Review:
Resonance of Fate

Once upon a time there was a city called Basel, a vast tower piercing the sky to monumental proportions that raises its citizens above the toxic air of the ground below. Obviously the rich live at the top in the great ‘Chandelier’ and the poorer you are, the lower down the tower you live. The state is ruled by the cardinals and at the very top in the basilica is the prelate, or would be if he hadn’t killed himself before the story began.

Basel is a very steampunk world, with cogs and machinery everywhere, everything made of wrought iron and brickworks and is a beautiful setting, with everybody wearing flowery dresses and suits, and subtle hints at a vaguely old Parisian theme with the occasional amusing t-shirt thrown in to jar the senses.

You play as a trio of housemates, Vashyron (the older brother), Zephyr (the younger brother) and Leanne who act as Hunters. Their job is to do trivial and meaningless tasks for the general populace of Basel, mostly revolving around fetching and killing through the many levels. You start on the fourth level of the city, moving upwards to the Chandelier to talk to the upper crust, then descending down to the lower dangerous levels to find niknaks, machine parts, jewellery and even (on one occasion) a bottle of wine.

The story is broken into chapters with one main mission to perform to progress the story and get you closer and closer to the Basilica at the centre of level 1, and many side missions available from Hunter HQ. Only the main story mission is required to advance the plot, though if you go to the next chapter without completing any side missions you’ve picked up then they will be lost to you.

Graphics
Well, they’re pretty damn good actually. They’re as near to photorealistic as you can get with today’s technology and the body and facial models in the game are way beyond the uncanny valley, the only slight complaint I would have would be in the running, which never quite works for me.

Combat
The fighting in Resonance of Fate is something that I’ve never seen before and requires so much thinking that it sometimes hurts your head. The learning curve is incredibly steep right from the start. If I can give you one bit of advice right now then you need to go to the arena as soon as you possibly can. Where other RPG games let you get away with Attack > Enemy for a while, just running into combat without training is a painful lesson in how to achieve a quick game over. Go to the arena and play the tutorials there, and play through them two or three times until you understand what they’re trying to teach you. Even the basics are complex enough to warrant it.