review
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POSTED 18/10/14


NATURAL DOCTRINE

NIS America



Natural Doctrine... Aww, Mum! Do we HAVE to?!

MWA-MWAAA MWAAAAA. MWA. MWAAA-MWA!

Sigh, having Charlie Brown’s teacher for a mother really is a drag sometimes. We’ve been told to type it ‘correctly’.
NAtURAL DOCtRINE is a tactical JRPG, brought to us by people who obviously have a busted shift key when it comes to typing the letter ‘T’.

MWAAAAAAAAP!

Sorry Mum.

Anyway, the ‘NAtURAL’ is a hint to what it’s basically about, which is NAtU- erm, natural selection. It’s pleasing to see that in this day of airbags and rampant mollycoddling Darwinism still retains some proponents.

OK, try to keep up. You’re in a mystical world where stuff called ‘pluton’ is all valuable and minerally and stuff. Special explorers hire bodyguards, as they need protection from vast evil while trying to mine the stuff. You’re one such bodyguard – Geoff - who, together with Vasily, takes care of Anka. In the protection sense, rather than that of Tony Soprano, of course.

With the director of the rhythmgasmic Patapon series, Atsushi Ii, at the directorial helm, you might expect an easily-grasped strategy-lite production.

Nup.

A convoluted tutorial introduces us to the turn-based, team-focussed battle system. A convoluted game then follows.

Anybody unfamiliar with strategy exploits along similar lines will find NAtURAL DOCtRINE quite cluttered, sadistic and impenetrable. Actually, even some with a little more nous for such excursions may find it quite cluttered, sadistic and impenetrable.

With so many options it’s easy to reach overload, and anybody expecting to master proceedings even in the time it takes to complete most other games nowadays may find patience tried.

In some ways with its dungeonesque setting and slash-a-go-slow play NAtURAL DOCtRINE is everything that Diablo III wishes it wasn’t – and isn’t. Seriously, only the hardcore should apply.

Others may be left requiring psychiatric help. The DOCtRINE is in...

take me back to the start...

 



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ALL WRITTEN CONTENT COPYRIGHT © AMY FLOWER 2008-2018. GAME IMAGES COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE GAMES COMPANIES.