Children of Zodiarcs Review – Orphans gone wild

You follow the story of a group of orphans, who, under the guidance of Zirchhoff (a meatier version of Fagin from Oliver Twist) go out to steal relics from the rich and powerful.  Unlike Oliver and the Artful Dodger, these youngsters mean business and have no hesitation to kill, and wish nothing more than to bring down the powerhouses, even if it means total anarchy.

The game is set in the world of Lumus sometime after a more golden age, where mysterious devices called Zodiarcs were present to manifest human will into physical reality.  Now the world is divided between the rich and poor, and lunatic cults who worship near the forgotten magic.

This is a very dialogue driven game, but you can choose to skip a cut-scene via the pause menu if you choose.  There is also no voice dialogue, and you need to read each panel if you care to follow the story in detail.  I guess I am not a fan of children throwing around insults, as I just felt disconnected from the characters – even though some of the dialogue was hilarious.  The developers attempted to add moments of realism to the game with many of your victims spouting last words of regret and despair.  I don’t think it really worked and made me a little sorry for killing that entire gang for no apparent reason.

The one huge credit I will give the developers is the level of female representation in this game.  The main two characters were female and it was never given another thought – instead the emphasis was on their class, that they were thieves (I think murder is a bigger crime but anyway), and their possession of Zodiarc technology.

But all I really cared about these characters was what they could do ability-wise as the gameplay was the winner in this game for me.

The design of Children of Zodiarcs is similar to many turn-based RPGs, such as those in the Fire Emblem series, with a simple world map to navigate and battlefields divided into a grid.  Similar basic tactics are present which include staying out of range of your enemy and coordinating attack positions to inflict the most damage.

What makes this game unique is that each character you control has a pre-determined deck of cards containing attacks, spells and various stat changing effects to benefit yourself or weaken opponents.

As you progress in the game, you can customise this deck yourself, and your characters gain new cards as they level up.  After choosing a card, you need to roll a bunch of dice that change the effectiveness of that card (e.g. more damage), and can add nice bonuses such as extra HP, extra cards or another action with that character.

Your character-specific dice can also be customised.

While the dice rolling takes a bit of practice initially to get used to, the dice throws add more variety to the gameplay, and the random nature of drawing cards makes the game more strategic.  If you do not like a given dice roll, you can choose to re-roll some or all your dice, but be warned – your dice can inadvertently hit and roll existing dice on the screen, and some spells can create curses on your dice.

The battlefields are 3D rotatable landscapes, of mainly urban dwellings.  Being thieves, your characters can scale buildings with no problems, and so can your enemies.  You will use the rotating feature a lot, and choose your targets before selecting a card, as the rotating function becomes fairly limited.  Not only are the battlefields visually impressive, they are also functional.  Having the high ground is a definite advantage in this game, as it being able to use the surroundings for cover or to prevent a dreaded back stab.

The music is your typical epic RPG score, and I didn’t notice it after a few hours of play.  The sound effects by the characters attacking I did continue to notice, and were a bit on the annoying side.

Do not let this detract you, Children of Zodiacs is an enjoyable experience, though the more I play it, the more I wish it were just a battling game, maybe even an online multiplayer, rather than a linear RPG.