Yggdra Union

"A non-traditional battle system with surprisingly deep gameplay depth, but suffers from luck based battles and a slow pace"

Yggdra Union is a turn based tactical S-RPG that has a non-traditional battle system and a good amount of game play depth, but suffers from uncontrollable and punishing luck based game play. The union system and cards give the game a different feel from other tactical games, and the game play is involving and requires forethought. Battles are involving and varied in their winning conditions and the game play system has a surprising amount of depth to it. The games difficulty varies depending on your goals - whether or not you want to restart missions and take what items you can get, or never restart and grab every item you possibly can.

The graphics are superb, interface is uncluttered, informative, and responsive, and it feels like a mini-Playstation game at times.. a high compliment for the tiny GBA system. The plot is the usual J-RPG garbage, but it's easy to ignore. Music and sound effects are tinny repetitive GBA fare but it's not a big deal to silence the game.

The game is too highly based on luck, especially with Fire Emblem style no mid-battle reloading. If your unit gets KOed with a critical hit (prettymuch a guaranteed loss since your unit leader is instantly killed), which happens often enough, expect to see a huge hit to their morale. Even normal battles swing between victory and defeat simply based on random factors, basically whether you kill or lose one more or less unit in an assault often determines victory. I could tolerate this if your units regenerated some morale based on either winning fights or at the end of a battle, but it's really just irritating and often destroys your chances at collecting items or finishing a map in short order. Enemies being able to randomly crit-kill your unit leader and chop off 1/2 of their morale or battles simply being determined by luck is simply unfair given the penalties involved and time needed to complete each fight. I wouldn't even attempt the game without a guide that shows the numerous items and secrets hiding around each map, especially considering the restart trial and error it would otherwise involve.

Combine this with the user unfriendly 'can't skip pre-battle dialogue', having to go through each battle manually, and being unable to save during battle preparations, and the game will easily try ones patience as far as time invested vs. skill and luck and trying to achieve battle goals such as nailing as many items as possible or trying to shore up pre-underleveled characters like Yggdra. I have never enjoyed the 'restart and pray' time wasting involved in trying to accomplish goals in games (including Fire Emblem), no matter how obsessive and patient some younger gamers seem to be for that kind of repetition. Although I bought this game, I still would not be able to choke it down on an actual Game Boy system - the fights drag on long enough even accelerated to 275% of actual GBA speed on my PC.

Depending on your level of patience and desire to 'rock the games world', you may want to pass and try more skill based games such as Super Robot Taisen or Advance Wars. I think the battle system has a lot of potential and perhaps a sequel will see the light of day on the DS.. although there is no guarantee it will reach the US. I'm honestly surprised this game was given a localization considering the huge amount of graphic based text and niche game play. I have to salute Atlus for catering to the niche market, and in fact that last 3 games I've bought have all been published by them.

I'm afraid I can't really recommend this game to anyone looking for a skill-based achievement challenge, although there are few games in the genre that manage to meet that criteria anyway, so it's not surprising to see another game fall on its face as far as relying on luck instead of skill for accomplishment goes. It feels like the developers desperately wanted to make Fire Emblem with a twist, but ended up with something that's even more frustrating to deal with than the mother of all luck based S-RPG games. Once again a lot of potential with the battle system, and maybe a future game will be more polished and less frustrating.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/06