X-Tactics Review

X-Tactics is a GPS-based location RPG, where the combat takes the form of a strategy game; similar to that of Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics.

When you first load up the game, you’ll receive an intro to the combat system. You will learn about how importance of your characters placement on the battlefield, as spaces can passively give you bonuses for whichever character stands on them. Attacking is your typical “tap here” to make your character attack. But to make things just a touch more interesting, before the attack takes place you can chain together stat bonuses by swiping over them in a little minigame. After you’ve gained the little power bonus, you can then proceed to play another minigame, where you have to time your attack to do the optimal amount of damage.

Whilst at first this is a nice extra to gameplay, giving you the option to improve your damage output it does get rather tedious, rather quickly. It’s not much more than randomly swiping at the screen and timing your button-prompts after each attack. Because it gets quickly tedious, it kind of puts a damper on the tactics system that, for the most part, is really quite enjoyable.

Another couple of things cropped up with the combat in the game, which has left a bit of a sour taste for me. Firstly, gameplay appears to go quite slow at times, and that’s kind of a problem. You can’t really just load it up, play for five minutes and be done; combat just isn’t that quick. As someone who has spent a number of hours in Disgaea, an SRPG that does things very quickly with very little dilly-dallying, it’s hard for me to get into this title with the speed it currently plays at. The second thing that comes to mind is the lack of animations during gameplay. They don’t need to be particularly flashy, but they do need to be there, and that’s something the game lacks, which is a shame. I understand seeing the same animation over and over again gets quite repetitive, but seeing my character stand still like a statue isn’t all that interesting either.

Another feature of the game that comes to mind is the art style. The game totes a particular anime aesthetic imbued into its very core, and it really resonates with the game. With each and every stylised character that you come across in your party, you’ll come to enjoy and appreciate the game's art style, regardless of how much or little time you spend in the game.

Now, one feature of the game that I truly find interesting and unique is the location feature. Your missions are unique to you around the area you’re physically situated, and not only that, the game takes your time and weather into account when you play. For instance, if it’s the stroke of midnight, then the battle you play will take place at night. But, if it’s raining out, the game will also take that into account and have it reflect onto the game. This element of the game is truly unique, and really quite enjoyable.

Obviously with X-Tactics being an RPG all your characters throughout numerous fights will continue to gain experience, as well as levels. These level ups do little more than increase your character’s stats permanently, but that’s no surprise. It’s your typical RPG mechanic that you see in every other game of the genre; it may not be special, but it gets the job done just fine.

There is one other small area of the game that I do have some grievances with, and that’s how small the game can appear on mobile devices. It’s not a real issue playing on mobile, but it does take a bit of getting used to before you have everything down, without accidentally tapping on the wrong area of the map by accident.

Overall, X-Tactics may be a little slow on the combat front, but it doesn’t completely take away from the enjoyment factor of the game. It does, however, mean that the average player just looking to play the game for a few quick minutes won’t be getting that. This isn’t the sort of game you can whip out for a coffee break at work, so you’ll want to keep that in mind in the long run. However, if you’re looking for the type of game you can spend countless hours on, then this is going to be easy to recommend if you’re at all a fan of tactical/strategy RPG’s. Combine that with the interesting location based gameplay, and beautifully done character art, and you’ve got yourself a game that you could lose yourself in rather easily.