Natural Doctrine Review (PS4)

I love difficult games. I love the way they don’t care if you are prepared, but instead beat you down relentlessly until you get better. Natural Doctrine is one of these titles, forcing you to spend the next few hours playing the same level over and over again. It tries to be the Dark Souls of the SRPG genre, but unfortunately falls short of its goal.

 

SRPG veterans will have to relearn most of the things they know. While battles here are turn based, they play out in a unique fashion. The turn order is not as apparent as it may first seem. You can easily link upcoming character’s turns with one another allowing you to take your turn multiple times. By attacking, defending or using a skill your character will make an initiative chain which will allow other characters to have an extra turn. This means that it’s enough for one character to have a turn in order to move your whole party. This allows you to make devastating attacks clearing out whole rooms of enemies within a single turn. Linking provides attack bonuses. The further you position the character the more damage they will deal in the link. In addition you can use the link system to retreat faster and evade unnecessary damage.

 

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Likewise enemies can also form links. If a single goblin has his turn the enemy will most likely move all his units, which usually results in game over screen. The link system will require quite a bit of getting use to as it feels quite unique. This kind of system also makes Natural Doctrine much more akin to a puzzle game than a traditional SRPG, as a single wrong move can spell game over, so each move must be played out perfectly.

 

The difficulty is out of this world. Following the example of Dark Souls, the developers thought that just concentrating on the games difficulty would be enough to make it enjoyable. Unfortunately it feels difficult for all the wrong reasons. Losing a single character means you are out. For a game about natural selection its a shame that the emphasis is not on losing weaker characters and keeping stronger ones. The game has friendly fire, so you are bound to shoot your characters when you least want to. Also healing allies with a health potion is extremely risky as if it accidentally hits a wall or enemy you can expect to see that game over screen soon. You can also forget about grinding to make the game easier, as dungeons automatically lock down after a few visits.

 

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More often than not playing any other way except the way the game wanted you to will result in a quick game over screen. The magic behind difficult games is usually experimentation and learning from your mistakes. If a level is difficult why not try a different approach? The problem here is that dying means literally playing another 15 minute segment all over again. And it’s not like in other SRPGs where you can see your demise as your team has less and less HP. Here you literally can get a game over within one turn with a fully healed party.

 

What’s worse is that levels beg for you to go and open chests and find secret paths, but once you do you find out that the only thing waiting behind them is a bloodthirsty ogre ready to kill you. Fortunately the localized version of the game brings with it a much needed checkpoint system, which makes defeat a lot less frustrating.

 

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As far as customization goes this game is as barebones as it gets. You can equip a weapon and two accessories. These items are only available from treasure chests in dungeons. There are no shops, no cities and not even a hub where you can talk to your party. You just select levels from a world map and go from dungeon to dungeon.

 

The only real customization comes from Natural Doctrine’s skill system. After a character levels up he gains skill points which you can decide how to distribute. At any time you can refund the points and invest them into a different category which allows for some flexibility. This is especially important as some missions require different tactics to beat. This system is somewhat reminiscent to the Sphere Grid system in Final Fantasy X. As you distribute the points you will gain stat boosts and new skills. For example selecting the health potion skill gives you one health potion in each battle.

 

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The multiplayer mode sounded like a great addition to this kind of game. As you play the single player campaign you recruit enemies and use them in multiplayer. You gain cards that correspond to a unit, each having a different cost. You can pick which of those cards you will bring into battle allowing for a great amount of customization. Natural Doctrine also features cross play between PS3, PS4 and Vita. Unfortunately when I tried it out, there was a total of 10 players across all the platforms and not a single room.

 

The graphics in Natural Doctrine leave a lot to be desired, especially considering that this game is at the end of the PS3 generation. While the PS4 version looks more polished, looking like a miniature set, the generic art-style and lifeless environments don’t make it stand out which is a shame.

 

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THE VERDICT

Natural Doctrine left me feeling a bit disappointed. Its not an awful game by any means, but it never realizes it’s true potential. Still its innovative battle system and sadistic nature are bound to appeal to some people. For those planning to get this game I’d recommend getting the Vita version as it’s much more enjoyable playing difficult games in small chunks.

 

You can pick up Natural Doctrine at our store!

 

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