If it’s possible to fall in love with a game at first sight, Azure Saga: Pathfinder had that effect on me. Classic jRPG combat combined with an isometric viewpoint in dungeons reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics (and its million subsequent imitations) appeals to my nostalgia plenty on its own, but adding in a spaceships-and-fantasy combo straight out early Star Ocean titles with the polish of a gorgeous art style pushes it firmly into “must have” territory. I haven’t made much progress yet thanks to an unfortunate lack of time today, but I made sure to record some early gameplay to show off the tutorials and help provide a sense of what the mechanics are like.

Some early gameplay/tutorial stuff

The game begins with Synch—ostensibly the main character—and his android Noide escaping from something in a ship. There’s not enough information yet to figure out the specifics of what was happening in this scene, but the point is that the pair get shot down on a planet and need to find a way to power their spaceship. Noide detects some unexpected power possibilities, and the two quickly discover other humans living on the planet when they decide to help out a high priestess named Clery from the nearby Ere Kingdom. A lot of the mechanics are as you’d expect; combat gives you your typical attack command as well as a skill command for moves that use MP. Something interesting, however, is that combining certain skills can unlock a “united” attack that all three characters partake in, and once unlocked it can subsequently be selected from the menu. Apparently selecting that combination of skills again doesn’t result in more united attacks, which was probably done to keep you from unintentionally triggering them when you’re instead trying to deliberately use those skills. There are also checkpoints that autosave the game in addition to acting as warp points. These warps appear to be connected to other teleports in the same dungeon similar to the ones in Battle Chasers: Nightwar, showing you the map and other room/s with discovered checkpoints to warp to.

The city was under attack by strange enemies at the end of the last video, so the main character volunteered to go into the sewers to help clear them out. Clery leaves the party at this point, and this is where Synch and Noide end up rescuing (and recruiting) a knight named Kishar. That means that the united attack that required one of Clery’s skills can’t be used anymore, but we unlock a new one with Kishar before long. From there, it’s your standard dungeon exploring, as the group looks for a key so that they can flood the sewers and wash out all of the enemies. The only unusual thing that happened was at the end where I found a checkpoint and, expecting trouble ahead, went to save my game manually, only for the game to softlock immediately afterward. This required exiting out of the game and restarting it, though I didn’t lose a single step of progress because the save was successful and it was a menu I couldn’t exit out of that made it impossible to continue playing.

Honestly, softlocking immediately after a save is the least harmful kind of softlocking possible, especially when your exact position is saved. Before starting to record again, I tried to reproduce the bug by saving really quickly a few times, but it appears to have been a one-time thing. Moving on, my decision to save proved prudent as a really tough boss fight occurred in the next room. It’s kind of surprising how difficult these early bosses proved to be, though my early decision to not focus all of my firepower exclusively on the rats (which was a case of me underestimating how much HP they had) played a big part in that difficulty. The rats continually buffed the entire enemy group’s attack power, which allowed the already strong boss to inflict devastating amounts of damage in a single strike. Still, I survived and finally made it to the king. I suspect that many interesting story turns lie in the near future.

Some miscellaneous observations

It hasn’t been hugely distracting or anything, but the English script could stand to be cleaned up a bit. Early on, the main character says “there’s there” (2:39 in the first embedded video) instead of “there’s something there,” and there are also some comma splices and moments of awkward phrasing such as in the picture above. I’m enthralled enough by everything else at the moment that this is something that I’m more than willing to overlook, but a little proofreading certainly wouldn’t hurt any.

Something interesting I’ve noticed is Synch’s distinctly mercenary attitude toward the people living on the planet. This is understandable and unique enough to be enjoyable early on, though it’s worth mentioning that too much of it runs the risk of casting the probably-main-character as a callous and unrelatable rogue. Regardless, it’s refreshing to play as someone who isn’t an impossibly perfect paragon of virtue.

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