Yggdra Union

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