Natural Doctrine is "built in a way that you're going to die," a representative from niche publisher NIS told me when he came to the IGN offices to show off Natural Doctrine. And after watching him and his colleague play the game for about an hour, I'd say he's exactly right.

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“ This so-called "linking" system is at the heart of Natural Doctrine, and if you don't link often, you won't make it very far.

“ You have flexibility here to try what works without tethering yourself to a stricter, less pliable class system.

For those who follow the Japanese gaming industry carefully, Natural Doctrine is a familiar name. For those that don't, all you need to know to start is this: it's Kadokawa Games' first internally-developed game, it was created by veterans of the Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Battle franchises, and it's extremely granular and difficult.Ex-Square producer Kensuke Tanaka and his team approached the creation of Natural Doctrine with a simple thought in mind. They felt that the strategy RPG (or SRPG) genre today lacked both challenge and quality, and with Natural Doctrine, they want to rectify the situation. Natural Doctrine isn't exactly a pretty game, and it doesn't rely a whole lot on story, which may be disappointing to some. But it makes up for these deficits by focusing almost wholly on mechanics. And it's there that Natural Doctrine has a real opportunity to shine.For instance, there may be a situation where you can throw four of your characters into a single square. This concentrates your power and allows you to use the various characters' special skills in conjunction with one another. It even allows for the altering of Natural Doctrine's initiative system, and may let you jump up ahead of an enemy that's about to go. But there's nuance here, too, because while you can position your characters in such a way as to block someone from being struck by an enemy attack, placing him or her in front of a wall, or even using one of your other characters as a meat shield, this goes the other way, too. That means that if you put a friendly ranged unit behind someone and his or her target is directly in front of you, you'll shoot your friend. Yes, Natural Doctrine has friendly fire, too.All of this mixes up into a strategy RPG that's far deeper than many of its influences and contemporaries. Since no one in your party can die, it also means that you have to be very, very careful while playing. Indeed, Natural Doctrine was considered so hard when it came out in Japan that Kadokawa ultimately succumbed to player complaints about how insanely difficult the game was, and patched it to soften it up a bit.Speaking of magic, Natural Doctrine's arcane systems are also interesting. Instead of having mana or another kind of individual magic points to expend, your entire party has a certain amount of a substance called Pluton, a mineral so rare that it's measured in mere grams. You have to be careful when using magic in Natural Doctrine because you can't use it endlessly, or even often. Everyone in your party shares the Pluton you have available to you, and once you work your way through it, you'll have to wait 'til the next battle to re-up and try again.For those that like multiplayer battling, Natural Doctrine supports competitive online play. The online system revolves around decks of cards that you will collect and strengthen over time the more you win, and otherwise, fights look a lot like they do in the single player campaign. The best thing about Natural Doctrine's online functionality, however, is that you can play it across any platform the game is available on, opening up the range of players you can compete against significantly.Natural Doctrine launches on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita on September 16, 2014 in North America and September 19, 2014 in Europe. The PS4 version will cost $60, the PS3 version will cost $50, and the Vita version will cost $40, and there are no cross-buy options available. Keep an eye on IGN in the coming months for more on Natural Doctrine, culminating with our full review.

Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter.