Ironically, the game takes place during the Edo period in Japan. For those not well-versed in Japanese history, this period lasted over 200 hundred years between the 17^th and 19^th centuries and was largely known for the peace that Japan enjoyed following the strife occurring between warring clans in the feudal era. But there’s not much peace to be had here as zombies have risen to claim the flesh of the living. This theme aside, the narrative is largely absent. There are loading screens with static images featuring dialogue and small tidbits of lore throughout. But there really isn’t any overarching plot to write home about.

"Ed-0 takes the nature of rogue-likes and seemingly attempts to capture the intensity of Souls games, making this one a particularly dicey affair."

Because of this, that means the gameplay is central to this experience and is really what the title should thrive on. But does it? First, let’s start with the game’s fundamentals. As with any game in the rogue-like genre, each world is randomly generated and death results in a restart of the mission which also resets the layout. Each mission is designated by conquering a number of “floors.” In each “floor” or level, you’ll have to find and potentially unlock Torri gates to continue to the next floor. Torri gates are color-coded by what potential boosts they offer during your small reprieve between floors. For instance, Yellow Torri gates will offer you a food item to boost your stamina or “Zen.” Zombies are littered throughout each floor and you’ll engage in a typical hack n’ slash approach to defeat them. You can acquire special moves called “Secret Arts” throughout each floor. Your character can equip a total of four Secret Arts per mission. Furthermore, if you acquire pick-ups of the same Secret Art you already have equipped, you can use that to boost the special attack in various ways.

While you travel from floor to floor, you must also manage your stamina by eating food, taking strength pills, or consuming any other boost that helps you maintain Zen. If you run out of stamina, the game will let you know you are hungry. In this state, your life will start whittling away, and yes, you can die from starvation.

Your ultimate goal for a given mission is to make it through a series of floors, usually 10 in total. The last floor often contains a boss character you must fight. While you can rush from Torri gate to Torri gate and climb to the last floor rather quickly without fighting many zombies, you won’t have the boosts necessary to take on the final boss and you’ll die miserably. So, in effect, you should explore and seek out boosts, Secret Arts, and consumables along your journey. Ed-0’s problems lie in the game’s method of shepherding you through a given mission.  Ultimately, the developers want you to be challenged. And you will, indeed, be challenged. But it’s not necessarily a good thing. Other rogue-likes and Souls-type games that amplify the difficulty do so in a way that employs strategy, player education, and growth. Ed-0, unfortunately, grants all of its enemy characters an egregious amount of vitality in the wake of your standard attacks. On the flip side, a traditional zombie dealing a melee strike cuts through your life bar swiftly. This, in effect, forces you to find the necessary means of boosting your Secret Arts attacks and finding powerful consumables. However, since the game is randomly generated, it’s essentially a crapshoot. I’ve had runs where I’ve largely gained nothing. Conversely, I’ve had runs where I was dealt a decent hand.

"Ed-0, unfortunately, grants all of its enemy characters an egregious amount of vitality in the wake of your standard attacks. On the flip side, a traditional zombie dealing a melee strike cuts through your life bar swiftly. This, in effect, forces you to find the necessary means of boosting your Secret Arts attacks and finding powerful consumables. However, since the game is randomly generated, it’s essentially a crapshoot. I’ve had runs where I’ve largely gained nothing. Conversely, I’ve had runs where I was dealt a decent hand."

Each mission must be completed in this manner in order to proceed to the next mission. Therefore, if you’re stuck, you’ll simply have to keep trying. The game does offer forms of permanent upgrades. There is a hub village where you go in between missions. As you gain coins from a quest, you keep them as long as you survive. You can even opt out mid-way through a run by taking a Homebound Torri gate to retain what you’ve collected without risking death and losing it. You can then deposit it in the bank to keep it safe or spend it at the Dojo on valuable buffs.

While some might find satisfaction in this gameplay loop, most will regard the combat as overly repetitive and tedious. When you have to slash an average zombie – without using Secret Arts attacks – upwards of 15 times or more to kill it, you know this zombie-killing ride will eventually become a real bore. While most enemies are easy to run away from, the bosses provide a steep challenge. Eventually, quicker and more deadlier enemies will be introduced in the normal floors including boss characters from previous runs. One misstep could cost you a third of your life or more in a single blow. Before you know it, you’re finished.

The controls are tight and responsive. Your character moves quickly, though sometimes you might forget which Secret Arts button combo you’ve assigned the action to as it will change with each mission. Some controls are a little awkward such as holding L2 and pushing the up button on the D-pad in order to throw an object. Aside from a few non-standard schemes such as that, there really aren’t any major hang-ups with the controls.

"The models for the zombies are often far too simple, jagged, and infinitely repetitive. Zombie clones will be noticeable at every turn. Aside from character combat, animations are robotic. The labyrinthine pathways of each floor in a given mission are rather dull and uninspired."

Graphically, Ed-0 looks like what you’d expect from a budget studio and publisher. This isn’t a AAA affair. The models for the zombies are often far too simple, jagged, and infinitely repetitive. Zombie clones will be noticeable at every turn. Aside from character combat, animations are robotic. The labyrinthine pathways of each floor in a given mission are rather dull and uninspired. Sure, you’re here to slay zombies and survive, not sightsee. But the foreground should at least have some appeal and at least be interesting to a degree. The developers did, however, include an EDO Shader that you can apply to the graphics that ultimately make things a little more refined. It’s a cel-shading style that helps the world feel a bit more animated

At the end of the day, Ed-0: Zombie Uprising doesn’t fully respect your time as the player. While some may find enjoyment in its painstakingly rigorous combat with the undead, most will feel frustrated and exhausted with its unrewarding and unbalanced difficulty mechanics. It’s a game that lives in the shadows of challenging rogue-likes and Soulsborne titles. While budget graphics, sound design, and animation don’t necessarily make or break a game, poor difficulty balance and a subpar combat grind absolutely will.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

As Redditch, players can experience five new missions and two sub missions in addition to exploring the Basement (which serves as a camp). There’s the Mind Map system which tracks her choices, and a new weapon type, Magic Tomes. It allows for Necromancy and Necrotiem skills, creating Skeletal Knights and turning other units into Skeletal Dragons.

New Game Plus has also been added with Extra Mode with enemy attack and level adjusted for a higher challenge. There’s also Very Hard difficulty and a new boss, Behemoth, to battle. The latter is the most powerful enemy players have faced yet, so be prepared.

For more details on The DioField Chronicle, check out our review here.

During the scenario, players can utilize the weapon “Grimoire,” which summons other units and alters their forms. New skills are also coming, like Necromancy to summon a Skull Knight and Necrotame to transform units into a Skull Dragon. Then there’s Extra Mode, which functions as New Game Plus and carries over levels, weapons and skill trees from a previous playthrough.

Enemies will be higher-level starting from Chapter 1, providing a new challenge for NG+ players. “Very Hard” difficulty is also being added, which offers lower enemy skill cooldowns, less revival time and recovery, and fewer fragment drops. Check out the trailer below to see the update in action.

The DioField Chronicle is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC. Check out our review here.

The DioField Chronicle is set in a medieval fantasy world that, after having known nothing but peace for several generations, has suddenly been plunged into widespread conflict. The mainland is consumed in the war, and though the titular island of DioField has been left largely unscathed and on the sidelines, it has its own troubles brewing within, thanks to a conflict over the kingdom’s successor following the murder of the former heir. Suffice it to say, things are looking very hair everywhere. Amidst all this, you play as Andrias Rhondarson, a soldier and former friend of the aforementioned dead prince, who, along with his band of companions, joins a mercenary unit and finds himself embroiled in the many conflicts of the wider world.

"The DioField Chronicle is a promising game, and many of its aspects do show their qualities time and again throughout the relatively meaty runtime. But this is also a game with several notable flaws that collectively mar the experience in ways that are not always easy to look past."

If you’ve played SPRGs before, the narrative experience is a familiar one, at least in terms of its tone and what it’s trying to achieve. There’s plenty of political intrigue, lore about factions and the world and its history, new conflicts and alliances arising out of different needs, and the like. To its credit, The DioField Chronicle does a solid job of doling out intriguing bits and pieces of lore and the political machinations of the story, complete with the occasional twist and turn, and even though none of it is very original or groundbreaking, it consistently does enough to keep you engaged at least on some level.

The biggest problem with the game’s story, however, is its characters. The DioField Chronicle introduces a sizeable cast of characters that join your party member throughout the experience, but not a single personality in the entire story – not the main cast, not the supporting crew – makes any sort of an impression. People are either mind-numbingly stiff-lipped and dour, or relentlessly one-dimensional. The end result is a cast that’s full of characters who are ultimately just bland. The cookie cutter writing and monotonous, emotionless voice acting don’t do the game much favours on this front either.

While The DioField Chronicle is all too happy to tread a familiar path where its world and storytelling are concerned, on the gameplay front, it does do some unique and interesting things, admirably enough. Chief among them, of course, is that this isn’t a turn-based and grid-based experience, but a real-time strategy RPG. Combat plays out in real time, which all units on the battlefield – friend or foe – auto-attacking enemies when they are in range. There is a pause-and-play element to proceedings though, because every time you command a unit to do something, the action pauses until the command has been issued.

Though units auto-attack, your focus during battles lies primarily on controlling their movement, managing health bars, and deciding how to split up your units to deal with different threats at the same time. Positioning is king in The DioField Chronicle, and which of the four classes your units belong to – soldier, magicker, cavalry, and sharpshooter – is an equally important consideration. Ambush attacks when enemies have their backs to you deal greater damage, so tactics like flanking and having some units evade enemies’ attention also comes into play. A tank soldier can draw an enemy’s attention and take the hits while the cavalry unit circles around them and charges them down from behind. A unit might use an ability that draws aggro from foes, and from a distance, sharpshooter can launch a volley of arrows on them when they come into range. Meanwhile, battles also allow you limited uses of magical orbs that can summon mystical beasts that unleash high damage-dealing attacks.

"While The DioField Chronicle is all too happy to tread a familiar path where its world and storytelling are concerned, on the gameplay front, it does do some unique and interesting things."

Putting the real-time twist on strategy RPG battles certainly makes things interesting in The DioField Chronicle where the moment-to-moment action is concerned, especially as you try to get your units into the best positions and make them combine to use their unique strengths in the most optimal ways. Combat, however, seems to rely on this aspect a little too much, because a lot of what you’d expect to see in a strategy RPG of this sort is missing in this game. There are no terrain advantages, battle objectives have very little variety and quickly become repetitive, while enemy variety is equally lacking-  very rarely do you come across foes who challenge you in different ways.

What that means is that The DioField Chronicle’s central hook – though a strong one – isn’t strong enough to carry the game all by itself, because there isn’t enough going on around it. Yes, the game has progression mechanics to engage with in terms of unlocking new skills and equipping your units with more powerful gears, which certainly gives you a reason to care about what you’re doing a little more deeply. But the actual battles eventually wear themselves out and begin to feel repetitive, because the game seems to feel no need to change things up in many meaningful ways once it’s settled into a rhythm.

It also doesn’t help that The DioField Chronicle can be a bit too grindy as you progress further into the experience. At a time, you can have four characters on the battlefield, and those four can each have a support character tagging along as well. Support characters can use their special abilities, and a limited number of times, can be swapped with the main unit, though at the end of the battle, the support receives less XP from the fight. Given how many characters the game throws at you, as well as the fact that equipping them with the proper gear can also be very costly, it becomes apparently relatively early on that replaying battles to grind out additional cash and XP is almost unavoidable at times.

Outside of battles, you periodically visit your HQ, which serves as the game’s location, though it’s quite bland as hubs go. You can talk to NPCs, visit the shop, upgrade your units, and take on missions and side missions. There isn’t too much interesting going on here though. The visual design is bland, there’s very little incentive for exploration (even when new rooms open up), and the characters you can talk to aren’t very interesting. It feels like a severely underbaked aspect of the game, which is far from ideal, given how many times you come back to HQ throughout the experience.

"The DioField Chronicle’s central hook – though a strong one – isn’t strong enough to carry the game all by itself, because there isn’t enough going on around it."

Visually, The DioField Chronicle is a mixed bag. Battles are set in diorama-esque environments, but outside of the game’s hand-drawn art (which pops up in mid-mission cutscenes), there’s very little personality in how it looks. From a visual perspective, it feels like it has no discernable personality, no striking element that might stand out in memory.

The DioField Chronicle is an exciting proof-of-concept, and it has to be commended for its real-time tactics ambitions and for its story, which is, at the very least, enjoyable, if not wholly original. It’s a game where there’s definitely fun to be had and things to be appreciated. But it feels underbaked in more ways than one, and even the pats of the game that are good are often marred by significant flaws. For hardcore genre fans, The DioField Chronicle might be worth looking into, but keep in mind that many probably might not have patience for its considerable flaws.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

Boasting a unique diorama-style presentation, it also features a unique Real-Time Tactical Battle system. Units can move in real time, but one can pause and utilize different abilities. Properly exploiting enemy weaknesses and catering to each unit’s strengths is the key to victory.

A demo is available for The DioField Chronicle across all platforms, free of charge. It offers about two to three hours of content, with all progress and levels carrying over into the full game. Those looking for their next big strategy RPG fix may find it worth checking out. Stay tuned for more details on updates in the coming weeks.

At over seven minutes long, the trailer is a meaty one, and it is in Japanese, so keep that in mind- though there is plenty of gameplay footage to check out in there, so there’s that. The DioField Chronicle is set in a war-torn world where two kingdoms – the Trovelt-Schoevien Empire and the Rowetale Alliance – are at each other’s throats, while the smaller Kingdom of Alletain on the Island of Diofield gets caught in the crossfire, thanks to the fact that the area is rich in Jade. Fans of the genre will find plenty of familiar stuff in here in terms of narrative elements, that’s for sure.

The DioField Chronicle is out on September 22 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A free demo of the game is also currently available, and will allow you to transfer your progress into the full game when it launches.

Each mission has Victory conditions and bonus rewards. In the Coswell Volcano Expedition, your Victory condition is to “Defeat all enemies,” but additional rewards are available upon completing the mission and not having any allies fall. There’s no permadeath – you have some time to revive a fallen ally. Failing to do so makes them unavailable for the remainder of the mission but they’re not dead for the rest of the game like, say, XCOM.

Party members that aren’t used can be paired with active characters to use their special abilities. The demo seems to be two to three hours long with progress carrying over into the full release. It’s live for Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch with the PC version still to come.

The DioField Chronicle launches worldwide on September 22nd for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch. For more details on the story and the staff working on it, head here.

The DioField Chronicle will be a real-time strategy RPG. Described by the studio as a “simulation RPG”, the game revolves around the Blue Fox mercenaries trying to make a living in a world beset by war.

The core gameplay seems to have a bit of a focus on positional attacks, as gameplay snippets from various trailers have showcased characters doing extra damage from certain positions relative to their enemies, and even using unique abilities.

Details on The DioField Chronicle‘s collector’s edition were revealed in July. Available in standard and Digital Deluxe flavours, pre-ordering either edition will get players the Rhopasto Knife and Recruit’s Bangle. The Digital Deluxe edition includes the base game along with some in-game items, like the Knight’s Spear and Mystical Ring, along with a digital copy of the soundtrack and artbook.

The game will also feature a physical Collector’s Edition in limited quantities. Priced at $170, the Collector’s Edition features the standard edition, The DioField Chronicle Board Game, a Four Pins set, and the Collector’s Goods Box.

Just last month, The DioField Chronicle got another trailer announcing its release date. Set for launch on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch, The DioField Chronicle is out on September 22.

Alletain possesses Jade, an ingredient in magic and sorcery, which attracts both factions. Throughout all of this are the mercenary group, Blue Fox, though whether they’ll embody hope or “darkest tragedy” remains to be seen. The concept art by Isamu Kamikokuryo (Final Fantasy 12, Final Fantasy 13) with character designs by Taiki (Lord of Vermilion 3 and 4).

The soundtrack is composed by Ramin Djawadi and Brandon Campbell of Game of Thrones fame. Along with a Standard Edition, players can purchase the Digital Deluxe Edition which includes the base game and some in-game items like the Knight’s Spear and Mystical Ring. Digital versions of the soundtrack and artbook are also provided.

Regardless of which edition is pre-ordered, one will receive the Rhopasto Knife and Recruit’s Bangle (the former having an exclusive color). A physical Collector’s Edition can also be pre-ordered for $170 from the Square Enix Store. Available in limited quantities, it includes the Standard Edition, The DioField Chronicle Board Game, a Four Pins Set and the Collector’s Goods Box.

The DioField Chronicle is coming to Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch. A demo will release on August 10th and save data can be transferred from it to the full game. For more extensive gameplay, head here.

Described as a “simulation RPG”, The DioField Chronicle follows the Blue Fox mercenaries as they make their living in a world rife with war. The combat sees units moving and fighting in real-time, though abilities have cooldowns. Based on positioning, one can dish out extra damage with back attacks. The diorama-style scenes also make for an interesting clean aesthetic even in the heat of battle.

Those on the fence can try out a demo for the game on August 10th. For more extensive gameplay showcasing the combat, cutscenes and environments, head here. In addition to The DioField Chronicle, Square Enix’s Valkyrie Elysium is also out in September for PS4, PS5 and PC. Check out the release date trailer and other details here.