NAtURAL DOCtRINE

Game Info

Thomas Hobbes once wrotein Leviathan that “life is nasty, brutish, and short.”  I have yet to ask developer Kadokawa Games who their favorite 17th century philosopher is, but I can hazard a guess.

Natural Doctrine (stylized as NAtURAL DOCtRINE, which I will ignore for the rest of this article) is a plodding, lumbering beast of a game, just like the Leviathan Hobbes’ most popular work references.  A dense strategy RPG with the steepest learning curve this side of the old Hitchhiker’s Guide text adventure, the characters you play lead nasty, brutish, and short lives – although the stages go on for quite some time.  This isn’t a game you hop into for a quick bout or two, a la Peace Walker.  Natural Doctrine requires an hour per stage – moreso if you die.

Which will happen frequently – this game is downright unforgiving.  Stages drop your party in the classic SRPG isometric view, where you then advance and attempt to slaughter your enemies.  Melee troops (such as your lead character in the single-player campaign, Geoff) use swords and sometimes shields, ranged troops have guns, and spellcasters fire away with magic energy.  Golem handlers show up too, adding a bit more variety (and a nice, heavy tank) to your team.  However, even on the easiest difficulty, you can quickly get wiped out by an ornery troll or by placing a gunner in a poor position.  And woe unto those who don’t optimize their initiate order – you’ll see your team get annihilated in one round.

This isn’t to say that the game cheats or is dishonest; if you can set up your team effectively, you can bring the pain onto your opponents just as well.  Proper planning prevents poor performance, as the saying goes.  But the game knows the rules intrinsically and you’ll have to figure them out.  Also, the occasional enemy reveal or in-engine cutscene will often place your squad in pre-determined positions, negating your proper planning.  This can be extremely unfortunate when it happens, and the brutally harsh checkpoint system will make sure you have time to contemplate your next strategy as you try the area again (and again and again).  And learning the ins and outs of these systems is a long slog of trial and error that requires a substantial time investment and a good deal of patience.  There’s a good, dense strategy game buried in there, if you’re willing to dig for a while.  The barest tutorial explains little; you’ll have to suss the details out yourself on what is actually effective.

Multiplayer battles are divided into versus scrims and co-op team-ups against computer-controlled opponents.  Instead of using your team from the single player campaign, the player is given CP – which I’m hoping stands for card points and not something else – to buy booster packs of troops to place into your hand.  When you battle, you choose your team under a set of constraints (size, rating, etc) and go to town.  This allows you to see some of the well-designed late game monsters and baddies that you may not get to in the campaign, if you don’t have the time or patience to get killed repeatedly by the same goblin shaman.

Unfortunately, multiplayer gets marred by a few issues which keep it from being a really fun time.  The lack of voice or text chat with your opponent or co-op partner completely inhibits communication, which increases the difficulty of co-op greatly.  This also means that new players without a firm grasp of the intricate game mechanics can’t really be taught in a hands-on fashion, bringing it all back to a trial and error learning process.  Adding to that is the frustrating win-loss mechanics, which heaps great rewards on the winner of a match, while the loser gets nearly nothing.  Winning grants rank XP and card points, while losing gets zero rank XP and about 10% of a winning match’s points.  It’s a very severe hurdle to jump to get into the multiplayer component, which is unfortunate since the combat system can be so interestingly strategic when playing against another person.

Though dated, the graphics in Natural Doctrine are actually pretty appealing.  The characters and portraits are your usual JRPG fare – big swords, big eyes, lots of exposed legs – but the design of many of the enemies is quite interesting.  One particularly fierce chum, King Aslan, has a wonderful eye for accessories involving his codpiece.  Goblins are sniveling little creatures, orcs are fat, angry, and carry some mean weapons.  The monsters are appropriately gruesome, and many are just massive – taking up an entire area square and not leaving any room for others to occupy.

The graphics falter though when confronted by the UI, and especially the targeting overlay.  Neon-colored lines connect all characters attacking to each other, as well as to their targets.  The large top bar shows initiative order via oversized icons.  Then there’s character-specific menus, weapon switch menus, target overlay, highlighted movement zones…  it’s all very busy.  Coupled with the inability to skip attack animations or speed up movement turns, there’s a lot of watching going on.

The Recommendation

If you’ve got the time and patience, there’s a decent strategy game buried under here.  Learning how to effectively use your troops and win a round after just a few attacks is gratifying, but you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to do so.  The UI and greaviously thin tutorial will do their best to keep you from it, though.  Natural Doctrine pulls no punches; it’s for the hardest of the hardcore SRPG player.