![]() ![]() A long bar at the top of the screen shows the next 10 character turns, helping you to predict your enemies’ movements and plan ahead. More than many other strategy RPGs, The Dark Crystal Tactics also emphasizes turn order and timing as a means of controlling a battle. The Dark Crystal Tactics gets the basics of that experience right, with a strong emphasis on using skills to get the upper hand over enemies that will likely beat you if you just trade blows until someone dies. Though its art style is not retro by any means – it’s got a muddy, overly rendered look that’s more functional than stylish – its turn-based combat laden with RPG-style abilities and tiled maps full of environmental hazards and gimmicks definitely is. Setting aside its capacity for Dark Crystal fan service, The Dark Crystal Tactics also evoked a bit of my nostalgia for tactical RPGs, particularly original PlayStation-era games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Vandal Hearts. Even allowing for the liberties you have to take when condensing a full season of plot into a roughly 15-to-20-hour combat-focused video game, this version of the story feels like a hurried summary you’d get from a friend – it hits the crucial details and can be enticing at times, but never captures the emotion of any important moments.Įven at its best, combat is dragged down by poorly designed menus that take far longer to navigate than they should. If you aren’t excited by the sight of them alone, controlling or fighting them isn’t going to add much to the equation. All the key characters – Gelfling, Skeksis, and otherwise – get a chance to stand in the spotlight, but there’s next to no time spent on character development. Screenshots From The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance TacticsĪs a result, even the centerpiece moments like boss fights with the most prominent Skeksis from the show, feel hollow. I found it difficult to follow, even after watching the first few episodes just before I started playing. In between the very clear nods to Age of Resistance, the plot moves far too quickly through strings of dialogue shown on the world map between missions. These moments, both interactive and hand-drawn, are truncated in ways that seem tailored to elicit memories of when you watched the show, rather than actually tell its story. Despite this, the story told here pales in comparison to the TV version. ![]() Like Stranger Things 3: The Game, many missions are pulled right from sequences in the show, and new, well-drawn comic-strip cutscenes retell key scenes with some flair. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I’ll say that The Dark Crystal Tactics covers the same general plot arc as the Age of Resistance show. ![]() It’s passable enough to trigger some Pavlovian response from both my love of tactics games and The Dark Crystal series, but left me wanting in both regards once I really saw what it had to offer. It twists Age of Resistance into a linear, combat-heavy experience, but ends up feeling like little more than a hollow puppet of an RPG used to capitalize on a beloved franchise. ![]() Like Stranger Things 3: The Game before it, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics morphs the streaming network’s 2019 prequel TV series to Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal into game form – this time as a tactical RPG akin to Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s 2020, but Netflix is still banging the drum for licensed tie-in games. ![]()
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