Having every signature feature of a typical Square Enix fantasy RPG: a world-devouring invasion powered by the Empire, precious crystal which is the source of all magic and a band of gathered heroes that comes from all different places, The DioField Chronicle is born with great expectations and I almost could not wait to step on another Final-Fantasy-Style adventure with some more tacticle touches when I first set my eyes on it.
Surprisingly, TDFC is not your boring and cliche tactical rpg where you have to dully select tiles for all your troops to move to, wait for their turn to attack and relentlessly calculate the consequences of your every action. Instead, SE has brought its notoriously famous real-time battle system. Amphibious assault? Pincer Maneuver? Or perhaps feint your opponent with a line of shield walls while your assassins take out their leaders? TDFC is such a tactical game with untold flexibility and freedom where you can order your troops to do almost everything while still remaining strategically challenging.
Now the tower of expectations is piling up higher and higher: a brillaint fantasy journey filled with courage and tears while controlling your heros to defeat their enemies in all kinds of imaginitive and clever ways, TDFC seems to have it all! What could go wrong, right?
The Storytelling that missed the Story
Trapped in the middle, quite literally and geopolitically, of a stalemate between the powerful empire of the east dreaming of a world-conquering westward expansion and the uncompromising alliance of the west, the Island Diofield is known to be rich with the only power source of magic: Jade. Although far from being an original story, the setting embodies unlimited potentials and I was very intrigued to see how the story would unfold.
Then I spend the next three hours within the game as a member of a mercenary group residing on Diofield Island with no knowledge whatsoever of what is going on in the outside world, running errands. There were no particular reasons that the game offered me, as in why should I care about what I am doing: Instead of a bad plot, TDFC offered me no plot. I am either running to a mining site to kill undeads defending a noble house from bandits simply because I was asked to.
The only thing I knew less than the storyline of TDFC is its characters. Start with an initial group of three and then soon to a group of five, even with five hours into the game, most of them are still mere collections of tags and a pretty face rather than a real person to me. I have no insight of who they are, and what they want or why they decide to stick together. In the second battle after the tutorial, I encountered a sharpshooter named Icarion who has always worked alone on a mission to destroy a bandit camp. After the mission, without any clear indication of why, Icarion asks to join the mercenary group and fight alongside me.
In retrospect of the first few hours of the game, it felt like the game just wanted to rush over the boring prologue of world-building or character introduction and instead drag me into as many battles as it can. I have seen similar tricks being done in other games like Monster Hunters, but even so, a basic story that at least allows on some level a connection between gamers and the game could only help not hurt.
The Tacticle Gameplay that missed the Tactics
The real-time battle system is a real revolutionary design. In TDFC the gamer controls their heros on different maps to fight different enemies in an overhead view, just like every other tactical games. However, TDFC eliminated all the tiring and boring feature like a turn-based battle or tile limited movement and instead offered complete control for the heros at all times, which would satisfy evne the most spontaneous gamer, like me. The pros and cons battles without rests, but unrefutablhy the battles in TDFC is certainly more realistic. More importantly, TDFC appears to have fully overcome the biggest challenge typical tactical games would face: the loss of gamer’s interest through the ridiculously long period for them to master all the details of the battle system.
But very soon into the game, it becomes clear the TDFC has little more to offer than what first appears to have. TDFC is not Dynasty Warriors which requires no brain at all to enjoy, but the battle system is shallow enough for there to be almost no room for the presence of tactics. The game could be hard, but only through the accumulation of enemy numbers; it could be challenging, but only in terms of how to satisfy the 4-minute time limit required by a perfect mission. Only seldom have I felt the satisfaction of beating my enemy with carefully planned movement, scrutinized troops positioning and calculated resource/mana management, which is ironically the biggest attraction of a tactical game.
Conclusion
The DioField Chronicle is not without its perks. Its map designs are as usual for a SE fantasy rpg, immersive and diverse, which truly allowed me to believe that one second I may be fighting on the central street downtown and the next second I am feeling the breath of a sleeping volcano. I criticized the lack of story and tactics, yet undeniably lowering the bar and canceling the sometimes obnoxious world-explaining narration does open the game to a wider audience in this hasty time where patience is seldom found.
In the end when I decided to stop playing TDFC, the only feeling I had was regret. Perhaps the story was going to truly unfold in a magnificent way later, or maybe there will a new feature introduced that will make the battle difficult and riveting, but unfortunately, the game has lost me way before it had a chance to introduce them.
