The late 1990s were a time for experimentation especially with the rise of 3D gaming on consoles. One of the developers at the forefront of that experimentation and eventual revolution was none other than SquareSoft – the future Square Enix. Square’s “Final Fantasy” franchise exploded in popularity during the Playstation era; giving way to one of the most important tactical games of its time, “Final Fantasy Tactics”.
Gamers have wanted Square to produce something just as masterful as “FF Tactics” for years after the sequels & ports also garnered grand praise. Though not one-to-one in terms of presentation, the Square Enix-Lancarse co-developed experience known as “The DioField Chronicle” seemed to be this generation’s “Final Fantasy Tactics” by being nothing like it other than having a similar art design. After playing the demo that covers the game’s first chapter, I was excited to experience the full release and see if “The DioField Chronicle” had the makings of being a classic heralded for years to come by tactical gaming aficionados and even casual fans of the genre.
Did I Complete “The DioField Chronicle”?
While the narrative of “The DioField Chronicle” is anything but simple, the mission design and general combat structure becomes all-too consistent and downright stagnant after the first couple of chapters. Players are tasked with organizing their team of four members known as the “Blue Foxes” – a mercenary group for hire to anyone including the rivaling governments looking to acquire the world’s most precious resource, Jade – taking them onto a battlefield where several mission objectives are presented as well as optional stipulations usually involving completing said mission under four, six or eight minutes, opening a treasure chest during one of the major story missions, and not letting one of the Blue Foxes become incapacitated as the fight rages on. Successful completion of the aforementioned stipulations provide valuable gold (the in-game currency), Skill Points that are used to upgrade each class’ specific combat abilities, and even Jade fragments.
There are dozens of missions to complete including the obvious ones solely connected to the story alongside several character-based side missions that either sees the protagonist talk to a character and initiate a combat-oriented side quest or them simply talking for a short period that ends with the player being rewarded a hefty sum of gold. After a little over twenty-five hours, I completed all the quests mostly on “Normal” difficulty; bumping up the challenge to “Hard” for added tension during the story’s latter missions even though “Hard” difficulty only increases an enemy’s damage output. Spending the next hour or so, I grinded the last two missions prior to the finale to increase a character’s level to fifty; earning all of the game’s trophies including the platinum.
What Makes “The DioField Chronicle” Unique?
Considering the promotion behind “The DioField Chronicle” and how many assumed it would something reminiscent to “Final Fantasy Tactics”, “The DioField Chronicle” is more “XCOM” instead by abandoning the tile movement, turn-based gameplay style of “Tactics” and embracing a real-time battle system. Allies and enemies move across each battlefield with the prior being dictated by the player unless the chosen fighters spot an adversary and go into auto-battle mode. There is an ability to pause the action, though. By pulling up “Skill” menu for each playable character, everything will halt so the player can pick their intended ability to use, determine what enemy or enemies to target, and potentially do some math as every skill uses up EP.
Beyond managing the Blue Foxes’ health and EP meters in battle is the ability to call upon summons thanks to the TP bar in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The TP bar fills up thanks to the more enemies the characters defeat and the blue fragments dropped by the fallen foes. There are six summons with each having varied amounts of TP needed to call upon them such as Bahamut (the first summon given) only needing one TP orb while the HP & EP restorative-focused Goldhorne requiring two TP spheres.
Beyond summons and character skills, characters can perform automated regular attacks with certain Blue Foxes instinctively distancing themselves for long-range strikes if they are, say, a spell-caster or archer. Customization and weapon management plays a huge role in “The DioField Chronicle” mostly because weapons are responsible for what skills each character can use. The newest weapon for purchase may boost the attack power and effectiveness of certain skills, but may also replace a player’s most used skill for another that may or may have been upgraded via the skill tree.
With the game sporting four main classes – Soldier (close & personal fighters who attack quickly, but don’t sport a great amount of health), Cavaliers (mounted, tank-like combatants good at using skills made for pushing enemies around the map), Sharpshooters (long-ranged attackers who can stun adversaries from afar to stop their area-of-effect charge attacks, and even set up tripwires), Magickers (spell-casters mastered in the art of offensive and defensive magic skills including healing and sending down a hail of meteors respectively) – and at least two variations of each class (Soldiers using axes rather than daggers for heavier attacks while sacrificing speed; Sharpshooters with rifles instead bows & arrows for piercing damage even though trap skills are removed; Magickers who focus on producing elemental magic shields to do damage to nearby enemies; Cavaliers riding on Wyverns instead of horses so they can unleash elemental attacks) finding a definitive style is totally up to the player.
Another interesting aspect about combat is the option to link secondary fighters to the main core team placed in combat. Via the “Edit Unit” menu, players can slot a character under the currently stationed fighter that gives the main Blue Fox whatever abilities the linked character has via their presently equipped weapon. This option essentially doubles the amount of skills and strategies a player can utilize once the fighting begins. With new characters being introduced throughout the story (players will have anywhere between fourteen to sixteen playable characters by chapter five), the fearful temptation to try them out in an important fray is greatly lessened as this character link system will reduce the loss of character skills players have grown accustomed to during their play time. The link system isn’t class specific and players can mix & match class abilities to their heart’s content by, say, having a Soldier linked to a Sharpshooter.
For all the options a player has both in preparation for combat and the actual art of battle, “The DioField Chronicle” suffers from several big problems with the most obvious being the lacking difficulty even when set to “Hard”. One of the most prominent reasons for enemies falling so easily even when completing the final mission is the fact enemy variations pretty much peak halfway through the narrative with once menacing bosses sporting multiple health bars and no, say, evolutionary stages when one of those bars are depleted, being reduced to large fodder. To complement the miniscule enemy types is no enemy level scaling connected to the Blue Foxes’ average level.
Enemy levels are solely associated with the mission being completed (essentially forgoing the necessity for level grinding, thankfully; though you can replay missions to complete missed battle stipulations or get ahead in terms of leveling). Early in the game this isn’t necessarily a problem in terms of being challenged, but by the third chapter it becomes almost impossible to lose especially with the “Battle Log” implementation that allows for the player to return the battle to any checkpoint achieved (checkpoints are usually activated after defeating a wave of enemies and a dialogue scene occurs). Players can also switch out allies up to the three times in battle, making it a lot easier to prevent a Blue Fox from being incapacitated.
Another problem with enemies like gigantic demi-humans and animals is the lacking elemental properties. For example, the Salamander foe is obviously a fire-based enemy. Instead of fire-based spells or Skills being nullified or even restoring a Salamander’s health, fire attacks are just as effective as they would be against regular soldiers with the enemy’s level being the only dictating factor in regards to how much damage it takes from the player’s attack. A majority of the missions are in unique settings like snow-covered fields or sticky-looking swamps.
There are no environmental hazards other than exploding barrels that cause a stunning blast if struck, and the stages themselves are nothing more than aesthetics instead of playing a role in how a battle plays out (don’t use lightning-based attacks near bodies of water if the Blue Foxes are close to said water, for example). The way “The DioField Chronicle” plays out in the first two chapters from a gameplay perspective is mostly no different than what happens during missions throughout the narrative’s next five chapters.
Upgrades are both impressive and oppressive with the latter being detrimental to the aforementioned difficulty. There are multiple upgrade avenues including leveling up the overall Blue Foxes unit. By providing financial backing to two particular characters in the overall hub/base/Blue Foxes headquarters, players unlock upgrades to the summons as well as a weapons forging system. While upgrading summons is pretty straightforward with a mixture of gold currency and Jade fragments, weapons forging not only needs materials like gold bars earned through successful battle stipulations, but these crafted weapons have to be purchased at ridiculous prices compared to the amount of gold coins provided through completed missions.
It isn’t until late in the game will the player have enough money to buy the most expensive & impressive weapons, but most likely will only be able to do so for the main four characters consistently used in battle. While armor can’t be forged, it too has some jaw-dropping prices associated with most pieces and, as expected, the cheaper versions are of not much benefit in the early chapters compared to the accessory quality increase around chapter four. Some side missions also upgrade the HQ’s units (known as “Badges”) including the eatery so restorative items in battle are more effective and slightly decreasing the item shop’s prices.
As noted, skills are class specific and can be upgraded via Skill Points earned by various means be it completing those battle stipulations, leveling up the Blue Foxes unit, and simply whenever the game sees fit. Comparatively to SP, Ability Points (AP) are dished out when a character levels up (one AP after every leveling) and are directly connected to that character. Personal character abilities range from spending a single AP to upgrade a character’s attack power by two percent, to spending ten Ability Points to guarantee a fallen enemy drops a restorative health orb if that adversary is slain by the character with such an ability. Though some character-specific abilities are exactly the same for certain classes, a majority of these Abilities help differentiate each Blue Fox when war begins.
The story of “The DioField Chronicle” starts off well enough. Mostly seeing the story from the perspective Andrias Rhondarson – an orphan-turned-royal bodyguard who is a master of ancient sorcery – the player is introduced to a war-torn continent with the island of DioField housing the precious Jade resource that the growing Empire wants to secure after pushing back the forces of The Alliance. The Kingdom of Alletain controls both DioField and the Jade which is detrimental in utilizing magic both modern like that used by the Empire and ancient in the case of Alletain.
With the Empire setting it sights on the Jade and, in turn, the Kingdom of Alletain, the Kingdom-ordained Blue Foxes mercenary group are put to the task of preventing DioField from being take over. What comes from this narrative are some significant conflicts and developments including off-screen deaths of major power players, fellow Blue Foxes including the rather sadistic Waltaquin Redditch reaching a new level of understanding their abilities, and multiple deals being made behind the backs of those who should be in the know about everything happening on the battlefield and behind conference room doors.
Though there are a bunch of characters introduced including those who are playable, very few get significant screen time. The aforementioned Andrias and Waltaquin are joined by Fredret Lester and Iscarion Colchester as characters who both are shown off as key members of the Blue Foxes and their thought processes on rising tensions between commoners and nobles with Fredret being adamant that democracy is an example of a failed government while Iscarion disagrees.
The voice acting leaves something to be desired as a majority of the cast sounds like they’re about to fall asleep or come across as otherworldly (though the latter makes a lot more sense considering some of the story’s developments). The story’s biggest issue is, arguably, the ending. Beyond the overall surprising nature, the ending works as a gateway to a sequel not yet known will occur. The fates of several important characters and plot threads are unresolved or left to a player’s imagination without the knowledge of whether or not they will be answered.
From a technical aspect, the game is a mixed bag. Beyond some of the previously mentioned gameplay woes are unexplainable issues like the game auto-selecting Blue Foxes to move or open up their Skill menu even if the player has the cursor on another active character. When moving the Foxes, path lines are shown as well as the sight lines/sight circles of nearby enemies. The AI will, at times, move a Blue Fox right in the enemy’s sight circle even if the path line was meant to take them elsewhere; potentially ruining a plan like setting up an ambush attack as hitting an enemy from behind produces more damage in the form of an “Ambush”.
Battle speed can be increased up to two times the normal speed to help make those long treks across a larger map a lot more bearable, not to mention make a repeated mission go a lot faster. The audio and general music selection, though light in terms of amount, is fitting at every moment and sounds fantastic. There are some odd dialogue presentation choices including full-voiced sections followed by the same characters either saying a few words or making a sound while the player has to read a portion of dialogue. Character models both during gameplay and cutscenes could be more associated with something from two gaming generations ago rather than a 2022 release; though problems such as frame rate drops and hard crashes are non-existent.
The addition of “New Game Plus” is ineffectively implemented. Everything from equipment to character levels carry over in “New Game Plus”, but enemy scaling doesn’t happen to complement the mode nor do the mission level requirements change. There are no extra abilities, characters, or even an extended ending from finishing the game again via “New Game Plus”; meaning “New Game Plus” is essentially a different version of “Practice Battle” where you can replay any previously completed mission via a specific table located in the headquarters.
“The DioField Chronicle” really feels synonymous with the story’s ending: a release showing great potential from a gameplay perspective, but coming up short in nearly every area with the intent of expansion in a sequel. What could’ve been a revolutionary experience that welcomed both non-strategy gamers and veterans of the genre into a magical world setting a standard second to none is simply the foundation for something that, hopefully, is greater in almost every way if a sequel comes into fruition.
Should You Play “The DioField Chronicle”?
While the initial hours may seem overwhelming and the beginning of something truly remarkable, “The DioField Chronicle” settles down into a repetitive series of events both in terms of gameplay and even the narrative as it builds toward a finale that is anything but conclusive. Does that mean “The DioField Chronicle” is underwhelming? Not in the most profound ways, but definitely not the once-in-a-generation experience many believed it would be considering the source and how well the first chapter sets up evolutionary tactics needed to find success in combat. The story is good, but the ending, though shocking, only gives the player so much in terms of sanctification as the developers went a route based on the idea of this being the first installment of who-knows-how-many iterations.
Due to the lacking combat progress, non-conclusive story, and general easiness even on “Hard” difficulty, it’s hard to give “The DioField Chronicle” a recommendation at full price. But if you’re a fan of the genre, definitely check out the demo and then pick it up when it’s either on sale or price drops about twenty dollars. No matter how disappointing certain aspects of “The DioField Chronicle” are including non-reached potential, there are very few things more enjoyable than beating a big-mouthed noble or a shiesty thief into ground.
