Battle Chasers: Nightwar

I just bought this on PC, and I honestly didn’t expect to like it. I bought it because a good friend was a big evangelist for it and I wanted to be able to talk to him about it.

And I freaking LOVE it.

I have to give some context: I am not really a big RPG player. I mean, back in the day I used to be, but nowadays very few of them feel like they’re worth the gobs of hours they require. I have played almost zero Japanese-style RPGs, as I missed their heyday on the consoles. RPGs I’ve spent more than 20 hours on:

  • Ultima 5
  • Ultima 6
  • Torchlight
  • Expeditions: Conquistador
  • West of Loathing
  • Cat Quest

But Battle Chasers is my kind of RPG.

First, the combat systems and equipment and advancement are character-centric. Please don’t give me a ginormous web of player abilities that I can customize to make a mage-assassin-priest-thief. Give me an awesome character (or five) who do awesome things specific to them using awesome equipment types specific to them and let me make them awesomer and awesomer.

The pacing of advancement and the introduction of new characters, etc, is, to my tastes, practically perfect. (I just found the fifth character.) And advancement never gets super fiddly. The perks system is nicely compartmentalized and intuitive. I don’t feel like I have to go into an hours-long torpor of staring at statistics to know what I want.

I have some criticisms of the fishing (unpolished and unfun–feels like a half-baked KS stretch goal) and crafting (hasn’t seemed useful yet, and it’s hard to set your sights on something you really want to make and then pursue that goal actively).

The story isn’t spectacular, but the world looks interesting and the characters are appealing.

I would not have expected a first project from a new studio based on a comic property funded by Kickstarter to be so polished or to include so many very elegant design choices. I’d expect a kinda sloppy mess of fascinating ideas that fail to propel me through the sludge.

Very glad I gave this a try.

Hmm, i picked this up on PS4 (half off right now) as many respected posters here seemed to like it. Also noticed it was an Austin outfit which helped tip me over. Seems like something outside of my normal wheelhouse i may enjoy for a change of pace.

Now have just got to find the time…

This is a great game, with a wonderful aesthetic. I love the levels where you can explore more or less freely, and how you have to make use of your character’s agility and abilities to dodge traps and so on. I also appreciate the fact that you can just run past battles on the overland map when enemies are way beneath your current level. Characters are likeable and interesting; story is forgettable fare.

The crafting is a bit hit or miss for me: some items seem like they need a ridiculous amount of stuff. (I’m not much of a fan of crafting in games, anyway!) And I’m currently about 8 hours in and I feel like I need to start to grind to keep up with the enemies, which is something reviews warned about (i.e. it gets rather grindy).

So far, though, recommended.

Finished through the second dungeon on the flight home. Just under 10 hours in, I think. Having a blast.

I do wish that when you go to enter a dungeon it would tell you the rough level equivalent of the difficulty options. I’ve only done normal so far, but it would be nice to know when it would be appropriate to go back and try a harder difficulty without having to load in, find out I’m not prepared (potentially) and exit back out.

Yeah, I just went into the fourth (fifth?) dungeon and I almost went with the middle difficulty, but I just wasn’t sure if I should. Turns out I probably totally could have. That said, I don’t know if level values are a good measure of that or not, so there might not be a simple way to convey the difficulty without you just trying and learning.

What I was a little disappointed in was that the loot is better in a difficult dungeon, but not fundamentally higher level, from what I can tell. So it doesn’t seem that you can really grind, say, the first dungeon after a certain point, even with the difficulty slider. Am I wrong?

Not sure, but I think the higher rarity chests are more liable to give higher rarity versions of the same items. Yes, that’s a thing. For instance, I have both a green and blue version of the same Calibretto weapon.

If you go to the vendor you sell the artifacts to, you can buy epic chests from the different dungeons and it says there’s a chance for epic loot. I bought one for Path of Fangs before I had even been inside and got the blue one (which was perfect because it was a well-out-of-date slot at the time) then got the green one in the dungeon.

So, I think one thing to do if you are below the curve a bit is to buy a chest or two from the hardest dungeon and hope you get a bit lucky (those chests had like 6+items, but some were materials…I think there were 2 pieces of gear).

In January, the devs removed level requirements for equipment:

The entire cast of Battle Chasers has wised up, and have learned how to use equipment that was previously beyond their skill level. This means: equipment no longer requires a minimum level to equip! This will improve the leveling curve, and make leveling up benched characters a smoother experience. To keep the game balanced, equipment drops and vendor inventories have been slightly readjusted.

That’s interesting. I also noticed in old reviews they said that clearing dungeons on normal difficulty unlocks the others, while there is no unlock req now (and is actually a bit confusing).

Opinions on the Switch version?

Love it. Played about 20 hours. Beat first 4 dungeons. Unlocked 6 characters. It’s beautiful, combat is fun and engaging.

There are some things I wish were different. Load times into dungeons are a bit long. The biggest gripe is that characters you aren’t actively using (limited to 3) do not gain xp, which actively discourages experimenting with lineups.

How many characters are there?

6, I believe.

Will I finish it? I don’t know. That’s rare for me. But it’s helped pass the time on 4 long flights the last few weeks.

It recently got XB1X enhanced. Waiting for it to go on sale on Xbox.

Wouldn’t that actually enourage you to use different lineups? So that you level up the other characters?

-Tom

Not when you are doing content that is higher level than someone who has been on the sideline for a while. Either you have to go find some easier content to catch them up or just don’t bother. Now, I should mention that xp received is adjusted by level (the lower level you are = more xp) so it may not actually be a big deal if you can struggle through a couple of smaller fights to get people caught up some, but I’d much rather just have everyone keep pace and be able to swap them in and out without having to worry about it.

I’ve been really enjoying playing this on Switch and definitely recommend it. As for the XP thing, I definitely don’t change my party around and so far haven’t had anything really push me to experiment with the other characters.

Another thought on xp. You unlock new powers as you level up, but are blind to what they will be. You could say there’s incentive to see what every character gets as they level up, but that’d mean constantly shuffling your lineup. The way some people have complained about necessary grinding in this game (which I’ve yet to encounter) that doesn’t seem like a good idea. If everyone kept pace, you could see what new abilities a sideline character had and might think “hey, that’s cool, I want to try that out”

I think it’s a really solid game and a really solid fit for the Switch. I doubt I would have put in as much time with it if I couldn’t pause it or play it away from a desk.

How often do Switch games go on sale? I want to it on the Switch, but I am not willing to pay $10 more than the Steam version for it.

Sales (in general, not this game) are frequent, but are usually relatively modest (50% is unusual).