oh hey! it's one I would have potentially played regardless!

Posh blokes hitting balls! I'm not going to lie it's really not my thing.

So I don't know about this one in terms of tone and greater narrative on real life wars etc. but it's a fun shooting gallery.

I swear we're eventually going to get to meatier episodes... when we get to games I'll want to actually get through 😅

definitely a game I played and didn't just mash the buttons. Definitely didn't come across an insurmountable language barrier.

so I'm going through NeoGeo games chronologically. this can't go badly right?

Join me and my personal goblin on a journey into a cave.

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Vandal hearts review

Some reviews can be meticulously written ahead of time and some you kind of have to do off the top of your head. This is one of the latter. Vandal Hearts feels like its derivative of Tactics Orge and Final Fantasy Tactics. Although it is a parallel production. It doesn't have the kind of narrative depth that you would see in the previously mentioned games, but it does have about the closest you can get to a better game feel within isometric turn-based strategy RPGs. Character designs look like they're straight from Asterix or Discworld and yet the tone is ludicrously serious in terms of the text, but also prone to gigantic blood fountains and other examples of violence that may have been edgy at the time, but now feel incredibly silly.

Gameplay is honestly fairly standard, if you've enjoyed Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, or the various series they've inspired, you'll enjoy the strategy. Scenarios are well balanced with gimmicks on specific maps creating a decent amount of depth in each encounter. The story is simple in comparison to the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics but has a decent amount of twists and turns in it for it to be engaging. The characters from a visual standpoint as well as how they are written are well designed and lend the game a decently unique identity for its time and genre. I very much found myself enjoying the spectacle, particularly the incongruity between the cartooney designs of the cast against the sheer violence often on display. On that note, this game does actually approach said violence as a negative, with characters aware that it is murder that the wars they are involved in have driven them to. Additionally the plot overall has heavy parallels with the rise of national socialism in Weimar Germany, although not approached completely directly the subtext is there in a way I thought was fairly well done.

On the whole I genuinely recommend this game to you, particularly if you want a stop gap between larger RPGs. It's a fairly short game that doesn't outstay it's welcome and remains engaging throughout. Absolutely worth your time.

I'm getting back to doing these... sadly I'm poorly and exhausted so this is as good as it gets!