Hello and welcome to
ToriJ's Video Game Reviews. Yggdra Union: We'll Never Fight Alone is
a tactical role-playing game by Atlus that was originally published
on the Game Boy Advance, and then later ported to the PSP. The game
stars Princess Yggdra who assembles a Royal Army to battle the evil
Bronquian Empire.
No justice!
No peace! No justice! No peace!
We start
off with some images and a text scroll explaining the plot before
being led to our title character escaping from Imperial forces. She
takes refugee in a thieves hideout, so the Imperials do the only
rational thing and burn it to the ground.
When their
leader, Milanor, comes back, he decides he doesn't like that
one bit and the battle is on, but first a tutorial, and another
tutorial, and another tutorial, AND ANOTHER TUTORIAL! My god, there
are more tutorials than game modes, just get to the point!
Roll the
dice, play your cards, break the rules that's who you are, whoever
said play it safe never played the game.
Yggdra
plays a lot like a board game. You can move each character a certain
number of spaces that's allowed on the card you chose, and engage in
battles with enemies when you're close to them. Steps are counted
for every character instead of individually so choose your movement
wisely. The game takes into account stats, and what weapon you're
equipped with to improve your chances in a fight.
Morale is
another thing you have to watch out for in this game. Your morale
goes down if you lose a fight and if it reaches zero the game is
over. The enemies have morale too and you need to take that down to
zero in order to defeat them. The PSP version is a little more
forgiving with morale boosts since you're gain some back upon
leveling up.
You can
find items to aid you on your quest by exploring the maps of each
stage, but you have to land on the space the item is on. You can
also visit villages and get advice or assistance from the villagers
you interact with, so it's worth it to explore a bit despite how
linear it can all feel.
Saves
happen in-between stages, and there are checkpoints in longer stages
which reset your cards so you can use them again, but heaven forbid
you have to shut the game off for any reason during the checkpoints
because then you have to start all over. I was so exhausted during
stage three because it just went on, and on, and on!
Can't
counter!? I call hax!
Engaging an
enemy takes you to a separate screen where the two armies battle it
out for supremacy. Whoever the attacking army is is the one who gets
the first charge, and then the defending army gets a chance to
counter-attack. Needless to say, the army who gets the first strike
has the advantage.
There isn't
exactly a whole lot you can do on this screen. You can toggle between
passive or aggressive, but for the most part you just watch the two
armies fight with your fingers crossed. If you hate repetitiveness
in your games, you're not going to have much fun here. At the very
least, you can speed up the fighting so it's over with quickly.
Cardcaptors,
a mystic adventure! Cardcaptors, a quest for all time!
Cards
make up the basis of your entire party. Run out of cards and the game
is over. The further you get into the game, the more cards you find
and can equip before a battle. Power determines how much damage the
enemy takes in a fight, while the Ace is what weapon the Union leader
requires for the card to be any good.
Each card
has its own skill that is useful in battle. A few examples of this
include restore allies, kill all enemies, change the field, and
invincibility. The power level of the card determines how much
damage your enemy takes, and the Ace matches what kind of weapon the
Union Leader needs in order for it to be of any use.
Sulu. You can
call me Mr. Sulu.
The
characters are all interesting enough and the voice acting is solid.
I swear Yggdra sounds so much like the voice actress for Rebecca in
the first Resident Evil game, but I checked and it's not her.
Actually, nobody seems to know who Yggdra's English Voice Actress is.
Or any of the English voice actors for that matter.
Yggdra has
a certain innocence about her, but when it comes time to start
cutting bitches, she rises to the challenge considerably. Milanor is
your laid back thief who's a little bit of a ladies man, and then
you have characters like Durant who is honorable, loyal, and
performs his duty well. I like his spear. You can never go wrong
with a good spear. Unless the other people have axes.
I like the animation of
the characters. Every character that talks has their own animation
you can see on the left side of the screen while they're talking
that's pretty well done, and a sprite on the right that's charming
to look at and provides other expressions for the characters in
certain scenes.
Kind of a
sweet subtitle when you think about it.
Bottom
line? Yggdra Union edges on the boring and repetitive side. The
characters are all interesting enough, but it just doesn't balances
out how lackluster the gameplay is. On the bright side, it's one of
those games where you know right away whether you'll like it or not.
The things seen above with the board and battle screen? That's
basically the whole game. If you get past that you may enjoy it. If
not then you're gonna have a bad time.
Try it
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