God Wars: The Complete Legend – Nintendo Switch – Review

God Wars: The Complete Legend is an SPRG developed by Kadokawa Games and published by NISA. The original version of the game God Wars: Future Past released last year for the Playstation 4 and Vita. It includes the two DLC scenarios which were released for the other versions as well as an entirely new one. Plus a number of game improvements, some of which aren’t available in the Playstation versions.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

The story of God Wars is based on Japanese folk tales and mythology particularly of the Kojiki collection. I’m not familiar with it so I’m not sure how accurate this story is to any of it. In this game the story starts off with the Queen of Fuji sacrificing her daughter Sakuya to stop Mount Fuji from erupting. The younger sister Kaguya, was sealed away in case she needed to be sacrificed as well. During an attack her friend Kintaro saves her from her imprisonment. From there she decides to find her mother to ask about it all. Along the way they make friends and defeat many enemies.

During which they come across Myriad Gods, many of whom are angry at the changes humans have made to the land. Not only that but them and other people have been possessed by Aramitama and must be fought and brought back to their senses with a special mirror.

War Against Gods

The game play is that of a turn based strategy game. Who gets to move in what order is based on their speed. Most all of the victory requirements are to beat all enemies, but some you only have to beat the boss. Dying in this game starts a fatal countdown for about five of their turns. If you revive them with an item or ability they won’t retire. There’s no perma death in this game, so asides from missions where certain allies can’t die, or being disadvantaged dying isn’t a big deal. AI is an option for any of your units but it’s not a good idea to use it.

In a turn a unit can move and take action in either order. Actions are attacking, using skills, searching a basket or defending. Skills use MP and are generally more useful than a normal attack. Some skills aren’t for combat, like units that can search sparkling areas for herbs or other items. Attacking from the sides or back of an enemy will deal bonus damage. Height also plays a factor into this, as the higher ground gives more damage and the lower less. There are points in the game where enemies have a massive height advantage and are very deadly.

The impurity system determines which unit is more likely to be targeted. This can be intentionally raised to protect others by using skills, or lowered by using other skills. There are quite a few different status effects which have two severities. Being afflicted with the effect when already under it may give you the enhanced version but some enemies can inflict the more serious one immediately. Rattled to Amnesia and Paralysis are the most annoying to be given.

Put to Work

All characters have jobs, one of which is unique to them and two of which can be changed to anything. Jobs determine what kind of equipment and skills you can use. Battling with those jobs equipped will net you job points which you spend on the skill tree to strengthen and learn more skills. Leveling up those jobs will unlock another related job with more skills. If you swap a job for another one you cannot use the skills associated with the unequipped one. This isn’t something I like but it isn’t particular to this game.

There are also three passive skills you can earn which also come from the skill tree. These can be attack boosts or the ability to counterattack and more.  From Chapter 2 of the game you can use special skills that require the flower petal gauge. The gauge fills up from attacking, using items or skills and taking damage. When it fills up it gives you a petal, some skills need only two and others need more.

Non human enemies and bosses have their own unique mechanic, where they can go beserk. This happens if they are under a quarter of their health, and they will recover their hp and boost stats. When trying to progress it’s not something you’ll want to trigger but when grinding the increased xp will be helpful.

Land of the Rising Sun

Travelling between battle scenarios and scenes happens on the world map. Asides from preparing units, you can visit the shops and shrines. The shrines allow you to offer payment for a boost and take on requests. Requests are battles in previous stages but with different enemies and placements. Most of these can be done more than once and are the place to grind.

There are three difficulty settings which can be changed between battles. I found that playing the story missions on normal but grinding on easy was the best experience for me. Most of the game I felt like was spent grinding, but because of the shrine requests I wasn’t constantly having to do the same fight over and over.  The difficulty is fairly consistent if you regularly use your job points and equip new items.

Technically

I played the game in handheld for the majority of the time and had no issues or much differences with it. I’ve heard that the other versions of the game had crashing issues and I haven’t experienced that at all with the Nintendo Switch version. God Wars has an English dub but I swapped it over to Japanese pretty quickly. Mostly because it’s a Japanese setting but the fully animated cut scenes don’t have subtitles.

The story presentation is varied, there are a few animated cut scenes, comic book style scenes and talking within a game map. The animated scenes are beautiful and the other ones are acceptable.

The game maps look a bit old style but the characters have plenty of detail on them. I just don’t like the chibi style. Having the ability to change the camera to multiple angles is very helpful as well. The soundtrack was pleasant and I kept it on while playing.

A Complete Legend

The Nintendo Switch version of the game has a number of improvements over the other versions. These are an increased member limit, increased character and level skill caps, five new playable characters one of whom is entirely new, multiple endings and new songs. A lot of those improvements are what comes with the Labyrinth of Yomi content. Which is said to be larger than the main game. The new character Orihime also has her own special requests, giving even more battles to fight. I haven’t gotten to that content myself but being included with the Nintendo Switch version makes it a better deal.

I didn’t particularly care for the story but I did like most of the characters. This is a classic tactics game with a couple of its own mechanics. God Wars The Complete Legend has a nice breadth of content and adjustments. I also found no technical issues with the Switch version other than there still being no subtitles for the animated cut scenes.

I didn’t feel that there was too much special with this God Wars, but it’s a good tactics experience and a big package. Since Fire Emblem got delayed there will be plenty of time to get through all of it. Any Switch owners who are fans of tactics games should pick this up but those new to them mightn’t find anything to draw them to it. I like it!