Gears of Dragoon: Fragments of a New Era Reviews

Hard lives up to its name.

I have 20 hours of gameplay as of this review, Steam doesn't have my actual game time. This game has a pretty good story and a very interesting world that builds up over time. One of those Fantasy world where there is the involvement of magic and technology, with many different races... Conspiracies, politics (Not western twitter politics). Just don't expect it to have any placebo trigger that will make you go "this game changed my life". The characters have life in them with good lore behind them, excellent voice acting and has it's funny moments. The OST is also good. My biggest complaint is the gameplay but you can make it manageable if you modify your settings. You turn on auto battle with skills at maximum speed and also make your character walk fast in the dungeon itself. Another good tip is to always keep your "thief guild" updated to the level of the map you are in because it will save you ALOT of time exploring dungeons for the first time because it's annoying to have to find the maps on each floor and there are limited resources/guides online. The one real problem you will face even on easy mode is that if you speedrun story mode it will get to the point where your characters are too underleveled and undergeared, so you have to do the guildmaster request and sweep through the dungeons to level up and gear your characters which is a huge grind at least once each. You will feel overwhelemed with the skill system at first but you get so many characters that as you go on you can specialize each of them, I just go with whatever part of the skill tree goes the furthest. The scenes are not animated, but remember this is a 2016 game when that was becoming the "meta". I do recommend the game if you are a ninetail fan.

Good game overall, but I have some gripes with it: 1. It is originally GoD2, not GoD. I don't see a reason to lose "2" if the first game isn't translated. It just confuses things, but it seems to be the common issue for localized games. For some reason they don't want to keep original names (and number is part of the name). 2. Restoration patch is behind the registration wall on localizator's site. Most companies release h-content as DLCs but some, like this one, still keep them out of the Steam. 3. Visuals switched from classical first person dungeon exploration to ugly 3d with not being able to zoom out. 4. Map exploration where you discover tiles on your map when you visit them and mark them on the map automatically switched to just searching for a map on each level. So you are blind before you discover the map without the ability to check your position and then you know everything, even places you didn't visit yet. Basically someone already explored all floors and then dropped them on each level, so you are not an explorer visiting some unexplored places, but a group of people following in someone else's steps 5. H-scenes after you restore them with the patch are just boring. The first one was a single image with a ton of text which just went in circles with very slow progression in event. It could have been shorter or with more actual "action" and not just "ahhh", "ohhh", etc. I wouldn't recommend using a restoration patch, the content which is restored isn't worth it. Anyway, the game is good and enjoyable because of the mechanics that still survived from the first game (character customization with equipment and skills and then applying it to different fights) so I give it a thumbs up, but I feel like there were a lot of negatives which make me feel disappointed with this release.

A free 18+ patch is available. But the game is solid in its own right. If you are a fan or other Ninetial games, or a H dungeon crawler seems interesting to you, I would highly recommend it. Character progression somewhat similar to the Etrian Odyssey games. There are 12 story characters in the game and you can use up to 6 at a time. each character its own class. As you level up you can spend points to upgrade base stats, get new skills, or improve skills you already have. The equipment you get is also highly customizable though socketable enhancements. As with all Ninetail games, difficulty can be set to so easy you have a literal “I win" button, so difficult that it will be extremely challenging even after you master the game, or anywhere in-between. Story has two distinct routes to encourage replayability. Worst part of the game is probably the presentation. UI is ugly and 3d environments clash with the 2d sprites, but if you can get over that, there is a lot the game has to offer.