Empire of Angels IV

Purely passable for hardcore fans of the genre.

Introduction
"Innocence is alive" the intro sings to me, in Japanese, whilst filling the screen with busty Waifus. I'm sure it is, but certainly not here - the introduction sequence can't even mention the land is suffering from an epic plague you have to investigate without showing a girl too-tightly wrapped in not enough bandages. I don't think there's a single character in the game who's portrait doesn't incite breast envy. Also, there are no men, this being based around the Valkyries of Asguard. What's jarring is the jump to actual gameplay.

Empire of Angels IV is a tactics-based RPG, but despite its adolescent boy baiting anime inspired artwork, the in game characters are tiny, cute little chibi things with massive heads. Even so, beating an enemy in combat instantly removes everything they're wearing except for their underwear, as they comically cover their assets with their arms. The thing is, the 3D engine is impossibly cute, and the battle music is all jolly and bouncy, and it begs the question, who exactly is the game marketed for?

Gameplay
But enough of the aesthetics. How does it play? The answer is surprisingly fast paced and well balanced, if you don't expect anything new at all. It's a very standard turn-based battle system, with control automatically cycling between characters after each turn. You're given a deployment screen to choose which of your party members to send out into battle, and once you've made your decision you get an isometric view of the battlefield with a movement grid surrounding your currently selected character's feet, a la XCom. Move the selected character into attack range, which differs dependant on character class, select Attack or use an ability from the menu which pops up after moving, and then go on to the next character. Once you've used all of your moves, the enemy party does the same thing. It's competently done and the combat is balanced enough that you can't just spam Attack every rounds, but it's oh so simple and bare bones, and looks and feels very much like something which may have come out on XBLA fifteen years ago.

As you fight, your characters gain levels and improve their generic stats - HP, ATK, Evade, Hit and Heal - and can be upgraded to a newer version of their class using the Merit Points you gain from battle. These classes branch off into different subclasses of the player's choice, before coming back to that character's final, and often best, class. The game also features your typical elemental strengths and weaknesses too, such as fire, wind, ice etc, and the battles are well balanced enough to make sure you need to pay attention to them so you can actually come out victorious., or at least they would be, if they didn't give you the ability to rewind up to ten turns if things go tits up (pun intended).

Out of battle, there's not much to write home about. You click on points on a world map to move there and either continue the story, which is told in short cutscenes and dialogue boxes, or fight another battle. There isn't any exploration as such – occasionally you'll find a treasure chest on a battle screen which you have to defeat like any other enemy, but apart from that not a great deal. At Chapter 3, you'll unlock a little pet which one character can summon into battle as an extra combatant. Previous locations will also get marked with a 'Side Quest' icon, which means you click on it to go back and fight a randomized battle. When you complete that battle, you'll unlock one of around twenty forms your summoned pet can take, each featuring different movesets and characteristics. That's pretty much the end of it, content wise.

There are some minor annoyances you pick up on as you play, such as the outfits the characters wear in their portraits not matching at all the ones they wear in battle, and the game is all in Chinese with a very basic and simple translation ("Look! Some monsters are blocking our path!") but nothing very distracting. The problem is, there's nothing too interesting either. It's difficult not to go into the settings and turn the battle animations to 'skip' to get to the more interesting fights, and they do get bigger and you unlock a lot more characters and attack options, but it still somehow manages to feel very... sterile.

And that's the problem. There's nothing here that's inherently bad, but it's just so uninspiring. You'll feel like you've played this a hundred times before, especially if you're into hand held or mobile RPG gaming.

Achievements
Games published by EAS have a tendency to be simple completions, and this one isn't any different, although slightly more time consuming. The only thing you'll need to do is complete the six story chapters and complete the story, upgrade your characters, and find all the game's pets you can acquire. Nothing taxing at all, just a little more time consuming than their usual Xbox ports. Which is nice, to be honest!

Overall
I really wanted to like this game more - traditionally it would be right up my street. As it sits, it's a textbook example of everything I've experienced in Chinese gaming - uninspiring, bland by-the-numbers games devoid of personality boiled down for mass appeal. There's a very playable framework here, it does what it set out to do and everything works, but there's no LIFE. It just... exists.

As a result, I have to give it a straight down the middle 5 out of 10, purely passable for hardcore fans of the genre.