Though it wasn’t an insurmountable issue, every setback in The Dark Crystal Tactics feels like a disproportionately big inconvenience. I didn't think much of this until I hit levels with cliffs... Fighting around Gobble pits. (See the original game manual here. Any character can also refrain from attacking or using an ability to speed up their next turn, which cleverly incentivizes careful play over taking wild swings. Over time, new battle conditions will force you to mix things up, but even that causes frustration. 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. Glossary Moreover, the classes are all complementary and feature very little overlap, so there’s always a strong incentive to stay in a lower class rather than absent-mindedly advancing up the ladder. A film i grew up with and now a game based around it. In The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics, you will lead a fledgling resistance of Gelfling against their oppressive overlords, the Skeksis, across more than 50 unique turn-based tactics RPG battles. Certain late-game cutscenes sped through dialogue and had faulty audio. Was there any pre-order/limited time/promotional content? But while the combat can offer some interesting decisions, even at its best it’s dragged down by poorly designed menus that take far longer to navigate than they should. The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History We invite you to play our re-creation of The Dark Crystal computer game. © 2020 THE JIM HENSON COMPANY. Spoiler Note: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics follows the same plot as its Netflix TV series counterpart. By the time a character hits job level 10, the threshold for advancing, they’ll have learned way more than three skills, so it’s on you to choose skills that fit a role on your team. Outside of the laborious menus, The Dark Crystal Tactics also somehow relies exclusively on an auto-save system and does not provide a way to quick-save in the middle of a battle. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistance-tactics-review Couple those missteps with its aggravating menus, and The Dark Crystal Tactics quickly becomes more tedious than fun to play. 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. While this review is spoiler-free and the gameplay and screenshots shown were picked to avoid giving anything away, keep that in mind if you haven’t seen the show and want to go in completely fresh. Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Crystal And it turns out its a 100% negative one. 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. Terms of Service Go figure. Behind the Scenes: How to Make Your Own Kira Costume, Behind the Scenes: How to Make Your Own Skeksis Costume, Behind the Scenes: Skeksis Restoration Podcast, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Inside the Epic Return to Thra, The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History. You cannot, for example, cycle through characters in the jobs or equipment menus, but instead must select each character, then choose what aspect of their loadout to alter one by one. ), Ages of Thra 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. | You can run across one but if you end your turn on Gobbles, they will eat you up very very quickly. Letter from Cheryl Henson This text adventure was originally released in 1982 by Sierra Online. Chief among them, backing out to the Switch home menu and returning without quitting would cause hitching and, in some cases, force it to crash entirely. With such strict loadout limitations, some of the skills become infinitely better than others, limiting character rotation greatly. Bringing in someone with a skill you unexpectedly need requires a lot of grinding optional battles to whip those backups into shape. If anyone hasnt seen the film , get and watch it. © Valve Corporation. While I found myself wishing I had access to other abilities, particularly passive and movement-related skills, they’re never as essential as the few I grew to rely on. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. Predicting enemy behavior is a cornerstone of all tactics and strategy games, but The Dark Crystal Tactics puts it front and center. 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. Did they actually choose to put a negative review video right there on the store page? share a screenshot, make a video, or start a new discussion. | On Switch, you can always pause by putting the console to sleep, but your save reverts to the last time you were on the world map if you quit. Not that IGN is aligned with the player, kind of like movie critics aren't always aligned with the audience. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The Dark Crystal Tactics' greatest strength is its progression, which is clearly a smaller-scale riff on the job system from Final Fantasy Tactics. 0 out of 0 people found this helpful. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics. There are also plenty of missions that require you to focus on an objective other than combat, like getting your team to an exit or freeing Gelfling prisoners from cages, which push you to balance engaging an enemy and achieving your goals. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics can be a passable, if bland, strategy RPG with great inspirations, but lacks the polish or depth to make a strong impression of its own. It’s also worth pointing out that the pre-launch Switch version of The Dark Crystal Tactics used for this review suffered from consistent bugs. [The Dark Crystal Age Of Resistance Tactics] (PC) Gameplay/Playthrough | Episode 10 - Dreamfast, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics - Episode 1 -Castle of the Crystal, The Dark Crystal: AoR - Skekmal The Hunter. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/IMSKEKSI, Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics - Review / Fazit [DE] by Kordanor. 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. There’s also a story map late in the campaign where highlighting certain panels would discolor a large portion of the screen. Is there anything missable or could I revisit any area? 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.