The Charm I found in Children of Zodiarcs through its Art and Systems
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Some of my most cherished memories stem from games, in particular Final Fantasy Tactics on the PSone. Tactical RPG’s were such a niche thing while I was growing up that for the longest time FFT was the only one I even knew existed, as far as I was concerned it was unique and for me that made it even more a treasure.
Me and my friends would play it together, being a single player game we would just buy the mercenaries you could at the earliest point and just create our own characters to adventure with Ramza and co. I have since played the War of the Lions re-release and loved that, it was everything that FFT should have been. It was through this particular lens that I looked through whenever I first saw Children of Zodiarcs appear in an email from Square-Enix.
The Children of Zodiarcs was a Kickstarter project by the studio Cardboard Utopia based in Montreal, Canada. The kickstarter was funded well over its mark of $50,000, ending up at a comfortable $250k by the end of the funding period.
This funding was generated in part by its beautiful concept art, an intriguing trailer that showcased both card and dice mechanics and a whole heaping dose of nostalgia for a huge segment of gamers fed a steady diet of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Suikoden and Disgaea.
It was this very promise of another take on a genre beloved by me, a fix I had not had sated since the FFT: War of the Lions on the PSP, that had me reaching for my wallet and pledging to the Kickstarter as well.The art grabbed at me. While a departure from the sprites I had loved it was also a unique and beautiful style in its own right with hand drawn character portraits.
So lets jump in by looking at the trailer first and foremost.
Now the first thing I want to talk about is the primary drive of the article, the art style. Emphasis on style. The stylized look and feel has been seen across so much of gaming in recent years, driven by a new age of optimization, prioritization and likely a whole heaping dose of nostalgia.
I touch upon this a bit in my Beat Cop article here, but revisiting these styles in a way that lets the art be prioritized is a fantastic way to experience games. That said, the choice of this style for this game is likely more for performance reasons than purely artistic.
The hand drawn aspects of the game are absolutely fantastic. The artist’s manage to convey all the emotions necessary, all the characters stories worth telling with their design.
The postures of Nahmi vrs Pester convey the total contrast of their personalities, their outfits showing similarities of living togther while showing that their parent cultures may not be the same. Zirchhoff and Slint are the same, conveying military strength with the suggestion of medals and the heft of his shoulders on one hand and the pale slinkiness showing that Slint is gutter scum and an assassin type of character. And than Xero is legitimately the best robot.
The hand drawn art shows through on a few other awesome points as well, the cards are these fantastic minimalist affairs. They capture the style quite well and channel something of an older Magic the Gathering feel.
From there we go and look at the actual mesh and game-play art. This is not quite as engaging but I think that they did a pretty good job here. The terrain has a level of care and attention paid to it that shows genuine love for these environments.
You do run into some small tiling and repeat textures and seam issues, I had to look pretty close though. You see them most prominent on the brick trim of the sewer areas. The cracking has some repeat instances but honestly I don’t know that you would ever see it if you were not specifically looking for it like I was.
The only real problem I have when it comes to the art design and direction is that the effects of spells are absolutely lackluster.
These when coupled with the equally lackluster animation make for a disappointing and repetitive experience during combat. This was actually one of the worst parts of the game for me, I would go from excited about my dice rolls, figuring out how to survive the turn and then speed through all of the effects and combat itself.
The character models are well done. They manage to capture the important details of the characters while owning the low poly stylized look of the game.
Achieving both of these without sacrificing anything seems like an easy win to me. There are a lot of nice details here, Brices oversized coat and Pesters turned over boots come through nicely. Nahmi’s necklace and her Zodiarc glove detail translate easily from the drawn art to this model.
The NPC models are well done as well, though they are generally a bit samey within their “Types” but that is absolutely nothing outside the norm when you look at games in general so I don’t see it as bad thing here.
The cannibals in particular have some…interesting design choices.
The music for the game was not a standout for me initially. This changed while writing this article though and for reasons that I found rather interesting.
The OST was created by a group called Vibe Avenue and their catalog is rather lengthy. They have music in a ton of different games and they seem to specifically focus on game soundtracks for the primary thrust of their work. I found this pretty interesting though unsurprising when I thought about it for a bit, of course there would be groups specific to this sort of thing.
So the interesting thing here is that while I was IN game this music did not catch my ear. My heart did not flutter nor did it create any depth to a particular scene or setting. If I had not gone back to listen to the OST while writing this I would not have much positive to say about this games music.
This is likely partially due to the dissatisfaction I found with some of the character writing. There was never a scene or a point in a characters arc that felt any attachment to the music. Nothing that happened felt like it had more impact or was even memorable with the musics inclusion.
Upon listening again though, man this OST is stand-alone fantastic. Everyone's theme is awesome, The party management theme is relaxing nearly to the level of the Monster Hunter World housing theme.
So the music is legitimately great it just does not mesh as well with parts of the game that would have made it memorable from inside the game.
Animation is the aspect of the game where everything starts to stutter for me when it comes to my own enjoyment. I was absolutely not impressed with the animation or the video effects of the game and the disparity between that and the better art and technical choices created a yawning contrast that I almost fell into while trying to enjoy the game.
The choice to use a rag-doll physics for the character deaths was, while likely a technical necessity with their team, a poor choice from a visual perspective. Instead of looking like bodies they fall like literal mannequins and I found it to be incredibly jarring.
Though sometimes hilarious.
More often then not however, they just fall lamely to the ground or jitter against some mesh or collision box until they disappear into black smoke.
The character movements and attack animations are stiff while the attack animations in particular are not interesting at all. They never change and essentially become something to try to speed through as fast as you can to get back to your card selection and dice rolling.
With all that said the idle animations of all the character models, including the NPCs are not bad. I actively like Pesters and Nahmi’s and do not think I find any of the others objectionable. Some of the big cultist models do this sword shift on their shoulder that I thought looked pretty cool in game as well.
The mechanics however, are another point where this game shines. Though initially it takes a bit of work to account for the different variables the combination of dice and cards and positioning really make this game fun. It is just a fantastic and interesting way to add tactical depth to the game and to the genre as a whole.
You can build specific dice sets and card decks. Though the deck building is specific and unique to the character you can get a lot of options. I tend to try to keep my decks under 30 to help make sure I am prioritizing specific builds I want to aim for.
The cards can all “level up” as you do so they can gain new abilities and add a decent amount of complexity to your turn planning. All this complexity is activated and compounded by the roll of the die.
The dice are relatively easy to read, at first. As time goes on though you start to run into other combinations and requirements for abilities. I am Five missions from the end of the game as of the writing of this article and there are some of the requirements for Xeros card abilities that I am still not sure how to effectively activate on purpose.
You can choose from a number of different dice sets and you can create your own sets via the dice crafter. I never did this and I am still not entirely sure how dice get applied to what card, it does look like there is some criteria to it though.
So you move your character, select a card to use as an action and then you roll your dice to see how that action actually plays out. You can re-roll up to two dice per action and as the sets advance the combinations can get pretty daring. You can trade a higher chance for damage or an effect like a Free Turn for a chance to take damage, etc.
It is incredibly engaging as a mechanic and I found myself really enjoying it, going in and trying to figure out which dice to re-roll to try to activate effects or mitigate the negatives.
The Children of Zodiarcs, a compelling game for its mechanics and its art. Its relatively poor story suffers from some poor character writing and a consistently bad pacing.
The developers took their own nostalgia and their ideas and made their dream a reality. I cannot fault them for that and I would absolutely suggest picking this game up if tactical RPGs are your jam. It did not quite hit the nail on the head with me but I also do not feel like I was in the targeted age demographic here.
At the time of this articles posting the game is $17.99 on steam. I would actually say that this is a solid price point for the game. You will get 20 missions, 5 Side quests and an arena that I have yet to dive into. The mechanics of the game are absolutely worth it and while I do not care for the writing overall, the characters themselves are likable despite the flaws in the execution.
With 14 missions (1 side mission) under my belt the game has 24 hours logged on Steam. Some of this is it just it just sitting open of course but I would say that by the time I am done it will have been about a 30 hour game.
Time well spent as far as I am concerned.
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