The First 2 Hours: The Alliance Alive HD Remastered
Hello everybody! Shaun here, and I’m finally back with a new article for Fandom Fanatics! In this one, I’m going to be covering the first 2 hours of The Alliance Alive HD Remastered game by FuRyu Corporation and NIS America. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this series of articles, it’s a brand new one that I came up with recently where I’ll be talking about the first two hours of every game that I plan to write a review for in the future, when I complete the game. I figured this series would give me new material to write about as well as give my readers something new to read while they wait for me to complete the game and write the full review.
So, I picked this game up during the Steam winter sale recently and have been playing it off and on the past few weeks now (On top of all the other games I’ve been playing lately, for reviews and otherwise), and it’s a fun little game so far. It’s also not little at all, it’s super lengthy and I’ve only seen the very tip of the iceberg so far.
The game follows a group of rebels who live in a world that’s been taken over by a powerful race of daemons with the aid of beastmen. Humans are subject to a pitiful existence under the control of the Daemons, and many live in fear of them.
Our heroes are part of a group called the Dark Crows, and their names are Galil, Azura, Renzo, and Barbarosa. The game begins with Galil and Azura being sent on various missions for the Dark Crows. Their main objective being to sneak into a ruin so Azura can view an image of the fabled blue sky that existed before the daemons appeared.
Along the way I found myself battling various types of beasts as we explored the overworld map, as well as the ruins and a forest region that’s in the 2nd hour of gameplay. I found out the hard way that the most fearsome enemies that you face early in the game are actually water based monsters known simply as water demons, they’re brutal and honestly wiped my party quite a few times in my encounters with them. I definitely recommend avoiding them at all costs in the early portion of the game.
Despite being early in the game still, the story has a lot of interesting moments already. There’s also quite a few twists and turns and even some puzzle solving elements to boot.
Gameplay wise, the game uses a turn based setup where you give orders to your party and use skills etc. The game does have a unique feature, though. During battle you’ll often unlock new skills for your characters to use right away. Most turn based RPGs keep skill unlocks for when you level up, but this isn’t the case in this game. It’s honestly pretty nice, and if you unlock a powerful skill in combat, it could turn the tide of battle in your favor. At the end of combat your stats have the chance to increase as well, but it doesn’t use a traditional level up system, which often uses experience points.
As I explored the game world, I also came across various towers that have various functions like a tower of knowledge or the tower of tactics. Those were mostly used for progressing the story currently, but I have a feeling they serve a purpose later in the game.
It’s also worth mentioning that the game is limited to 1920x1080 resolution at maximum, which is unfortunate since I have an ultra-wide monitor which is 2560x1080. It also has no support for 1440p and 4K resolutions either. This makes sense since it’s an “HD” remaster but it’s still kind of disappointing, regardless.
Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that the game requires a controller to be played and has no keyboard and mouse support. This may be disappointing for some, so I figured I’d mention it.
One thing I was kind of surprised about was the fact that the game doesn’t have any voice acting, for both gameplay and cutscenes. Not entirely sure why, because it definitely could have benefited from having some, but at the same time, it was originally a 3DS title, and the hardware limitations probably had something to do with it. Still, the story is really well-written, and quite entertaining so far.
Ultimately, I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with the game so far, and I definitely plan to continue the game, it’s just going to take a long time to actually complete, especially since I’ve been working on so many other games recently as well. We’ll also see how my opinions change as I get further into the game, and eventually complete it.
