A long time ago, an evil demon king and his armies ransacked the land.  When the demon king was defeated, the armies disbanded but there are some demon stragglers here and there.  You play as a young man who just discovered his ancestry and is now a lord.  So you must lead your troops into battle to rid the world of demons for good.  Akatsuki: Lord of the Dawn is a unique combination of deckbuilding, simple action battles, and hexagonal board style strategy.  It’s available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

The game is separated into islands, and each island is divided into a hexagonal grid layout.  There is a town you’ll visit in each island and that’s where you’ll get your missions and side quests.  Use money to recruit fighters and magic users and add them to your party.  When you are ready, go out and start battling on the grid.  When you enter a battle, the game switches to a 2D perspective.  Move your guy on a horse and your troops will follow.  They automatically attack enemies, and you can put them in formations to have certain benefits.  Your first five people in your party will also have cards of them on the bottom of the screen.  A meter will fill on each one and when they are full, you can activate certain skills, like healing, magic, buffs, and more.  When you defeat a group of monsters, that spot on the grid will be yours and you can move on.  You can also build roads and fields on your spots so you can gradually get goods from those spaces over time, too.

I had some problems with this game, but most of those are just a personal preference thing.  They do a good job explaining some things to you, like battling.  But some other things in the menus and whatnot they don’t even talk about.  Also, the game is awfully fiddly in that you must manually level up each member of your party separately, and I wish they could’ve streamlined some of that.  But if you enjoy simple RPGs with a bit of strategy, action, and deckbuilding thrown in, you might want to try this one.

Kid Factor:

Akatsuki: Lord of the Dawn is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.  You hit pixelly monsters with weapons and magic spells and they just disappear when defeated and that’s it.  Reading skill is a must and due to the complexity of the game, this one is probably best for older kid gamers.

Tags: Game Reviews