Natural Doctrine takes the concept of natural selection and throws it in your face; the world is brutal, cold and unyielding, and you’re going to have a hard time surviving in it. The story is nothing more than an excuse to go out and kill stuff, and the gameplay is just as unforgiving as humanity’s struggle for survival in a world where other races and species are vying for dominance. Natural Doctrine tries to challenge even the most elite tactical RPG veterans, but it ends up being infuriatingly unfair - filling its 40-hour campaign with rage-inducing battles.

Perhaps Natural Doctrine’s greatest failing is in how it struggles to convey its needlessly complex combat system (and no, the quick tutorial and walls of text that “teach” you how to play aren’t much help). During a turn, every unit has the ability to have other allies go immediately after them through Link Turns. The criteria for linking attacks is as convoluted as the user interface; after somehow managing to link my entire team into one huge attack, my screen is a comical mess of lines, colors, and even upside-down scrolling text. It’s an aggravating and unbalanced system that favors strength in numbers. The problem is that I was almost always outnumbered, meaning when it was the enemy’s turn, they relentlessly assaulted me, leading to constant deaths. On the rare occasion my team was larger (this only happened during a few boss fights), the enemy inexplicably got “Quick Turns,” allowing them to constantly skip turn order and go first, making the fights even more one-sided than they already were.

Worst of all is the fact that there’s no saving during the often long and grueling battles. Checkpoints are sparse, so the often unavoidable losses I suffered stung that much worse. During one fight, I had to defeat a small army while keeping the enemy’s leader alive. I spent 45 minutes defending my team while chipping away at the opponents’ health with my snipers only for the leader to rush in, auto-triggering my riflemen’s covering fire ability. I watched in horror as my stupid teammates unwittingly killed the one person they were tasked to keep alive, effectively erasing nearly an hour’s worth of progress.

In another lengthy fight against a dozen dragons, I had the help of an AI-controlled goblin wizard. He decided to use a fireball on one of them, catching my characters in the crossfire. Twenty minutes of progress were deleted thanks to friendly fire outside my control. Natural Doctrine constantly worked against me—even when it was on my side.

Even on the easiest difficulty, a character’s death means an instant game over and thanks to constant occurrences like the ones described above, my characters died a lot. By the end of the game, my team was so big that I was managing ten separate health bars at once, constantly worrying that one would get hit by a critical attack for an instant loss, which happened far too often. It’s as if Natural Doctrine expected me to know every move my opponents would make—even implausible ones—which meant my victories weren’t based on tactics or strategy but constant trial and error, and dumb luck. Loading

Fortunately, the game allows you to respec skills at any point at no cost, but no amount of skill swapping could change how poorly magic is handled. Instead of the traditional mana, humans use grams of Pluton, a fictional element, to cast spells. The issue is that it’s a finite resource, and getting more of it is hard. Pluton is found in chests in the dungeons and caves you explore, but opening them during battle is suicide because it wastes a full turn. By the final levels, I was so low on Pluton that my mages were literally worthless wastes of turns I was forced to keep alive. 85 IMAGES

To make matters worse, Natural Doctrine is punctuated by a forgettable story, unlikeable characters, and nonsensical dialogue. The narrative starts out as a small party of mercenaries looking for a quest, but quickly turns into a cliché save-the-world tale, and my generic, trope-fitting adventurers consistently made out-of-character decisions that served only to stretch the story’s length. The voice acting is about as annoying as you’d expect 12-year-olds in pink armor to be. I almost lost my mind after hearing Tatyana shout her catchphrase “Dinner is served!” for the fiftieth time. Even the graphics are subpar and outdated. Though I liked the pleasing, cartoony design of the golems and lizardfolk, the game looks like it belongs on the PS2, not the PS4 I was playing it on.