I'm not usually a fan of this genre of games, but Battle Chasers is one of the best comic series I read in the mid-to-late 90's, and I've been waiting for a continuation to it ever since then. I love what Joe "Mad" Madureira did with Darksiders, and, to be fair, it's more like my sort of game, but Battle Chasers: Nightwar is... well, Battle Chasers, and that, alone, makes it have a special place in my heart. I guess this is the closest thing that we, fans of the comics, will get to a continuation of the series, so I bought it immediately.

The first thing I noticed, when starting the game, was the voice acting. I was amazed at how they managed to get voice actors who sound *so much* like I imagined the characters would sound if Battle Chasers ever had a cartoon.

I can't talk much about the gameplay, to be fair, considering this isn't exactly my type of game, but I'm enjoying it good enough. I guess JRPG "purists" will find it too easy, since I'm usually bad at turn-based "tactical" games and I've been managing to do just fine, so far (I'm five hours in, just got Knolan in my party and arrived at Junktown). It probably gets harder the more I get far in the game, but, right now, everything has been a breeze.

Either way, I'm just happy to have a new Battle Chasers. Thanks, Joe Mad!

I'll sign this, good games deserve credit and this definitely has mine too.

Well worth the selling price, only just started it but loving it already.

Totally agree; The visuals are faithful to the source material and gorgeous, even on my underpowered laptop.

Got to give massive props to everyone involved with the voice acting; They absolutely *nailed* it - If they make this into an animated series I hope they keep this cast! I love how nuanced the voices have been too; The voice direction must have been really thought out. I love how Gully's voice has that kinda slightly uncertain innocence of a child but with a slightly brave independent undertones to it. The robotic effects for Calibretto's voice are spot on - A lot of the time studios lay it on too thick and it just sounds bad, but here they got it just right and it works perfectly with the smoothly modulated tones of the voice actor. The *way* it talks is spot on too; Slightly naive but at the same time a wise sage. Garrison has always been the most tropey of the BattleChasers cast - The brooding warrior - but the voice actor lays it down without it being super cheesy, which would be an easy trap to fall into. It's well projected; strong with a sense of duty but also a hint of impatience, without being stupidly gravelly or excessively deep.

As the OP said, they all sound near-exactly as I would have imagined!

I haven't gotten to Knolan and Monika yet but am seriously looking forward to hearing them; From what snippets I've had from the intro they sound spot-on too!

My only regret with the voice acting is there isn't more of it! But it works well with what they have, i.e. just voicing the important bits. In a way it might work better as it puts extra emphasis on those sections! Great design choices!

The music is pretty good - It's got a nice theme and leads without being intrusive. I like that it has some personality rather than just being the generically bland soft muted atmospheric crap that so many games have. I love games with strong memorable themes! I'd say the music is on-par with StarCraft 2's - It's got some nice hooks here and there and the instruments are nice and clear, sharp, not soft and muddy like you tend to get with RPG background music. It doesn't really have any instantly recognisable leads like the Starcraft 1 music (Starcraft 1 Terran music still some of the best games music ever written IMHO!) but it's still good background music while being unintrusive. It has a nice energy to it that encourages one to go forth and kick arse, albeit cautiously in some cases.

The overworld map is neat; It's not free-roaming but there are multiple paths with nodes where events (Mainly fights or loot) can be had. The multiple paths allow you to sometimes bypass enemies - Sometimes 'random' encounters can become a boring chore (I'm looking at you, almost every other JRPG!!) so this can be desirable - but so far I'm finding the battle system very enjoyable so I'm actively seeking out more fights rather than trying to avoid them!

The generic fights are not too hard, although if you do silly things your party can still take a whacking. They're just hard enough in most cases for you to try out different skill/item/tactic combos for effectiveness, and this is great practice for the harder bosses!

The battle system is very clever; This overdrive mechanic adds a nice spin to the traditional JRPG-style battle mechanic, and I'm finding it's opening up a lot more tactical options for me, where I'm seeing if I can take out the enemies quickly, or changing styles for a longer game, when dealing with normal enemies, and saving main mana for the bigger fights where I can just let rip!

It's also nice and intuitive - A lot of other games could take lessons from the design choices used here!

I haven't delved much into the inventory and character aspects so much yet; It looks like you can unlock new abilities as you level, and there is also a skill/perk system which is super awesome as you can respec at-will instead of being locked down a path; I love this as it's letting me experiment with different skill configurations and battle tactics without having to break the game flow umming and ahhing over what skill to pick because you're worried you might take the wrong one and hamstring yourself later, which is a thing I've always had an issue with since Baldur's Gate 1!
More games should do this; As your character evolves, some skills often become redundant unless you meta-game and plan out the whole skill progression from the start. This system allows your character to evolve naturally and you can shape their skills to them as you go rather than trying to shape your character around those skills as is the case in most *RPGs

The overall feel of this game is it was well designed and a lot of thought went into the details; A lot of games that have come out lately have looked great at first but when you get into it the feel just isn't there; Something subtle is missing which makes the game not reach its potential. Not so with Battle Chasers; This has that feel of *just right* in spades!

The game isn't perfect tho' - Two things I really want them to fix - The performance could do with some optimisation; My laptop might be underpowered but it should be able to run this game on the lowest settings without being *that* jerky! To be fair, it's mainly on the overworld map; The battle mode is nice and smooth.
The other thing is controller options - I *really* want to play this with my 360 pad, but I hate that goddamned vibration and there is no option to turn it off!

So for the moment I'm using the keyboard, but I find the keybindings a bit off and want to change them, except I can't!

But yeah, glad I bought this game; It was well worth the wait! I was hedging and held off on pre-ordering due to all the disappointment a lot of recent pre-order games have given on actual release, but now I'm kinda glad I did - They deserve the extra money!

Now I'm hoping Joe can continue the comic series too...!

Highly recommended!