One day, a high school student gets lost walking home one evening and is ambushed by a horde of flying devils.  They almost kill him, but some angelic beings come down and bring him back to life and take him back to their heavenly fortress called Celestia.  Here, they imbue him with a powerful crystal that makes him a god, and now he must lead an army of angels against a war with devils in this anime-inspired dungeon crawling RPG.  It’s actually a sequel of sorts to last year’s The Guided Fate Paradox, but you don’t really need to play the first one to know what’s going on in the sequel, as the stories seem completely unrelated from what I can tell.

Like the first game, the meat of this title is typical of most other dungeon crawling RPGs.  The only difference is that in the first game, you viewed the action in a diagonal isometric perspective.  But in the sequel, it’s more of a traditional top-down view.  Wander around mazes, trying to find the next floor. Scour the levels for useful items, but watch out for enemies. Bad guys will move when you do, and when you must fight, you’ll take turns trading blows.. But be careful. Each action requires energy, so make sure you carry enough items to keep yourself healthy and in the game.. In between dungeons you can buy items and equipment, power up your weapons, and place icons on a grid to increase your stats and learn skills.

In this game, you can transform into an angel or devil as you fight, which allows you to overpower light and dark enemies and use special skills.  The choices you make in the game and who you choose to talk to also affect your light and dark sides, and can sometimes give you items to power up the light and dark areas on the grid that you use to beef up your character.  Making these ‘light and dark’ decisions seems to be a major factor in the gameplay.

One of the main problems I had with this game is that there is WAY too much dialogue. In between each event, you’ll have to sit through at least ten minutes of story.  Plus, the dungeons get pretty difficult later on.  But if you enjoy dungeon crawl RPGs like the Mystery Dungeon series, and don’t mind anime stereotypes with way too much story, then you might like this one anyway.

Kid Factor:

The Awakened Fate Ultimatum is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence, Language, Mild Blood, and Mild Suggestive Themes.  Violence is really only minimal. Enemies just disappear when defeated.  In some of the still cut scenes, characters who are wounded may have blood stains or clutch bloody wounds.  Also, language and suggestive themes run rampant in this game, so if you let your teen play it, I would recommend that they need to be older and mature enough. Plus, families with strong religious beliefs may not like some of the themes in the storyline, since you are a god and all. I’m a Christian, and even though I’m fairly easy going about this kind of stuff, even I thought some of the parts in the game were a bit off-putting. Plus, the complexity and difficulty of the game make it best for older players anyway.

Tags: Game Reviews