers. 4 Floors. 5 levels each. 20 levels (game stages total). 3 "starting" professions. Warrior upgrade goes like x3 (second) x1 (third) = 7 Archer goes like x2 x3 = 9 Magician goes like x2 x2 = 7 So it's 23 professions to choose from, not bad huh ? Yep but this are the all the enemy you will encounter in the game (+3 plot dolls who just useless but have high HP). There are no more enemy types in game. No gear. Trere are NO items or potions. No inventory. Just skills. There 6 types of magick. Guide staits that Fire->Lightning->Water->Fire and Dark->Light->Star->Dark. But trere is no elements on the characters (exept buffs), so for the most time it is just like "hit the mage with fisical, hit the warrior with magic to win). Difficulty ? Total maximum of your characters are 20. In batle you can use 5, with no replacement. There are 10-15-20 enemies, you should fight with 5 of your dudes. No item difference, no profession difference, no skill difference ever. Plus you often start in terrible position (like group separated). Of course it's difficult, but it is just "zerg rush" you see. Here my playtime with it if you need more proof. http://www.twitch.tv/drobodur/c/5712990 http://www.twitch.tv/drobodur/c/5712997

In short: It's a semi-competent SRPG with some odd design choices, grindy and tedious progression, and charming but weak characters and story. Rather than giving a comprehensive review and nitpicking about the lack of available resolutions, or how there are typos and broken tags in the game text, or how the character art was seemingly drawn by little Billy, age 6, using the GIMP's default brush and burn tool, I will focus on my biggest gripes with the game. The UI could benefit from mouseover popups that tell you in detail what everything does. None of the attributes have any kind of description, you have to open the manual for that. You can't easily hover over (de)buff icons to see their effects, you have to either check the manual again or open the caster's status menu and scroll through the skill list for the description. But how long does the buff last? The game won't tell you. Whenever a unit dies, it leaves behind a body that occupies the tile. The reason being that there is a resurrection spell in the game, even though you won't actually see it until the last few stages of the game. Since many of the levels contain small cliffs and narrow passageways, it makes moving your troops forward a pain, and in some cases impossible due to their slow movement and jump values. This makes the already weak melee units even weaker. Difficulty is good for the most part - until the very last level. The final boss fight requires either very high levels, or very specific tactics to counter magic nukes. The AI is poor. Often it only ever attacks the unit closest to it, even if there are vulnerable targets available. Occasionally the AI backs away to cast buffs even if it makes little sense given the situation. AOE casters pay no heed to their allies and will mercilessly harm their allies and possibly even themselves if it means scratching the player's full HP tank a tiny bit. The AI seems to ignore the player's reaction skills entirely, a very useful weakness to exploit during the final battle where a single AOE nuke can wipe out the entire party. Your units' starting positions depend on what party slot they occupy. This is usually not a big deal, but there are some maps where your party is split and placed on the different sides of the map. This can lead to a quick defeat if your fighters and supporters are not evenly distributed. Most importantly, the game is tedious. The story isn't very interesting, you only get bits of the story during the first and last levels of the current floor. Dead bodies quickly clutter up the battlefield and limit possible moves, forcing you to clean up the remaining enemies by moving your ranged units up while everyone else attacks thin air or buffs a rock just to level up their skill proficiencies, and this takes forever. I would highly recommend setting battle speed to its max value from the options menu.

Rime Berta is a strategy role-playing game from the small doujin circle Next-Soft Plus, and their first (and at the time of writing this review, only) game. Drawing heavy influence from the likes of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, Rime Berta debuted in Comiket of 2013, and has become available on Android. Since then, it made its way on Steam. [u][b]Story:[/b][/u] The game tells the tale of a couragous young girl by the name of Livia. Hailing from a village that has been pleagued with an uncurable illness, she sought to help by climbing a mysterious tower that contains a wish-granting relic at its top: the Hallows. However, many "Guardians" patrol the tower to prevent intruders, and Livia must recruit "dolls" that live in the tower as she fights her way up. As far as stories go, Rime Berta's isn't completely original by any means. Much like the gameplay, it's simple, but has a certain charm to it. The few characters there are have distinct personalities, and their interactions can be pleasant. Unforunately, it is relatively short. [u][b]Gameplay:[/b][/u] As previously mentioned, Rime Berta draws heavily from games like TO and FFT. The dolls you receruit in the tower can belong to one of three main types: a Swordsman, Archer, or Magician. Aside from main characters, whose class cannot be changed, each of these three types can branch out into different classes for up to 24 in total. Once you go into a class path, you can't change to another, but you can backtrack to a class you were using before. Each class has its own unique active/passive skills, and class upgrades depend on mastering some of these skills up to a certain level. You can't change weapons, armors, accessories or any of that stuff, nor can you use items. In fact, there's no monetary system for buying/selling in this game at all. You only have your skills to serve you in battle. In battle, your units have an HP and an AP bar. Your unit dies when its HP reaches 0, and each action, whether physical skills, magical skills, moving, or normal attacks cost AP that regenrate by an amount each turn. All action skills have a countdown number that decreases when used, and cannot be used once it reaches 0. Skills gain Skill Points with usage and level up, which is essential for class upgrade. This could be problematic when a skill you never use is part of the prequisite, and you're forced to grind that one skill to its needed amount. There are also some glitches in some aspects of the gameplay, such as with certain statue effects, that brings the gameplay down a notch. Other than that however, the gameplay is fun and can be quite addicting. [u][b]Graphics:[/b][/u] The sprites in-battle look surprisingly good for a doujin game. They're crisp, smooth, and most importantly, cute. The battle animation, especially with magic, looks style-ish. Unforunately, the illustrations outside battle are somewhat plain, as you can see from the screenshots. [u][b]Sound:[/b][/u] This is what I'd call the strong point of Rime Berta. The music is notably good. While there isn't much variation due to the game's short length, each track has a tinge of folk-y feel to it, and is distinctly catchy, which helps quite a bit when grinding. It's a shame because the OST doesn't come with the Steam version. [u][b]Summary:[/b][/u] Cutting to the chase, should you get this game? I'd say, not with its standard price. The game is enjoyable, but is simple, short, and requires grinding for the more advanced classes. If you liked FFT-style games, you'll like this one. But for its length and overall quality, I'd only recommend you get it on sale.

Cute enough looking little turn based RPG, but one with no meat at all to it. I was hoping on first look that it would be a lighter, but still interesting, PC replacement for one of my all time favourite games Disgaea, or at least on par with something like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. However the combat system is as basic as I've ever come across in this genre, with very little strategy involved, and poor AI. Perhaps the latter will develop later in the game, but nothing I've seen leads me to believe this will be the case. The storyline also seems very lacking, which wouldn't be so bad if there was anything to the rest of the game. Character and party customization is limited to a fusion system which again is very shallow. The art style is decent, nothing special, and the partial controller support is pretty poor, refuses to map the majority of my controls (on an Xbox 360 pad, so not a case of obscure tech), and is just a headache to use, having to switch between controller and keyboard/mouse in the middle of each characters combat action... really, just don't bother with it using a controller. There is a serious lack of this style of game on the PC, which has always disappointed me, and this game does absolutely nothing for me as a fan of this genre. In the same price range you can get Agarest, which is a far superior offering to scratch that tactical RPG itch. Even those looking for something really basic are going to be far better served by something such as the free flash game Ultimate Tactics.

I had a really enjoyable time playing this game. It's not that great, but it's not that bad either. It has a good variety of skills and classes, which makes up for the lack of items and equips, giving room for many different grouping strategies. There are some challenging maps, that will require some "grinding/training", making it barely impossible to clear it in one go. There are some issues (such as a childish plot and simple graphics), but the greatest let down is the AI, which is very simple/weak (even in hard mode). The enemy's motto is basically: "just marches towards your closest foe and hit it with whatever you got". And that's bad, especially with mages. Don't be surprised to see enemy mages trying to have physical duels against your strongest warriors. Also, when using area skills, they won't care about friendly fire. Overall, this is a simple yet playable game. It's nowhere near FF Tactics or Disgaea and the price may seem a little more than it's worth. Buy at your own risk, and maybe you'll like it as much as I did.

This isn't a bad game but does have a few thing missing. i'ed say a 6/10 though i would get it on sale. the tactics and gameplay are solid, controls are ok, story is do able, in game sprites are nice though the story art looks like a kid drew it, there are also tons of abilities to unlock, but sadly it only has 26 levels. overall i found it to be a good tactical game even though the AI missuses AOE attacks, healing you and damaging thier allies. now the flaws 1)there is no tool tip help for states or ailments. like whats dex, spd, & vit do? whats paralyze do (they can still attack and move)? what does fusion do (i was hoping it would carry over abilities. there is a steam guide you should look at before using it)? 2)the grind: the game over all isn't to grindy BUT you'll need 20-30+ more levels to take on the last boss compared to the floor before. more extreme is if you want to level a character to the last classes the grind is FAR more than the content is there. it takes to long to level abilities without major grinding to get to the end of most class trees. 3)changing classes: if you get a later tier class to join you they will be given random abilities from that class but you'll be missing spells that if you had leveled them they would be required to levelup. this was a issue when i was leveling a mage and was forced to go down the tree until i learned 2 spells so i could move up into my later classes. second though this can be seen as a game mechanic but if you go up a class tree that branches your stuck on that branch. 4)you only get 5 units to take into fights. this may seems fine but you get 3 characters without class trees but have higher hp so you're left with 2 slots. some also complain about how you'll be outnumbered in every fight. 5)forget using a controller and though the keyboard/mouse controlls take a bit of getting used to they do ok. 6)just a grip but archers suck vs magic and you may want 1 melee but more than that is pushing it. 7)there are no equiptable items so no weapon, armore, ect. this is more of a grip as it isn't gamebreaking but something i feel should be put out there.

An extremely dumbed down Final Fantasy Tactics experience. Worth it if you can get it at a discount, but would not pay the full 15$ for it unless you're addicted to tactical RPGs. Music is decent, offset by the average character artwork and sprites. Class system is interesting but fairly crippled by the inability to truly multiclass or have more than 6 skills equipped. Game would be a lot better if you could have more than 5 characters in your active party too, and if there were unique enemies. Poorly documented in English, and in general too. The game doesn't actually tell you how many skill points you're earning and instead just gives you a percentage. Still, it's not BAD. It's not EXCELLENT either.

If this game was released on the PS1 console, I would have easily put 100 hours into it. However it was not, and it does not hold up in the current atmosphere of SRPGs available on Steam or anywhere else. It draws a lot of comparisons to FFT, but for all the wrong reasons. It's a basic SRPG that needs very little instruction (which is good because it offers absolutely zero) and has a wide array of classes to choose with promotional trees. This was interesting, but within the first few hours you will find yourself already dismissing entire classes due to their uselessness, and favoring mages instead. The skill leveling system was also interesting, as individual skills level up with usage, but that goes for defensive and reactive abilities too, which are obviously not easily controlled by you. This leads to some major grinding needed. To level up the way you'll probably want to, you need to revisit previous stages. The stages are the exact same layout as your original fight, and you have no way of choosing your own troop deployment or where they start. It makes the high level of grinding needed in this game even more unenthused. Read some of the posts and guides on the forum here, some of the suggested leveling methods involves beating the 3 enemies on the very first stage over and over again... That's just not fun. The story is kinda meh. I didn't get far and nothing about the story made me want to see what the next stage had going on. If you like PS1 era SRPGs I would suggest Brigandine, Tactics Ogre, Vanguard Bandits etc as far superior options. If you are limited to products available on Steam, I highly suggest Eador (see my review) or Banner Saga.

To note: while I do recommend this game, I do so with careful consideration of the game's many MANY issues, which you'll find below. The playtime is not exactly correct (I did leave the game idling a few times), but I did beat it on Hard. At its core, Rime Berta is an extremely barebones SRPG in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics (but without most of the depth). You get to command an army of 'puppets' with different classes, each with mostly unique skills, and occasionally change classes when you hit certain skill milestones and get to hire random units at the end of most battles. There are no items or inventory whatsoever, units can't change class outside of their own class trees and can't choose different branches of the same tree once you commit to one. Combat's fun enough when it works and I don't remember running into any glitches. Now, for the less than stellar details: this just might have the worst AI ever seen in a full-sized RPG. It makes FFT's Rafa running headlong into enemies look like a decision carefully debated by a room of philosophers. The AI does very little beyond moving forward and attacking and often does completely inscrutable things, like refusing to attack on a full AP bar, moving a wounded unit towards you to heal or, my favorite, using area attacks specifically so they can hit their own units along yours. At least a few times, the AI of the melee enemies simply turned off, presumably because their pathfinding broke and they couldn't find their way to my units. And honestly, said bad AI may actually be a boon, because at least on Hard, you're hopelessly outmatched stat-wise by the other units unless you do some severe grinding. And grind you will, at least once: skill progression is quite slow and the final level is such a huge leap in difficulty that I can't see anyone actually managing it without going back to the drawing board and making their units punch each other in the face for an hour or two. On the topic of wasting time: there are 80 achievements and may the good lord help you if you plan on completing them, because a solid 20 or so hinge on learning every skill from every class, and that's a massive chore. To cap it off, while the pixelated characters look pretty decent (if not very detailed), the art is atrocious and looks somehow worse than Touhou in the early years. So why in the blue-skinned ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ am I recommending this? Because, despite all of its flaws, it does quite nicely in scratching that tactical RPG itch; combat is reasonably fun, grinding for skills and class changes is actually rather addictive, the soundtrack is legitimately pretty good and the whole thing, despite being barebones, actually feels like there was some love put into it. I'm not quite sure about buying it for full retail, but if it ever comes on a good sale and you like SRPGs enough, give this badly named game a shot.

You should buy this game, is a really good game. If you like Final Fantasy Tactics or the Fire Emblem series you'll feel right at home with this game. A few very specific things about this game are a bit problematic for veterans of the tactics type of games however. (Keep in mind some of these issues are only on HARD, and if you pick the normal difficulty you'll be fine against a few of these issues.) You don't get you place down any of your units at the start, everything is just kind of preset based on where you have your various girls put into slots, so slot 1 always spawns in the same spot on level 1-1, etc. Theres no items. This isn't a huge problem however except for very early on in your gameplay, just because you start with only 3/5 character slots filled, level 1-1 is you vs 3. at the end of 1-1 you get a new girl in your party, which gives you 4 girls... level 1-2 is your 4 girls vs 8 (or 9 I don't remember), so unless you get really lucky with RNG or you will need to rerun 1-1 just to get your 5th girl slot filled. Theres no gear of any sort. The way you get powerful is based on leveling skills, which is also how you evolve your units into different classes. (I like this system but it can be confusing at first) These issues are only really a problem in the very beginnings of the game, and they become non-issues after about 1-3, but I wanted to touch on them so you know what you're getting into and to tell you to NOT QUIT just because it is hard in the beginning, it gets better. One small gripe I wanted to talk about with the game is that the controller support is a bit meh. The pre-game launcher could only detect like, half of the buttons on my wired xbox controller, like I couldn't get it to find my D-pad so I have to use my stick which can be a bit annoying. The other EXTREMELY annoying thing is that for some reason after I have input an action into the game, if I don't want to follow through with that action, pressing the cancel button on my controler doesn't actually cancel the input. I have to right click with my mouse in order to get it to cancel, but every other time I can cancel inputs just fine with my B button on the controller, not sure what that's about. Overall this game gets a 9/10 from me, just because of the simple controller issues, Gameplay itself is an easy 10/10 for this game genre.