Ever thought about winning the lottery? Of course everyone has but who cares about money when the lottery won in this game is Godhood. Welcome to The Guided Fate Paradox where you take over the role of God in a philosophically fueled war between angels and demons.
GFP is a roguelike role-playing game that breaks away from the tactical RPG mold set by the popular Disgaea series. In its place are stages broken into floors, each changing every time it is replayed. This is great for those who like more variety in their grinding. The catch is once left all character’s levels reset to 1. Clear enough stages and the main character’s base stats will permanently level up, giving purpose to the mass grinding. If you have played the PS1 classic Azure Dreams by Konami, it is a similar style of game.
Unlike Azure Dreams, GFP adds a new element to solve a traditional problem in many RPGs: What to do with all those thousands of useless weapons? The leveling system involves placing power-up tiles on the character’s divinigram. To get these tiles equipment must reach burst status, which is gained after continuous use in battle. Once burst the weapon loses some of its power but a power-up is gained as powerful as the item’s star rating. Also the same item can be brought to the blacksmith to be strengthened, thus unbursting it and permanently raising its stats. It is a fun way to keep using all the loot gained from the hundreds of floors needing to traverse in the game. Handling the divinigram is slow and tedious though, having to manually remove each and every tile to replace them with a better one. The developers should have enabled swapping tiles, thus making it more efficient and seamless.
NIS breaks its traditional mold in another way, the story. Except for Phantom Brave almost a decade ago, NIS keeps their storylines light-hearted and comedic even in serious situations. In this game they try to be more like Atlus, by being more philosophical and making a cast of good characters that will do anything to win the war, including sacrificing the main character and themselves. It is great and fresh that they tried to craft a more serious narrative. However it is very hit and miss because of the voice acting, something I never thought I’d say about this company. NIS dropped the ball when casting this group of characters. Some actors were good like for Lanael and Rakiel, but the main character had little emotion throughout most of the game and the female cast sounded like one person did all the voices, only slightly altering them enough to technically be different. It would have helped the story’s tone and mood if there was no voice acting as sad as that sounds.
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If someone were to look up the word depth in the dictionary it would have a picture of this game. There is so much to do to keep strategy RPG fans from being bored. As mentioned each dungeon changes every time it is attempted, and while the story dungeons are short at five to ten floors each, the extra dungeons are 50 to 100+ floors. That is a lot of gameplay with enemies, loot and traps all changing each floor with a mega boss at the end. Add to it the option to artificially make enemies stronger and those seeking a challenge won’t be disappointed. Dying also has consequences by wiping out your inventory, essentially making going up a floor a risk/reward situation. Again it just adds to the challenge and replayability.
The theme song hits players right away like a war drum, trying to be grand with an ‘O Fortuna’ style of song. After the title screen disappears so does the soundtrack’s emotional impact though. The sad part about it was I either had other music playing or a TV show on in the background. NIS has always struggled making a collectively grand soundtrack and this is no exception. Hopefully if there is a GFP2 they make every stages music epic like the opening theme.
One aspect that I didn’t enjoy was the limited amount of characters I could be. The main character Renya and one angel ally are all that are allowed. Some dungeons and all boss fights force you to only use Renya, sacrificing a lot of the fun of from other series by the company. There is no character creation at all; meaning if no one in the cast is appealing to you it will be a painful grind. Even Azure Dreams allowed up to five allies to be brought along. I mention that game again because instantly GFP played almost like a carbon copy despite both being made from two different companies. That is great news for those who were a fan of the PS1 classic.
Graphically nothing is new in the game though the anime artwork is solid. All the characters have their own personal flair even though they are dressed similarly. A new cast of generic enemies make their debut except for the traditional Prinny addition, and even the weapons look more detailed and less generic than in Disgaea D2 as a comparison. Fans of anime style games will continue being happy.
This is a game for two kinds of people: NIS lovers and roguelike fans. The same humor is embedded in the game for players to laugh with, and the insane amount of randomness coupled with all the potential restarts from dying at the bosses means a good 100+ hours can easily be sunk into the game. The story does try and be more bold and serious but as long as gamers are not expecting a tale of Persona magnitude then they will be happy.