God Wars Future Past: The Complete Legend
God Wars Future Past tells the story of the ancient land Mizuho and its three nations: Fuji, Izumo, and Hyuga. The tale begins within the nation of Fuji as a young princess is sacrificed at the hands of her mother in order to prevent the world from being destroyed. Meanwhile, the queen's other daughter (Kaguya) is trapped and awaiting her sacrifice as well. However, she escapes and goes on a journey in order to find out what her mother's true intentions are. Throughout her travels, she'll meet a collection of friendly faces who join her along the way. Kaguya's childhood friend Kintaro helps her out from the very beginning and his strength makes him a worthy ally. Kintaro brings along Kuma who's a bear-like deity that he can telepathically communicate with. From then on, you'll meet a capable goddess, a goofy lady who operates a mine, a hot-tempered demon-like man, and a handful of powerful gods. Overall, the story has a solid premise and stays interesting throughout while the cast is full of distinct and endearing characters.
When it comes to gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised to see that God Wars Future Past is a throwback to classic games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts. The simplistic strategy RPG battles mix with in-depth character customization to create a rewarding yet easily digestible formula. Fans of these PS1 SRPGs will recognize many familiar elements such as gaining experience points per action, attacking from above and behind causes more damage, and having units close together boosts their stats.
There are 3 base Jobs -- Warrior, Priest, and Magician -- which can evolve and branch into even more Jobs. Each Job has its own skill tree, skills to use in battle, passives, equipment it can use, and more. It was fun to set up my characters the way I wanted them -- and with the ability to use a main and sub Job, there are many combinations available. Every character also has their own unique Job, in addition to the other 2 that you choose. You eventually get multiple characters, so there are times when you must choose who to take with you based on their specializations, adding another layer of strategy.
One aspect of God Wars Future Past will be frustrating for long-time genre fans and newcomers alike. Basically, whenever you change jobs for a character, they will be unable to use the abilities that they learned for their previous job. On the plus side, each character can have two jobs equipped simultaneously but that still means that you'll have to grind as that character in order to learn a capable set of abilities upon switching jobs.
Graphically the game looks great but this is not much of an issue for fans looking for an old-school Tactics game, but modern gamers that aren't familiar with the style might be put off. This definitely feels like a game that could have been released on the original PlayStation, though that is part of its charm.
Although God Wars Future Past will be an incredibly nostalgic and enjoyable game for those who grew up playing strategy RPGs on PS1, modern gamers who are used to the more immediately gratifying genre formula nowadays may feel perplexed as to how this could be enjoyable. This is mostly due to the amount of patience required on the player's behalf in order to allow the gameplay to click in all of its subtle complexities. There are options to speed up battle by not showing detailed info, which is great when you want to do a bunch of Shrine Battles that aren't part of the story. But my favorite option is the difficulty setting, which lets you adjust how hard the game is. The caveat here is that there's no benefit to playing higher difficulty levels, and you don't miss out on anything by playing on Easy. In fact, Easy gives you more rewards than the other modes. This may not be good for people that want a challenge in the battles, but not in the rewards. Still, it makes the game more accessible and I would rather have difficulties that don't require me to play hard mode to get the most out of the game.
So you want to know whats new? Well in The Complete Legend edition we are given 100+ hours new content with all previously released DLC, new gameplay mechanics, and the Legend of Yomi storyline.
God Wars Future Past The Complete Legend is a fantastic RPG that fans of the genre will surely love and want to buy and is an impressive throwback to possibly the best era for turn-based strategy RPGs. Long-time fans of the genre will love every second they spend fighting off dastardly beasts while modern gamers may wonder how this kind of game could be fun.. Those unfamiliar with the genre, or more into faster games should be cautious when deciding on this game. All in all This game is KASANOVA APPROVED
