The emphasis on teamwork is so heavy that if a single character perishes, players aren’t sent back to the last mission checkpoint.
What’s more, it subtly guides the action, as say Anka, the resident gunner is capable of blowing holes through weak walls or picking the locks of doors. While it may not provide the satisfaction of building your own treasure-hunting troupe from the ground up, it does provide a bit of a story arc, endowing each character personality. Notably, Natural Doctrine takes a role-playing attitude toward its cast, with characters destined for certain roles and predetermined banter between party members as players explore each foe-filled expanse. Naturally, the game throws a plethora of problems to disrupt that tactic, such as a pre-scripted event where one character stands on a switch to keep a door open. In essence, this becomes Natural Doctrine dominant play strategy and forces parties to think and move as a single unit. Once the players imitates an attack on an opponent, and adjacent allies can also join in. While it’s an essential tool for planning your attacks, waiting for a strike can be circumvented. At the top of the screen is a linear sequence showing the order of battle. While seeing a wayward axe swing leave the weapon buried in the ground is amusing the first three times, before long these routines becomes monotonous.Īnd while the battle sequences do drag a bit, it does give time for player to think about initiative. With enemy AI reacting fairly swiftly and intelligently, the only really element which slows down the speed of battle are Doctrine’s fighting animations. While the title’s clearly articulates whether a shot is capable of hitting a target, friendly fire is entirely possible.Įssentially, moving characters with the left stick while targeting enemies with the right works well, maintaining the momentum of battle. Mercifully, a press of right trigger shifts the player’s perspective, alternating between two overhead views and an over-the-shoulder perspective that recalls Valkyria Chronicles’ viewpoint. Herein the stream of stats emerge, with vibrant colored connection indictors divulging percentages between comrades.Īs Doctrine takes place in labyrinthine dungeons with multiple heights, firearm-equipped adventurers have to worry about the environment impeding a line-of-sight attack, while melee attackers need to be aware of elevations. In fact, increasing the distance between party members swells the amount of damage or the probability of earning a critical hit. Characters can’t be too close to each other, or else they won’t have enough room to execute an attack. Once a group of allies share the confines of one of these boxes, the title reveals its distinctive ruleset. Natural Doctrine abandons the small grids and hexes that are ubiquitous in the tactical genre, for large rectangles that delineate movement and attack ranges. While it might sound like the type of combos that has driven franchises like Disgaea, there’s much more nuance in it. Fortunately, it’s a lot more fun than it initially sounds.Īt the heart of Doctrine’s combat model is linking- a system where adjacent units combine their offensive capacities into a dominating assault. It was pure stat-porn for the mathematically-minded.Īlthough NIS America’s release of Natural Doctrine for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PS Vita doesn’t quite match Knights in the Nightmare and Gungnir spectacle of on-screen statistics, the title does provide moments where players are inundated with multiple rivers of visual and aural information, tasking them to make crucial decisions amidst a cacophony of indicators. Heaven series not only burdened with complex play mechanics, but would consistently exhibit several simultaneous ticker-tape bands of figures. Personally, I prefer the overstimulation caused by a superfluous amount of on-screen data. Video games habitually push the boundaries of sensory overload, whether it’s the number of projectiles in a bullet hell shooter or the simultaneous task-juggling required by real-time strategy titles.
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