Ah, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, I have waited SO LONG for this game!
The original Vandal Hearts was the first Tactical RPG I ever laid my hands on, and boy did I love it! Of course, there have been more since then: Front Mission 3 (I miss this one too), Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, etc. I’m not sure which was developed first, but Vandal Hearts was my introduction to this genre. It has a place near and dear my heart (in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a lil hint to the origin of my name).
Here we have the third installment to the Vandal Hearts series, which comes to us as a prequel. I couldn’t wait to dive into it. The game started off the usual way with a quick tutorial (and I do mean QUICK) on how to do what, then straight into the blood spilling action.
If you’ve played the previous titles, the gameplay is very familiar, with a little bit of improvement to the graphics. My only gripe is that they skimped on the spells a bit, but they made that up with the number of customizations you can do to each character. Each stat increases individually so the characters adapt to your playing style. Everything is interchangeable, which makes it easy for each play-through to be different.
The main character is named Tobias, who is an orphaned boy being taught by the church. He and a new recruit are in a weapons class (tutorial) when the town is raided. From there you are thrown into the army and your party starts to amass from there. I’m not going into the story any more than that. If you’ve played the previous games, it gives you insight into the past.
Now the only complaints I had were the spells (as previously mentioned) and the rumors I heard about the game. I had read about multi-player capabilities and up to six endings, but they have been snuffed. I guess those sources weren’t so reliable.
Down to the pricing. This bad boy is downloadable for around $15. Honestly, I shouldn’t be complaining at all. You get a decent amount of game time through the story, two different endings, and it was just as much fun to re-play as it was the first play-through. And BOY did I replay that one!
All in all, VH:FoJ is a great game to pick up off of the marketplace.
Platforms: XBLA & PSN
AMMIH Rating: 4/5
Sicky’s Motion Sickness Rating (lower is better): 0/5
Trailer:
