Nice strategy game imported by Atlus and developed by Fun Unit. It's one of those almost unheard of games that shine among the sea of grinding-based strategy games out there as it introduces its own original combat system (here called Route Maneuver System) and a good story based, from what I've seen, on deception between nations rather than "let's go save the world all together".
The core of the game is the RMS mentioned above, which lets players attack more than one enemy if the targets are within their movement range: rather than moving a character near an enemy and chose the attack option, attack is carried away by drawing a path on enemies and allies. After you've reached your intended destination or depleted all movement points, the game skips to the attack scene where you see your character (or your enemy) literally dashing through the tiles you drew the path gaining bonuses from allies and attacking the enemies.
With this system, careless placement of units usually leads to their deaths, as more than four enemies can swarm one (not counting ranged units) and even attack two or more at once: bottlenecks are almost impossible to hold (unless you have a character with a particular skill) as enemies can plow through if they have enough movement points, breaking in less than a turn what in other games could have been a solid defense.
Also, using ranged attacks (spells and bows), skills, overboard attacks and item require the character to stand still.
While direct-attack units rely on dashing through enemies and bows hit their target from afar (a for massive damage, I might add), spell are more varied, with short-range spells hitting anything within their effect area, line spells hitting anything standing in their way or long-range, single-target spells. Compared to bows, spells are a bit underpowered, considering they need a stationary caster and MPs - bows, on the other hand have infinite arrows and hit for more total damage, although they can't hit more than one target per turn.
With each kill, characters earn XPs and level up, thus earning skill points. Skill points are spent between missions to learn new skills (if available) or improve existing ones. Each character can "equip" up to eight skills, including active (like spells) or passive (bonuses for friends passing through). With fighters this isn't a real problem, but spellcasters need some micromanagement, as the number of spells they can learn, plus their passive abilities, is more than the eight slots allowed.
There are no weapons: each character comes pre-equipped with a weapon of choice, so equipment is limited to four boosting items and four recovering items: in RoS the characters doesn't take recovering items from a common inventory, but each carry their own, so assigning the right items to the right character (based on his/her class and how you use him/her) is very important.
Like most strategy games, lost units are not lost forever, but reappear in the next mission hurt, unable to do errands (you have max 6 units in your party and the rest can be sent on various missions to retrieve things) and their defense and attack would be halved.
Considering that the game is really demanding in terms or careful strategical planning and there are units that literally ask to die (most knights...at least, how I use them), it's good to see that they aren't lost forever.
The game has some minor flaws, mostly in the technical and interface departments.
First, the battlefield view is too close, forcing the player to go around even to move his units on it - with a system basically requiring to plan your moves two or three turns ahead, constantly waving around the camera is annoying. Also, movement ranges are shown by replacing each square black outline with a red one - it's not impossible to see but surely it's hard. Also, it's impossible to lock multiple enemy units to see their movement range, and it's also impossible to know an enemy archer or mage maximum attack range: as it's possible to take a look at each enemy stat and see their movement and attack range from menus, you can also determine their range by counting tiles...this slows down the game a bit, especially in the first missions where the enemy has multiple archers and you have just one (weak) mage.
The interface, especially during battles, could use some work. As some enemies can block your dashing attack with an ability called ZOC and there's always their info screen to see all of their abilities, I can't see why not to show it directly on the top screen along character portrait (almost useless, especially for standard enemies) and stats. A cancel button on the touch screen would help.
Character design is nice, 2D animations are good (if limited), sound is rather standard fare but it's catchy. The back of the cover tells about multiple endings, so surely there will be some replay value.
Overall, the game lacks the finish other games have (Yggdra Union and Advance Wars, for example), but thanks to its strategic system it's a very nice game to play - with excellent cameos, too.
The core of the game is the RMS mentioned above, which lets players attack more than one enemy if the targets are within their movement range: rather than moving a character near an enemy and chose the attack option, attack is carried away by drawing a path on enemies and allies. After you've reached your intended destination or depleted all movement points, the game skips to the attack scene where you see your character (or your enemy) literally dashing through the tiles you drew the path gaining bonuses from allies and attacking the enemies.
With this system, careless placement of units usually leads to their deaths, as more than four enemies can swarm one (not counting ranged units) and even attack two or more at once: bottlenecks are almost impossible to hold (unless you have a character with a particular skill) as enemies can plow through if they have enough movement points, breaking in less than a turn what in other games could have been a solid defense.
Also, using ranged attacks (spells and bows), skills, overboard attacks and item require the character to stand still.
While direct-attack units rely on dashing through enemies and bows hit their target from afar (a for massive damage, I might add), spell are more varied, with short-range spells hitting anything within their effect area, line spells hitting anything standing in their way or long-range, single-target spells. Compared to bows, spells are a bit underpowered, considering they need a stationary caster and MPs - bows, on the other hand have infinite arrows and hit for more total damage, although they can't hit more than one target per turn.
With each kill, characters earn XPs and level up, thus earning skill points. Skill points are spent between missions to learn new skills (if available) or improve existing ones. Each character can "equip" up to eight skills, including active (like spells) or passive (bonuses for friends passing through). With fighters this isn't a real problem, but spellcasters need some micromanagement, as the number of spells they can learn, plus their passive abilities, is more than the eight slots allowed.
There are no weapons: each character comes pre-equipped with a weapon of choice, so equipment is limited to four boosting items and four recovering items: in RoS the characters doesn't take recovering items from a common inventory, but each carry their own, so assigning the right items to the right character (based on his/her class and how you use him/her) is very important.
Like most strategy games, lost units are not lost forever, but reappear in the next mission hurt, unable to do errands (you have max 6 units in your party and the rest can be sent on various missions to retrieve things) and their defense and attack would be halved.
Considering that the game is really demanding in terms or careful strategical planning and there are units that literally ask to die (most knights...at least, how I use them), it's good to see that they aren't lost forever.
The game has some minor flaws, mostly in the technical and interface departments.
First, the battlefield view is too close, forcing the player to go around even to move his units on it - with a system basically requiring to plan your moves two or three turns ahead, constantly waving around the camera is annoying. Also, movement ranges are shown by replacing each square black outline with a red one - it's not impossible to see but surely it's hard. Also, it's impossible to lock multiple enemy units to see their movement range, and it's also impossible to know an enemy archer or mage maximum attack range: as it's possible to take a look at each enemy stat and see their movement and attack range from menus, you can also determine their range by counting tiles...this slows down the game a bit, especially in the first missions where the enemy has multiple archers and you have just one (weak) mage.
The interface, especially during battles, could use some work. As some enemies can block your dashing attack with an ability called ZOC and there's always their info screen to see all of their abilities, I can't see why not to show it directly on the top screen along character portrait (almost useless, especially for standard enemies) and stats. A cancel button on the touch screen would help.
Character design is nice, 2D animations are good (if limited), sound is rather standard fare but it's catchy. The back of the cover tells about multiple endings, so surely there will be some replay value.
Overall, the game lacks the finish other games have (Yggdra Union and Advance Wars, for example), but thanks to its strategic system it's a very nice game to play - with excellent cameos, too.
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