I haven’t gotten much sleep in the last few days and it’s all because of Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement. It started out as a very plain tactical RPG with no real innovation to speak of, but the plot and battles just kept getting better and better, compelling me to ’marathon session’ through it. As a prequel to the original Vandal Hearts, this game stays fairly close to the style of play you’d expect from Playstation 1 era Tactical RPGs and it’s clear that it was meant for fans of that genre. It’s very straightforward in design, it doesn’t do anything new, and it even has bizarre interface design flaws, but players that enjoyed the PS1 era for the Tactical RPG genre will probably be able to overlook all of that because it’s a solid take on that style of game.
Like most fantasy-themed Tactical RPGs, this game lets you control a variety of characters and move them along a square grid, fighting a group of enemies that are either stronger or more numerous than your team; it’s up to you to use good battlefield tactics in order to win. As a $15 downloadable title, you know something has to give compared to a full-price game in this genre, and in this case Flames of Judgement has opted to cut the scope of the game. You don’t get as many characters, and what might normally be a 40-60 hour plot is now more in the 10-16 hour range. That’s okay; I’m fine with paying a ’lite’ price for what amounts to ’PS1-era Tactical RPG Lite.’ All the usual aspects are here; some of your characters are better with swords or axes, others are quick and sneaky, some make better mages, and others generalize so that you can use them as the situation demands. Your enemies usually tend to be of a similar basic mix, so it works out.
Since the combat system is pretty basic, that means either the plot or the actual content of the battles need to save this game. The story ends up being merely decent, telling the typical RPG tale of several youths united by circumstance to deal with what first appear to be regional problems, but expand in scope over time. You’ll have a few characters you particularly like, and the story paces itself very well with little wasted time, but it is ultimately just a decent to fairly good plot.
Thankfully the battles themselves stand out. A very simple TacRPG system can easily be forgiven if the stages make good use of it, and that’s definitely the case here. Only the first few battles are simple and boring; later ones get much more involved. A little past the half-way point in the game, I was delighted to be partaking in a three-front battle that forced me to make genuinely challenging decisions. This was joined by other highlights such as an escort mission actually done right: The NPC you’re protecting behaves very intelligently (they’ll take cover behind your defensive line if you set one up, for example) and does various helpful things during the battle, making it an actually enjoyable escort mission. Thus while the game mechanics were simple, the actual layout of the battles made it a lot of fun; some of the fights in Flames of Judgement are the best ones I’ve ever played in this genre.
That said, this game does have some flaws beyond its simplistic RPG rules. The most significant of them is the graphics: The character designs, battlefield graphics, and vaguely animated cut-scenes are hideous. I don’t specifically have an issue with them being western style character designs rather than anime style, but these were executed very badly. The cut-scenes near the end of each major plot point are just as bad, featuring ’animation’ only in a very loose sense; if you recall the endings from Twisted Metal 2 it looks almost exactly like that. But the battlefields are the real problem, as any stage set during the evening or in areas where man-made lighting (torches, magic sources, etc.) is present just abuses Quake 2/Daikatana style colored lighting. This means lots of deep red and blue lighting effects clashing with each other in about half the stages of this game, and it’s genuinely hard to look at. Colored lighting is for ambient effect, not for making the player want to rip their eyes out! The menu and interface are also pretty bad, missing a lot of modern conveniences we’ve seen in games like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
I can forgive these flaws, however. I still enjoy classical-style Tactical RPGs, and this game is a lot like them. Admittedly it’s ugly and does nothing to innovate the genre, but I can forgive these issues because the battles are very well designed. As a result, I’m left with two distinct opinions on the game. First, fans of the Tactical RPG genre will enjoy this; you’ll find your $15/1200 Microsoft Spacebucks well spent and this game’s 8.0 rating is given with you in mind as its target audience, especially since I count myself among that group. On the other hand, that same lack of innovation and bad presentation mean that if you don’t already like the genre, Flames of Judgement won’t change your mind and you would be better served playing some other game.
Demo note: The demo really does this game no favors. It shows only the worst of this game’s content and fails to hint at the much more enjoyable battles later on. Normally I don’t comment on that sort of thing, but the disparity in this case is so big that I honestly wonder why they released such a bad demo when the actual game is just fine.
