Dungeon crawlers. A genre that strikes fear in to the heart of many a game fan. Notoriously hard, infamously punishing and infuriatingly deadly, we tend to give any "rogue-like" games (sometimes affectionately known as procedural death labyrinths) a wide berth. With the exception of the odd Pokemon Mystery Dungeon title, anyway - and even that eventually got relegated to the scrap heap when the novelty of repeatedly dying as Pikachu wore off, as dungeon crawlers are clearly a sub-genre of role-playing games we probably aren't cut out for. Much like turn-based strategy titles, given that we have all the foresight and tactical planning of a dead tuna - but that's a whole other kettle of fish.
But, as a games journalist, you sometimes have to go outside your comfort zone, play the games you'd never thought you'd play and write home about them. Which is how we came to try last years "WTF" rogue-like, The Guided Fate Paradox - and, shock, horror - we actually thought it was pretty good! Of course, some of that is likely due to the fact we could don stylish combinations of mermaid tails, zombie arms and penguin hats whilst playing god to everyone from Cinderella to murderous broken-hearted mermaids to some rather obsessive librarians, but still. The reason why this is important is that The Awakened Fate Paradox is its sequel - and while the game may lose out on some of the crazy customisation options, that doesn't mean it's a bad game in itself. In fact, far from it.
Da da da daaaaaa!
The game begins with Shin Kamikaze, a brooding, lonely and seemingly unremarkable teen, who gets attacked on his way home from school one day. Only this wasn't your average mugging - his winged assailants flew down from the sky and shoved a sword through his heart, killing him instantly, while a mysterious girl appeared to save him just a shade too late. But Shin's tale is only just beginning, as he wakes to find himself in another world, known as Celestia, surrounded by angels - and thanks to the crystal embedded in his chest, he's now been reborn as their God, an ultimate weapon in the war between the angels and the devils, and the last hope for mankind.
You see, the war isn't going too well for these angels, and their Celestia - essentially heaven - is a constantly moving space-ship-style beast that's on the run from the devils, mounting all sorts of covert attacks against the Netherworld's key targets. Entrusted to the angelic girl who attempted to save your bacon back on Earth, and a red-headed devil prisoner/scientist with a penchant for noodles, Shin gets a crash course in his godly duties, ready for the impending Armageddon, liberating comrades from prison camps, infiltrating devil power plants and more.
The gang.
These two guardians, as well as many other characters along the way, play a big part in your quest. The angelic Jupiel Soraumi acts as your 'exclusively assigned angel', watching over your training each day, and reporting your progress to her sister, the head honcho of Celestia. Ariael Agarie, meanwhile, sees you as more of an ongoing experiment, and monitors the progress of the crystal inside you as part of her regular examinations - a devil herself, she was originally liberated from the Netherworld to help the angels create the crystal that now resides within you, giving you the powers of a God. Both of them can chat to you through the Imagicomm (another one of Ariael's inventions) when you're out in the dungeons, giving you guidance from a distance.
Despite it's heavy reliance on narrative and story - so much so, we may even go as far as to call the Awakened Fate Ultimatum part visual novel, given the sheer amount of text you have to read - it's still a dungeon crawler. At the entrance to Celestia is a space known as Phantasma, which creates constantly changing, random dungeons to trap and confuse any incoming devils - and as God, it's your job to head in there and deal with them. These gridded areas, linked by twisting and turning corridors, littered with traps and swarming with enemies are where you'll cut your teeth as God, harnessing the powers of both angels and devils to do your bidding. Because God is bipolar, don't you know.
Also, you probably want to avoid getting ganged up on.
With more than a smattering of rogue-like about it, the Awakened Fate Ultimatum plays out in a kind of turn based way. In each dungeon, nothing at all will happen so long as you're standing still - but for each step you take, and each move you make, your enemies will move too. Should you find yourself head to head with a foe, it's up to you to take it in turns with your foe to wallop each other with your weapons until one of you (hopefully them!) keels over, at which point you can resume your square by square exploration of the dungeon, searching for that elusive portal to the next level, travelling up and up (or maybe down and down - we haven't worked it out yet) to the exit. Oh, and try not to die in their either - because otherwise you'll suffer the immeasurable pain of losing all your hard-earned items.
The enemies that jump you generally come in two forms - black/red/purple horned devils and blue/white haloed angels, and while we're not entirely sure what the angels are doing revolting against you, how you need to approach the two groups differs slightly. Being God, you apparently hold both the powers of angels and demons, and using a nifty power known as Deitize, you can transform into each one, gaining a new set of abilities at the same time. As you can probably guess, angelic powers work best against devils while devilish abilities fare better against angels - so you'll spend a lot of time switching between the two forms depending on the enemies you encounter. But you also don't want to spend too long in them, nor do you want to use up all their fancy moves willy-nilly, because each attack eats up a chunk of your SP bar, and once that hits zero, you'll be forcibly transformed back to your normal, weaker, non-deity form.
Knowing when to use each form is key to surviving the game's dungeons.
For each enemy you dispose of, you'll earn a certain amount of experience points, and once you amass enough, Shin will increase in level, becoming more powerful. Unlike it's predecessor, The Guided Fate Paradox, which utilised a rather strange levelling system which reset to one each time you left a dungeon, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum takes the more traditional approach, and once you go up a level, it's there to stay. Levelling also brings with it a way to customise the crystal that's embedded in Shin's chest - split into two halves, a wing-shaped board lets you exchange the cunningly named 'Crystal Points', which you get for levelling up or when choosing certain story options, for stat bonuses, boosts and new abilities for both your angel and devil forms. Generic crystal points can be spent on whichever side you want, whereas angel and devil specific points must be spent in their corresponding half - which, depending on who you find yourself siding with in the story, may require a bit of a balancing act, as unevenly levelling your forms could put you at a bit of a disadvantage against roughly 50% of a dungeon's enemies.
In another departure from the previous game, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum adds in an element of choice to the proceedings. During story sections, you'll have to make all sorts of morally ambiguous decisions, such as whether to have each of your party carry one injured angel each, moving slower and running the risk of the devils mounting a counter attack and killing everyone, or pairing up so as to move them quicker but leaving half the prisoners behind to die. With one path being fairly obviously marked out as the angel/good path, and one as the devil/bad path, you'd be forgiven for thinking the consequences would be similarly obvious, but it's not always the case. For example, an early choice has you faced with an order to execute a demon commander, but Shin hesitates, knowing he has a family waiting for him. Being gracious and letting him go sees him kill a fellow angel as he leaves - but so does deciding to deliver the final blow, as Shin still ends up having second thoughts, which ends up costing the life of a comrade. As a guider of fates, it's up to you to make the right decisions, but some of the choices, and the harsh reality of the situations the angels face, mean that rarely does one option seem the better, often with some rather hard-hitting consequences whichever path you take. However, it is a tad disappointing that none of them really alter the course of the overarching story much - even if they give the illusion of it, although the surprisingly gripping narrative and fleshed out characters kind of make up for it.
And make some rather awkward decisions from time to time too.
While The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is a fairly accessible and easy-going dungeon crawler in a genre that's generally as hard as nails, it does have a couple of confusing systems to contend with. Item Boost lets you combine your collected weapons, armour and crystals to create better, more powerful items - at least in theory. But in practice, you'll find that, despite combining several half-decent weapons doesn't seem to do an awful lot, with a newly created Dagger +3 doing the exact same damage as a bog standard Dagger, with little to no explanation as to why it's worked out that way. And then you'll stumble across a Dagger -2 in a dungeon which also does the exact same amount of damage, adding to the confusion. With a bit of trial and error it's possible to end up with a better weapon at the end, but the intricacies of the system seem lost on us.
Much like it's predecessor, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum succeeds in making an accessible and thoroughly enjoyable dungeon crawler for folks who don't want to be dying every ten minutes (although that isn't to say it's a walk in the park either). With a surprisingly involving story loaded with choices, unexpected consequences and likeable characters, it's a slightly more serious game than it's predecessor, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. For fans of Japanese role-playing games or rogue-like dungeon crawlers, The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is definitely worth thinking about.
Format Reviewed: Playstation 3
