Battle Chasers: Nightwar is going to be my jam [Preview]

I was a massive fan of turn-based JRPGs in the 80s & 90s. I will fight anyone who says that Final Fantasy VI isn’t the best in the series or that Legend of Dragoon isn’t highly under-appreciated. The genre was key to my high school and college sanity, and I still find myself falling back on those kinds of games often (thank you, 3DS). I was also massively into comic books at that time, supporting everything X-Men and Image.

That’s why I’m so looking forward to Battle Chasers, the new game from comic book legend Joe Madureira, that looks to capture both of those expertly.

I have to admit that my knowledge of the Battle Chasers comic book was hazy. It was popular, and I liked where the characters and plots were going, but it didn’t release consistently enough to keep me engaged. There was always something familiar about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on it — until now, that is. After having had hands-on time with the game last month, I now realize that the mix of comic books and turn-based RPGs was my fanboy dream all along.

In fact, this is exactly the kind of game I’d dreamt about for that entire decade.

Joe Madureira is a big fan of gaming and JRPGs, and was so in the 90s, crafting is Battle Chasers comic to mimic the Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests of the time. The characters in the comics had the same classes that their gaming inspirations had, and there were even light elements of progression. Brought into an actual game, it (obviously) fits perfectly.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar stars teams of three characters on a familiar RPG quest. Set in a comic book sci-fi universe, we travel around a map point-to-point, entering dungeons and towns and taking on enemies in side-by-side battles. The battles are turn-based, so “Attack” and “Magic” and “Item” and the like are baked in. It plays exactly like how we remember those games playing.

Madureira’s great visual style is all over the game as well. Mixes of technology, fantasy and sci-fi highlight hand-drawn worlds, and even early in the game (where this particular demo takes place) it is easy to get hooked into the individual characters. Though its a Western themed game, there are enough elements of Japanese RPGs that the balance works well in character and plot building, and things don’t seem too out of place.

Granted, my time with the demo is short — in my half hour I take on a bunch of different enemies and bosses, experience dialog and learn to understand the game’s mechanisms — but it’s so enjoyable and palate-cleansing. That this game isn’t in the same vein as something like Mass Effect or modern Final Fantasy games is a blessing. It aims to hit on nostalgia rather than retro, which could very well satisfy my fanboy dreams.

The game is coming to just about everything this year, and has been confirmed for Nintendo Switch.