The DioField Chronicle review - A fast-paced strategy RPG held back by a lackluster story

The DioField Chronicle, the latest RPG from Square Enix, offers a unique real-time combat system set in a fantasy universe. It meets many of the requirements to be a political fantasy story, and it reminds me a lot of its predecessors - Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, in particular.

It’s a story of political intrigue, and everything in this story is quite serious. There isn’t much humor, which isn't necessarily bad. The problem is when the story doesn’t live up to the expectations it sets for itself.

I didn’t feel drawn in by The DioField Chronicle or its characters. I might like the game visually and appreciate the challenge brought forth by its real-time strategy gameplay engine, but I just felt disappointed by everything around it.

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The DioField Chronicle is a new, interesting strategy RPG from Square Enix

Unfortunately, the successor to the monarch in this story was murdered, which sets off a Romance of the Three Kingdoms-style war of succession. All factions are looking to rule this land and will do anything to make that dream a reality.

That story should be one that immediately pulled me in, but it simply did not. The characters in this story felt like they were written without much emotional weight. Players control a group known as the Blue Foxes, a group of mercenaries who have joined one of the factions in this war.

The character designs are excellent, but their personalities feel a bit flat (Image via Square Enix)

The Blue Foxes fight for the faction in charge of the throne, and while I am normally a fan of gritty, war-is-hell stories, Andrias, as a protagonist, just doesn’t have any emotion about him. His conversations with others often feel dull and uninteresting.

Even if the story disappoints me, I enjoyed the style and design of the characters that join your party. You receive quite a few characters to join the party, each specializing in a particular play style.

The DioField Chronicle’s story is far from the worst I’ve ever seen. But it feels like it’s setting itself up to be a grand, political epic like Final Fantasy Tactics, but instead, it feels more like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

How does combat work in The DioField Chronicle?

Combat is probably my favorite part of this game. You enter a battlefield and get one last opportunity to equip and customize your party before setting forth. You have a few types of battles as well. You may have to defend someone or someplace, defeat all foes, or perform an escort mission for an important character in the story.

Each battle focuses on four characters, each of whom can have a support character to aid them. You can use the support unit's unlocked skills, though they share a cooldown with the skills the primary protagonist can use.

Selecting a character to move in The DioField Chronicle will also showcase all enemy aggro ranges. This is excellent, so you can set up your team in relative safely. Also, combat pauses when you select skills or movements, giving you time to think.

You can set up some incredible skill combos with this system as well. You can knock people into tripwires with cavalier skills or stun and poison foes. The stages don’t take long either; if you lose, you can repeat the mission.

Enemies can also use powerful skills. You’ll see a targeting reticle on the ground with a charge meter. The skill slowly gets red, and the effect triggers when it fills up. It’s imperative to get out of this, even if you bring a healer. It’s not uncommon for these huge AOE attacks to deal tons of damage, which may be hard to recover from.

While I enjoyed most of these missions, the escort missions were the worst ones. I had more than one experience where the escort just walked right into danger and died in one or two hits. It would have been nice if we could command them to slow down.

That’s okay, though. This means you have to think about the puzzle more and figure out where you should go and what you should do on these small maps. Battle in The DioField Chronicle is a puzzle to solve, and I appreciate that.

It's very satisfying to rain destruction down from the heavens (Image via Square Enix)

It’s also incredibly satisfying to power up and employ powerful summons - you start with the best one, in my opinion - Bahamut! You will probably feel like you need to grind in this game. You can repeat stages to earn rewards and XP again, which I certainly took advantage of.

Another battle facet that might surprise players is that boss enemies can have multiple health bars. If you see a circle or two above their health bar, they will refill that many times.

Customization is a big part of The DioField Chronicle

With plenty of protagonists to pick from and several weapon types, it’s not hard to find something to burn resources on. You unlock better weapons by increasing the rank of your faction and by spending Gold/Silver Ingots within your base. It can be a little frustrating, though, grinding to upgrade all of your weapons.

On top of that, you can unlock more skills to use, but they are tied to weapons. Each character also has traits that they can unlock using AP. Thankfully, each character has their own AP pool, which increases as they level up.

You can improve your characters, skills, and even summons in the game (Image via Square Enix)

While you cannot create characters, you can build your squad how you’d like them to be, though each character only has one type of weapon they wield. There will likely be times when you want to equip a weaker weapon because it has more powerful or useful skills.

This would be a feature I did like about The DioField Chronicle, even if it did require me to do some grinding. I handled this by figuring out which characters I wanted to use the most and simply focused on upgrading things that made them better.

Visually, The DioField Chronicle is satisfying but suffers

I loved the graphics of The DioField Chronicle, but the PC release had a particularly weird glitch. During the cutscenes, of which there are a lot, the characters' hair flickers with this weird black grainy filter. It happened during my entire playthrough experience. I still enjoyed the character design and the way the stages were laid out, but that glitch never seemed to go away.

Eventually, the stages will feel incredibly repetitive. At least the enemy packs varied enough, which helped. The soundtrack wasn’t bad either, but a small handful of songs played more than any other. Though the OST has plenty of tracks, it always seemed like 2 or 3 were always playing.

In Conclusion

I love the possibility that The DioField Chronicle represents, as there’s a lot of potential for a stellar strategy game series here. The combat was easily the best part of the game, though. The characters felt underdeveloped, and their dialog felt weak and uninspired, but the gameplay itself? It was a treat.

Some stages were pretty frustrating, but I always felt glad when I could overcome the challenge and figure out the puzzle. The controls are a little disappointing, though - why is there no pause button? Gameplay stops if you highlight a unit, but that’s the only way you can catch your breath in battle.

The DioField Chronicle definitely has potential. I loved the possibility of the story; at first, it really hooked me. The themes of gaining power, the divine right to rule, and the group of warring factions are something that appeals to me. I hoped this could be the modern Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it fell short for me.

Even the things I enjoyed about the game felt a bit redundant. It feels like the game is set up for a sequel, but if it does receive one, it will need to put some serious work in to make up for where the first game lacks.