Play as a God Tank in The Guided Fate Paradox - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 16 June 2013 / 2,921 Views
The Guided Fate Paradox is the story of God. Well, ok, not the sort of God most people think of, more like a God who just won all of his powers from a mall raffle. It's a rogue-like game with a peculiar sense of style that should interest fans of the genre.
I'll admit I've never actually been into rogue-like games but it's something I've always been meaning to try. The genre is defined by how difficult dungeon crawling is with every movement you take draining a bit of your energy until you have to cut and run or die trying. The Guided Fate Paradox's system actually lets you keep your levels if you die, but all of the items and money you've collected will be discarded. It's a harsh world we live in, I suppose.
One of the first things I noticed about my character was that he didn't actually have any legs. Instead he had tank treads where his legs should have been. This is actually a sign of something that so many Japanese RPGs miss out on: equipment that's visible on the character. Beyond just giving stats and a cool outfit, though, each piece of equipment actually has a special attack connected to it. If it breaks, you lose that ability, but you can change your equipment for free so you can always toss on a spare you brought with you or found during the trip.
As Ryan Phillips from NISA ran me through the dungeon I noticed that each enemy has an area around them highlighted. This was apparently the monsters' aggro radius. If you entered it would come running. You aren't facing this alone, though, we went into the game with an angelic sub-character who you could give general instructions to but who mostly did her own thing while following along.
While the visual style borrows a lot from NIS's Disgaea series it's much faster paced, with special attacks that weren't even long enough to press R2 and skip. That could change as things progress, though. My time with the game was pretty short so I'm afraid that's all I have to report, but look for more on The Guided Fate Paradox as it gets nearer to release in Fall 2013 for the PlayStation 3.
