Battle Chasers Nightwar review

Introduction
What exactly is Battle Chasers Nightwar for game? It is a game based on the comic book series Did you read this comic book? It’s on my to-do list. If you didn’t, don’t worry. This game doesn’t expect you to know what happened in the comic books but you will get a few references to the books here and there. That made me curious to read them in the future. This game gives me a feeling towards the Final Fantasy playstyle. It is an indie game and I can tell you that it is a very good game even though it has a couple of flaws, this game gave me a big urge to platinum it!

Here is a picture of my platinum progress. This took me 88 hours. My wife is playing this game too, with the intent to Platinium this game.! No more time to diddle daddle here right? Beware, there are spoilers! Let us get started, shall we?

This review will contain spoilers

The characters

I’ll start with the explanation of the characters, these are important in the story of Battle Chasers Nightwar. And otherwise, you might not follow the story explanation.

Gully: She is a young female, also referred to as child, who had lost her father. She has magical gloves that look like the infinity gauntlets from the avengers. In dire need, she can do incredible things with her gloves. She is hoping to find clues on the island to find a lead to her father. The bad guys want the magical gauntlets for themself. That is why she needs protection, even though she can do damage herself.

Garrison: He is a swordsman that has sworn to protect Gully and he has been doing so from the beginning. Garrison has a dark past, including dark ancient powers. You don’t get to see much of or hear much about his past. To me it’s still a mystery. Maybe I’ll unravel this in the comic book series. Garrison fears his own power and he has doubts about using his powers. He only wants to use the powers in dire need.

Calibretto: He is a giant war golem robot found in a mass grave of robots. He has been rebuild and reprogrammed by Knolan to be kind and gentle with healing powers. He questions himself if he truly is not just a Warmachine. He needs reassurance from the other characters to reassure him that he is a gentle giant and not a bad guy. Calibretto had also sworn to protect Gully and keep the infinity gauntlets safe. His first priority is Gully.

Knolan: He is an old arcane mage. Knolan is always in search of new spells to learn. He is very old but and he is afraid that he is slowly losing his mind from old age. He is scared that he soon won’t remember the important things and he is afraid that he will die. Knolan can be seen as the main leader of the party. In the tutorial cutscene, he leads the expedition to the island.

Monika: She is a bandit who is also protecting Gully. She and Garrison go way back they are friends but acts hostile towards each other. Why? Maybe it is explained in the comic books. Monika never felt like she belonged anywhere but now she feels that she belongs with this group of people. She thinks of them as her family but she won’t let that show and definitely not tell them. She acts tough but she is actually a nice person who wants to help others.

Alumon: He is a member of the party you will find on the island that is looking to destroy Verus. Since he is from a special order that has been doing so for a long time and he holds a whip and shield as weapons. That gives me a serious Castlevania vibe. His father is killed by Verus.

Destra: She is the evil witch that wants to resurrect Verus. Destra has a pact with a blood demon named C’dral. Together they plan on destroying Verus.

C’dral: He is an ancient demon. He previously had a pact with Verus. But Verus declined their pact and disobeyed C’dral. C’dral wants revenge.

Verus: He is an ancient vampire who has been slain many times. He has the ability to come back to life. Right now he is weakened and can be destroyed forever. This must happen before he restores his power.

The story of Battle Chasers Nightwar

The game starts with a cutscene, where they explain exactly what is going on. You are a party of 5. Knolan wants to find mana on the island to learn powerful spells. (Maybe zetaflare?! Let me know in the comment if you got the easter egg) The island has been hidden for a long time and nobody knows what has been happening. Of course, it would not be a game if everything went according to plan. While flying the airship, bandits come in with their airships. Even though you are way stronger compared to bandits, the cutscene logics will apply and you will be defeated by the bandits. Your airship will crash and the party gets split up. You will start with one member of the party, Gully. With her, you are able to find the other 5 party members. You are in luck! The second party member is close by. It is Callibretto, he will heal your wounds from the crash. After this Gully and Calibretto move along to search for their friends. In your search, you’ll encounter bandits and other enemies. The plan is to quickly find them all and leave the island. Soon you will find a town called Harms Way. In this town are people that are willing to help you find your friends. In a bandit camp, you’ll find a letter that gives you an insight into the enemies plan. Their plan is to gather artifacts in dungeons. You do not yet know why. The townspeople give you a key and you are able to get to the dungeon. You will encounter the bandits in the dungeon. The goal is to get to the artifact first to prevent their plan, whatever it is, from succeeding.

You will go to a second dungeon and after completing this you will unlock the third dungeon. Before entering the third dungeon you will find Knolan. After killing the boss in the third dungeon you will find Monika. Your party is complete for now. It becomes clear that you and your party are the only ones who can save the island. It seems there is an evil witch resurrecting undead enemies and before you know it your task is to defeat her.

Somewhere the island will be a new party member. You will have to find him. His name is Alumon. He is able to join the party after the fourth dungeon. Before entering the fourth dungeon he reveals that the person causing trouble on the island is an evil witch named Destra who has a pact with C’dral to destroy Verus. He explains to you that you will need an artifact called the deadwatch to enter the realm of the dead to proceed with your journey. When you return to Alumon after collecting the deathwatch artifact in the fourth dungeon he will join your party. Together you will enter the fifth dungeon. You will try to stop Destra for good. In the fifth dungeon, you learn that the dungeon was a decoy made by Destra. You will have to rush to the sixth dungeon to stop her from summoning a powerful demon.

You don’t actually have to rush, you have all the time in the world to complete sidequests, or go fishing. Whatever you chose to do, you will be too late. The Demon is being summoned! You need to fight it now it is still weak from being summoned. You have the chance to it before it regains its power.

You will need to destroy a beholder creature called “the Farseer” to find out where you can find Verus, a godly vampire, to stop him from regaining power. Because you kill this beholder C’dral will see through the plans of Destra, who actually wanted to help Verus regains his power. C’dral will posses Destra. Destra will die and C’dral takes over the body.

In the eighth dungeon, you will fight the shadow version of your party members. They have been summoned by C’dral. After the defeat, you find a container that is powerful enough to hold the demon. You realize this is the way to go to stop C’dral. You will go to the castle where you are expecting to find Verus and C’dral fighting each other. You hope one of them will defeat the other since fighting them both would be very hard for you. Instead, you only find C’dral. The cutscene will start. After the cutscene, you will have to fight C’dral. Afterward, the final cutscene will play. I’m still wondering; where did Verus go? After the credits you see Verus leaving the island in a boat. Is this the start of Battle Chasers Nightwar 2?

The gameplay
This might be the most important of each review. Isn’t this what everyone wants to know before playing a game? Battle Chasers Nightwar is a Japanese role-playing game. This means there are turns. When it is your turn you can select an enemy and an action that you want to perform. After your turn, the enemy gets to select an action and use it on you. After selecting an action, you’ll sometimes have to wait before you can perform the action. This is based on the speed of your character and the speed of your enemy or enemies. If the speed is equal the game will randomly decide who gets to perform their action first. To increase your speed you have to upgrade your haste status. In Battle Chasers Nightwar you have time to decide what might be a good strategy for the given situation. You have three party members in your team, if you would like to switch them up, you can do so in the Inn. You can try and find the best match for you. I used the party combination of Garrison, Gully, and Callibretto. I have tried other combinations, including Alumon, Monika, and Knolan, but they kept dying.

When you are low on health points or mana you can go to the Inn and rest. Please note that resting at the Inn will reset all the enemies in the overworld map. You will need to fight them again when encountered. Party members that are left in the Inn do not get experience points. You will find equipment and weapons scattered all around the island, in dungeons or exploration areas. You can replace old equipment very often. All you need is love, no just kidding! You only need Garrison. He has high damage output. He can defeat every enemy with ease. Especially when you have his unique equipment and have 100+ points in his skill tree. My personal best with Garrison is a hit of 171k damage in new game+ In comparison, in new game+ the final boss C’dral has 58k health points. I have killed the boss in a new game+ with one hit. In the video below I show you the buffs you need to get the highest damage output with Garrison. Unfortunately he was a bit camera shy and only hit 63k.

Why do you need the other party members? Gully can make a shield to protect the whole party from harm. Callibretto can heal when needed. My goal in every battle was to buff and heal Garrison. I use taunt with Gully, this will lure most enemies to damage her instead of Garrison. Garrison had to have a flaw next to high damage output, this is low defense and health. Praise the Garrison! (comment if you get this easter egg) In this game, your party members have health points and mana points. A special mechanic in this game is called overcharge. No health points? You’ll die. No mana points? You are only able to perform normal attacks. In Battle Chasers Nightwar you also have overcharge. For example, you are near death and you need to heal but your mana points are running extremely low! Lucky you! You have enough overcharge and with the overcharge, you can save yourself. Overcharge can be used as mana points. You get 10 overcharge each time you hit an enemy with a basic attack and some party members can get 15 or even 20 when using a different attack. Later on, you can get a skill to generate more overcharge when you hit an enemy. Once the battle ends, you will lose all the build-up overcharge Garrison can use the skill warblade which uses an initial 40 overcharge for a massive attack, later on you can upgrade this to 60 overcharge. Getting 10 overcharge each time can be a lifesaver! You can heal or use a massive attack. Whatever you need to survive that tough battle that you have encountered

Crafting is more of an end game thing. By the time you get to the end of the game, you will have gathered enough of the crafting materials that you will need for high tier equipment. You can also enchant items. The enchanter shop opens up after the sixth dungeon and I have marked this for endgame, for the same reason as with the crafting; by then you’ll have the materials needed.

It is possible to find an enchanter shrine in the dungeons located on the island but most likely you will not have gathered the materials yet. It is random if they appear in any dungeon. You can also craft flask and potions at the potion shop. I have barely used this option because I have found enough potions in the dungeons. When you do craft a potion, you can increase the effect of the potion by including more of the needed materials in them. There is also a beastmaster in town. She can learn your party members bursts and you’ll get hunts from her. Fun side quests the hunts are fun but there are only nine spread over the game. Most hunts have puzzles or trading sequences related to them which means running around the island. Completing the hunts will give you special equipment and shadow coins. The last hunt will give you a valuable item which I really loved in the new game plus. It is a monocle that shows all information in a dungeon before you find a dungeon map. I just mentioned bursts, Bursts are quite simple to use. Once you have complete the first dungeon, you will gain the first one for every party member, before your first boss fight. With this burst you can do a special attack. You can use the burst without letting the enemy select an attack first and the burst attacks are often quite powerful. You can fill your burst bar by performing normal attacks or buffs. You need to do special quests to level up your bursts to maximal 3 bursts per party member. My advice is to mostly use Garrisons second burst in combination with a critical hit build. This will let you cruise through the game with ease.

You have an overworld map that is not open-world exploration but more semilinear. You will need to walk on a path. You can gather materials, minerals, and plants along your route. These items are used for crafting and enchanting items. There are shrines on the world map that will give buffs. For example, increased attack or increased defense. It is not at all an easy ride, there are enemies all over the paths and they attack you when you walk into them. These enemies don’t move. They are on a point on the path and if you have to walk by them this will trigger their attack. When you are a higher level then the enemies they won’t attack you. You can choose to initiate the fight. If you don’t you can just walk over them. There is one exception, a group of enemies that follows you in their airship. They scale to your level and they are very strong in the early game. You can not outrun them, they will follow you forever. These bandits are the same guys that made you crash to this island.

In dungeons and throughout the island you can find treasure maps. You can follow them, or solve the riddle to find good loot. There are hidden treasures all over the island. But you might need to fight off a lot of enemies to find the right spot mentioned. I did not get all the clues on my first try. In the video below you can see a battle airship chase me and the fight.

Leveling up is important in Battle Chasers Nightwar. With every level up you will get perk points, in other games known as skill points., you apply these points to skills. You can switch any time you want so you can experiment with what works for you. For each party member, there are two skill trees. Both trees go in a different direction. In the end, you can get up to 270 perk points for Garrison which are way more than points to fill two skill trees. You need 100 perk points for one skill. You can gather a maximum of 368 perk points per party member. With every level up you will gain perk points, but you will also find perk point books along the way. You can also buy perk point books with shadow coins at the collector in the village called Harms Way. He will say: “I have the wares if you have the coin.” (please comment below if you know where this is from) Here are two pictures of Garrisons’ different skill trees. You can use them to reach the high damage or just look at them and experiment with your own build.

In Battle Chasers Nightwar you can go fishing. You can catch fishies and sell the fish to Fishmonger in Fisherman’s wharf. Special fish can be sold to the collector. Fishing yes you are gonna go fishing and sell the fish and use those shadow coins to buy skill books and some fish can be sold at the collector to other fish need to be traded at the Fishmonger. At the Fisherman’s wharf, you have four fishing spots. You will start with one fishing spot. The further you get in the game the more fishing spots you will unlock. Sometimes there are fishing spots in dungeons. This is random. You can upgrade your fishing pole and lure as you progress in the game. In the fourth fishing spot, you are able you catch books. Swimming books, without water damage. These are worth a lot to the collector!

I spend over 10 hours fishing to collect them all for the fishiary. Also to collect special fish/books to trade with the collector for the perk point books. If you have completed the fishiary you can get a strong weapon from Fishmonger for Garrison. This weapon is called the shark bait. You can use this weapon until you can make Garrisons’ ultimate weapon. In the game, but mostly in dungeons you can collect lore books. If you collect the whole set you get a bonus. Most times you need three or four from each set. These lore books give you an idea of what is going on, on the island. Usually, you need to complete a dungeon multiple times to get all of the lore books from that dungeon.

The maximum level in Battle Chasers Nightwar is level 30. The game has been set up to be more of a quality than quantity. In my opinion, the maximum level could have easily been level 50. When you replay dungeons for lore books, or are trying to get all the achievement, you will get there with ease. I have filled both the bestiary and the fishiary, which took a lot of time but getting the achievement felt very satisfying. Once it took me the whole evening to fill up one monster since this monster was very rare. You had to be lucky to encounter it.

Dungeons

In this type of game, you spent more time inside the dungeons then outside. Without the dungeons, this (and many other) game would be a walking simulator. Before entering a dungeon you can select the difficulty. In the first playthrough, you can choose. normal, hard, and legendary. In new game + you can choose mythical. Normal won’t exist in new game +. I recommend you to choose the highest difficulty as that gives you the biggest chance on item drops. You will also get more experience points for each completed battle. The dungeons are randomly generated. There is no running through them blindly. You’ll need to look for the way to the boss each time you enter a dungeon. In every dungeon is a dungeon map, but this dungeon map can be everywhere. Literally the last room. You have to repeat some of the dungeons many times to complete the bestiary or get a certain item. In the dungeons are random events. They can give loot and are needed to gather materials for special weapons and armor. An example is caldues skull from the deathwatch dungeon. You need this for Alumons last battle burst upgrade. It took me 12 tries to finally get the caldues skull! I shouted in excitement and simultaneously I scared my wife and our cats. My wife has played this game as well. She entered the deathwatch dungeon for the first time and she found the caldues skull, not yet even knowing she would need it in the future. She had seen me get frustrated though the search for this caldues skull and laughed very hard when she’d found it in her first try.

The enemies in the dungeons are fast and very aggressive. You won’t be able to outrun them, though it is a good way to gain experience points and simultaneously fill up your bestiary. But I found that you are not able to outrun enemies very annoying when my bestiary was filled and I needed to complete a dungeon for an achievement. I missed a speed button to speed up battle animations. With filling your bestiary you can achieve beast perks, that makes your party members stronger.

There are also exploration areas throughout the island. These are small maps. Usually, you need to find something for a quest or solve a puzzle. The loot is minimal in these areas. Some exploration areas will have lore books.

Every character has an extra skill while in a dungeon or exploration area. A second one will be unlocked later in the game. Every party member gets another ability. Calibretto can heal the party outside of battle. Gully is able to uncover the secret areas. Garrison can roll into an enemy which gives him a haste buff. I do recommend the dungeons! They are fun to explore. But keep in mind that even with the random generated element it could get a drag if you want to gather all achievements.

New game +

The new game + options works a bit differently in Battle Chasers Nightwar compared with other games. When starting a new game +, you are not able to keep your collected items. You start at level 1, but you keep all of your perk points. That means you don’t have to repeat all the fishing to get two full skill trees. Also, you start with all the party members. You are also allowed to use the monocle from your last hunt. That reveals all that is going on in the dungeon. The enemies will be a much higher level. They will also be stronger. That could be a problem in the beginning. Fighting a level 12 enemy at level 5 is pretty though. In the end, the enemies will be level 35. You will be level 30 but that does not really matter by then. You will be so strong by then that they won’t stand a chance. There is also a new game++ option. I did not try this because it was exact same game but more difficult. And also there was no need to play new game ++ for an achievement. I recommend playing a new game +. It’s worth it! Definitively if you enjoyed the main game playthrough!

Pro’s

• Good combat
• Nice graphics
• The RPG elements are good
• Good story
• No game-breaking bugs
• Good voice acting

Cons

• The sound and the music are not very good
• Dungeons are repetitive, even though they are randomly generated.
• Max level is to low
• The enemy rarity is too high for some of the enemies.
• For a couple of the bugs that I did encounter I had to reboot the game.
• When you walk into a group of enemies that are still talking, your camera gets fudged up.
• You can not see yourself on the map

My final number for Battle Chasers Nightwar…… Drumroll…..

7,5!

I recommend this game even though it has flaws! If you like final fantasy games you will like this game as well.