Though this is only a week after Forspoken’s launch, president Yosuke Matsuda (who is stepping down in June) revealed that reviews “have been challenging.” “However, the game has also received positive feedback on its action features, including its parkour and combat capabilities, so it has yielded results that will lead to improvement of our development capabilities of other games in the future.

“That said, its sales have been lackluster, and while the performance of new titles with February and March release dates will be the ultimate determinant, we see considerable downside risk to our FY2023/3 earnings.”

Matsuda also spoke about a decline in net sales year-on-year in the HD Games sub-segment. While the “release of major titles a year earlier had created a challenging” hurdle, he revealed that “many of the new small and mid-sized titles we launched this year did not perform as well as we had expected.” Though not specified, some titles that fall into that category include The DioField Chronicle, Valkyrie Elysium, Harvestella, Star Ocean: The Divine Force, Dragon Quest Treasures, and more.

Octopath Traveler 2 and Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line were released last month, and it remains to be seen if they can balance out the underwhelming year-on-year performance.

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.

Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection (on PC)

When the remastered duo launched for PS5 in January, it debuted in fifth place on Gfk’s UK physical sales charts. Pretty good, even if it didn’t hit the top 20 for The NPD Group’s best-selling games for the month. Its PC version is a completely different story, though, hitting a peak concurrent player count of only 10,851 on Steam when it was released in October. Either because there wasn’t much hype around it, or other big titles took all the attention, the collection just didn’t resonate.

CrossfireX

With a whopping 38 out of 100 Metascore and lacklustre marketing, it was somewhat expected that CrossfireX wouldn’t do great. Lo and behold, it didn’t chart anywhere in The NPD Group’s February 2022 sales rankings, nor did it warrant a mention in Gfk’s physical charts for the UK. However, given how popular Crossfire’s multiplayer is in China and South Korea (with over $1 billion in revenue each year since 2014), this won’t hurt Smilegate’s bottom line one bit.

Monark

You could call Monark another victim of Elden Ring’s overwhelming presence, especially in Europe, where it launched on the same day as the Souls-like. That’s probably why it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in Gfk’s physical sales charts for the week. It also had only 177 peak concurrent players on Steam in the West. Then again, when released last year in Japan, it barely hit 16,000 units sold on PS4 and Nintendo Switch. Couple that with poor critical reception, and its failure is understandable.

Ghostwire: Tokyo

Tango Gameworks’ Ghostwire Tokyo was one of the premiere PS5 console exclusives this year and sadly didn’t perform up to par. It debuted in 12th place for The NPD Group’s March 2022 charts, and in 11thth place for Gfk’s UK physical game charts. Not only that, but it sold 80 percent less than The Evil Within 2 in the UK, which was considered to have performed poorly at launch. Though it managed sixth place in its debut in Japan, it only sold 10,144 units in its first week. Even the Steam numbers were nothing to write home about, with a peak concurrent total of 14,086 players in its lifetime.

Shadow Warrior 3

Shadow Warrior 3 was intriguing in how it not only went with a super-linear approach to its levels but also stuck to previous-gen consoles and PC. Blame it on the lack of marketing buzz, the shadows of Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West, or something else, but when released on March 1st, 2022, it was nowhere to be seen in Gfk’s UK physical sales charts or GSD’s digital sales charts. Even the peak concurrent player count on Steam was a mere 1,651 players.

GRID Legends

Another game which likely suffered due to releasing too close to Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West is Codemasters’ GRID Legends. It debuted in 18th place in Gfk’s UK physical sales charts and was pretty much never heard from again after that. Yes, not even in The NPD Group’s best-selling titles for February and March 2022. SteamDB reveals a peak concurrent player count of just 455, which is just a few days after it launched.

Roller Champions

Roller Champions’ success is a bit harder to measure since, well, it’s a free-to-play title. That being said, its digital revenue hasn’t warranted any mention this year. It launched to very little reaction on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, and the Switch release did nothing to help this either. Lest anyone thinks the recent Steam release would aid in a resurgence, it has had a peak concurrent player total of 141. Such was the response that reports quickly circulated of the game being sunset, which Ubisoft denied.

Marvel’s Midnight Suns

One of the big three releases of December, Marvel’s Midnight Suns has a lot going for it with the XCOM team involved, strong critical acclaim, and some well-known Marvel heroes. It even had 15,500 peak concurrent players on Steam. Sales-wise, the story is less positive, as it debuted in a mortifying 26th place in the UK physical sales charts. Granted, Firaxis is known more for its PC player base (as seen with the Steam user count), and the digital sales could help, but the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 numbers can’t be entirely discounted. Maybe it was just the victim of too many big releases on the same day, as evidenced by The Callisto Protocol performing way better.

Need for Speed Unbound

Due to its release timing, we won’t know how Need for Speed Unbound performed in the US until next month. As for the UK, its launch week physical sales were down a staggering 64 percent compared to Need for Speed Heat, earning it only 17th place. This may seem expected, but it’s the tenth-biggest IP in the region’s history. Things hardly improved the next week when it slipped to 19th place following a 19 percent sales drop. Steam player numbers aren’t so great either, with a peak concurrent total of only 14,063.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force

Compared to Valkyrie Elysium, Star Ocean: The Divine Force performed decently when it launched in Japan, with over 44,000 units sold on PS4 and PS5. The problem? It’s the weakest game launch in the series. The first Star Ocean in June 1996 sold over 81,000 copies on the Super Famicom, for crying out loud. The Divine Force failed to crack Gfk’s top 10 in the UK and debuted in 14th place for the US, according to The NPD Group, before quietly fading away.

Gungrave G.O.R.E.

Gungrave G.O.R.E. launched a few weeks after Sonic Frontiers and God of War Ragnarok, and days after Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Shock of shocks, it neither charted in the UK nor the US. On Steam, it has a peak concurrent player total of 138, which says it all.

Harvestella

This one hurts, simply because I loved Livewire’s Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights. Sadly, Harvestella matched up in neither sales nor critical acclaim. It debuted in second place in Famitsu’s Japan sales charts with 26,644 units sold on Nintendo Switch, but only reached 38,704 sales before dropping out entirely. On PC, it had a measly 3,395 peak concurrent players via Steam.

The DioField Chronicle

Square Enix may have some heavy hitters coming in 2023, but this year has been rather disastrous for the publisher. It released a flurry of underwhelming titles and commercial flops, like The DioField Chronicle. The strategy RPG launched at 17th place in Gfk’s UK physical sales charts and sold about 12,068 units in its first week in Japan across Nintendo Switch, PS4, and PS5. SteamDB notes 1,272 peak concurrent players over its lifetime, which is pretty sad.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure (PC)

Considering how valuable the PC market has been for Sony with Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War (2018), and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, it was expected that Sackboy would follow up on that success. Alas, it wasn’t to be. It recorded a meagre 610 peak concurrent players since launch, far less than even Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection. Sony hasn’t revealed sales numbers, and maybe it’s unfair to expect much out of a lesser-known IP on PC. Nevertheless, it’s still disappointing.

New Tales from the Borderlands

Released on October 21st, 2022, you’d expect a new Borderlands title, much less the follow-up to Tales from the Borderlands, to get a decent response. But either due to the lack of marketing, Telltale not returning, the premise or a flurry of other releases, New Tales from the Borderlands came and went with very little response. It wasn’t mentioned by Gfk in its UK physical charts for the end of October and throughout November. Even worse, it didn’t even chart in The NPD Group’s US sales charts for October and November.

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.

It’s due to the physical edition releasing on PS5. Even though it’s included free in PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium, the adventure title still ranked high. In second place is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which saw sales drop by five percent compared to last week. Square Enix’s The DioField Chronicle debuted in 17th place.

Other noteworthy changes were Grand Theft Auto 5 rising from ninth to fifth place thanks to sales increasing by 21 percent. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga also went from 18th to tenth place, with sales up by 43 percent thanks to a retailer promotion. Check out the full chart below.

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.