I would like to firstly say that this game was pretty much my first time playing an RTS game. My only real point of comparison is what little Starcraft videos I've seen many years ago, so practically nothing. As a new player to the genre, I honestly had fun with The DioField Chronicle. The Steam info blurb calls it Real Time Tactical Battle, but it's very much a "player-sided RTS with pause SRPG".
To describe this game in one word: Experimental. I think there were a lot of different things LANCARSE-SquEnix wanted to try out with this title and as such there were some things left half-baked and some things that were surprisingly pretty well executed. A fairer starting price for this game would be in the $30-$40 range, as I feel there's not really too much replayability. New Game+ exists but from what I've seen, it doesn't seem to change much in terms of difficulty, especially considering what you carry over.
[b]Story[/b]
Being a hybrid SRPG/RTS the story did a lot more than I was expecting. I won't delve too deep into the story because I think it was good enough that you should experience it for yourself. At its core, it was pretty much the essential war story: Warring Empires, Royal Succession, Internal Group Conflicts, Allegiances Tested, the works.
Beyond their recruitment introductions, there really isn't much in terms of story regarding your growing band of mercenaries. I felt that the other recruitable characters in this game are the type where you either like them or don't. Some will be tied to your main group leaders, some will be tied to the events of the main quest, and some will just be there to fill the roster.
I don't think I ever found myself bored with the story, just moreso a boredom stemming from having to deal with typical JRPG grinding between main quests. The character subquests are for the most part optional, and they're pretty short and painless, just occasionally talking to them in the main hub with their final quest leading to a battle map.
[b]Combat[/b]
Earlier I mentioned how this game was player-sided, and what I mean by that is when you pick skills to use or what movements to make, the game will pause the battlefield to let you think things out. There is no pause when an enemy tries to use their skills against you, and there will be a large telegraph marking the area to avoid, so you really shouldn't have a hard time avoiding large damage bursts or crowd control. With this in mind, I found this game very forgiving as a new RTS player, so if you're someone looking to try this genre out, I think this is a pretty good one to pick, but again, this was my first RTS so I have limited knowledge on the genre.
Your skills are not tied to your character, but rather their weapon and class. Each weapon you equip will have its own list of associated skills, and there is a skill tree that unlocks and develops class related skills. The character specific skill tree is something that will be used mainly to specialize your character, as you get 3-4 characters for each of the four classes.
The summons in the game are very overpowered early on, essentially acting as your get out of jail free card, but once you progress further in the game, they become more of a tool than a crutch. You can use them but they won't win the map for you like in the early game. Realistically speaking, you can just stick to your initial summons as the payoff of the later acquired ones isn't that big an upgrade.
You can bring 8 units to a map, but only 4 are on the field at one time. You have 4 main units paired with 4 sub units. Pairing up allows the main unit to use the sub units skills, and if necessary, you can swap positions of your main and sub unit, but I never really found myself needing to do that. Initially I paired melee class units with ranged class units, but as I got more characters, I found myself leaning towards pairing units of the same class. In doing so, I was able to switch between the two to take advantage of a particular character's personal skillset while also not losing access to class specific skills. However, you're allowed to swap deployed members with those in your reserves, up to 3 times per map (I played on Very Hard so it might be different for lower difficulties) , so ultimately it doesn't really matter who you bring.
With that 4 unit limit in mind, you're probably going to end up making the typical JRPG party: DPS-Tank-Healer/Support. You'll be sticking to one pretty much broken character for single-target DPS, which leaves your other 3 units to work together to clear packs of enemies. For me, my favorite class in this game were the Firearm-sharpshooters for their Headshot skill, it felt so fun to bunch enemies up with another unit's CC and use Headshot's cone effect to kill them all. But with that in mind, the combat does get to feel repetitive at times, especially when you're clearing subquest maps between main quests, as the quest design is typically just kill 3 separate waves of enemies. Subquests also reuse maps from main story quests so you can expect to get used to seeing all the tilesets.
Being an SRPG, you can expect to do quite a bit of grinding if you want to max your characters and outfit them with the best equipment. But to alleviate this somewhat, there is a 2x speed option in battle (which to me was my default). You're able to replay maps after clearing them, so your rewards will always keep pace with where you are in the game. I had fun, but unless you really like the genre or grinding in general, I probably wouldn't recommend long play sessions for this game to avoid burnout.
[b]---[/b]
My major gripe with the game was that I initially found the art style to be jarring, specifically when comparing the character art to their cutscene models, but I believe that this was done for budgetary reasons as it looks to me that the cutscene models are literally just their combat models. After getting used to it, I found it quite charming as the color palette and general design really helps make it look like you're controlling characters on a mini battlefield like in a tabletop game. This design really shines through when you use certain skills that have cut-in animations.
I would love to see a continuation to the story, sequel or something similar, because I felt like the game had a really good premise, but it was just lacking in execution. It's probably a very low chance with how game dev has become as of late, but I'd love to see what the team behind this game could do given the proper time and budget.
