El juego nos pone en la piel de unos críos que están sufriendo los estragos de la guerra y, por cosas del destino, acaban en una especie de tanque tochísima. La trama irá avanzando en pos de acabar con la guerra con algún que otro girito de guion pero que tampoco te explota demasiado la cabeza.

La gracia está en su jugabilidad, todo a una carta, con combates contra unidades que podrán ser relantizados según con qué arma se le golpee, habiendo un total de 3 y de las cuales cada uno de los 12 niños será especialista. La cosa va en ir juntando a los niños por parejas, usar el arma y/o habilidades que mejor vengan en ese momento e ir controlando los puntos de habilidad y los de salud para no tener problemas mientras vas siguiendo una ruta en la que de vez en cuando hay bifurcaciones. Es algo así, para ponernos en contexto, como el sistema de combate del Final Fantasy X, pero en vez de varios personajes "únicos" (aquí entraría también el tema del tablero pero sería ya una movida), lo que tienes son 3 tipos de armas y las habilidades de cada personaje que, según estos tres tipos, suelen ser prácticamente idénticas.

A parte de esto, tendremos creo que dos parones por capítulo en los cuales entra el juego un apartado algo escueto de social link, donde tenemos 20 puntos de acción a gastar según nos convenga, teniendo en cuenta también una lista de acciones que les gustaría hacer a los críos que hará que entren en modo turbo más pronto. Entre estas acciones tenemos desde descansar en camas hasta subir de nivel o ampliar algunas instalaciones del tanque.

En general es un juego entretenido y bastante asequible, pero al final es increíblemente repetitivo, puesto que su jugabilidad consiste en ir combatiendo contra las mismas máquinas (cada vez con más fuerza y vitalidad, pero la diversidad de enemigos es casi nula) usando estrategias muy lentas en las que cada dos por tres tienes que parar el combate para cambiar a los críos para finalmente pegarle al jefe de turno del capítulo. Y así durante 12 capítulos. Son unas 15-17 horas lo que te lleva y lo cierto es que hubiera prefiero que durase la mitad teniendo en cuenta que después de 2-4 horas, es todo el tiempo lo mismo pero elevando un pelín más la dificultad. Le daría un 7.

Fantastic idea but subpar execution. I love the idea of the gameplay. It has the turn bar of Final Fantasy X, with a focus on delaying your foe's turns. It has Fire Emblem party member affinity systems and heart events. It has party members gaining long term status ailments like in X-Com requiring you to cycle out members. So many great ideas, but the game is poorly balanced.

There's basically two story paths, one where everyone lives, and one where you sacrifice party members. If you sacrifice a party member you instantly win a battle, but your overall strength is lowered since cycling out members is so important. The issue is that the enemies are the same either way, there's no split path for the gameplay. So once you get past chapter 4, if you haven't sacrificed anyone then the game is just a cakewalk. The game is easy enough that if you did sacrifice someone you can still win with a reduced party, but if you're at full strength it's all easy, and the dilemma of choosing to sacrifice someone never comes up again. It was a fun concept and the first few chapters were great, but the ending was a slog because of how easy it was. Plus the story is really simple. Just furry kids in fantasy WWII, nothing special.

(For the record these were my immediate thoughts just after beating the game so maybe take some things with a grain of salt or not idk broh)
One of my favorite RPGs I've played recently.

The Delay System the game uses is a very enjoyable variant of turn based RPGs as being able to momentarily stop the enemies allows for fun strategizing. The weapons used are straightforward but I appreciate that despite the fact that multiple characters use the same weapon, their weapons and stats are different enough so that each party member is useful throughout the game. I'm also a fan of the fear and depression status effects, it helped make the tough battles even more tense and fun. Speaking of, having done a no death run the boss battles were very tough but fun, and I was a fan at how the game tries to tempt you into sacrificing your party members.

I won't get into huge spoilers, but I thought the story is pretty damn good, though it's definitely the characters that make it. I found all the characters in the game to be enjoyable and had a lot of fun seeing how they interacted in the link events. I also enjoyed how these links interacted with the battles between the Passive boosts and Link Attacks. While I had no deaths in my playthrough, I can imagine how shitty someone might feel if they ended up sacrificing one of their party members. Having played the other Little Tail Bronx titles and seeing the trailer for Fuga 2, I am very interested what will happen to the cast in Fuga 2.

On that note, as someone who played Tail Concerto and Solatorobo beforehand and has read some of the supplementary light novels, the nods to those two games and extensions to the lore and worldbuilding was very appreciated. I have nowhere else to put this nor am I able to say much without getting to huge spoilers, but Fuga having a French language option was an incredibly great attention to detail ( NOTE: If you decide to play this game do yourself a favor and play the game in French :D ). Even though this is the most recent release in the LTB series, it is the earliest game in the timeline. While I'd say you might be able to appreciate some parts of the game more if you played the previous titles, this is more than an acceptable title to start with in this series (but if you played the other games iykyk).

I don't have the a lot to say about this, but the soundtrack is really good too.

I could say more about this but to "quickly" conclude,
With its fun gameplay systems, enjoyable characters, and an interesting world and lore. Whether you've played the Little Tail Bronx series beforehand or not, this is a really great RPG that is worth your time (~22 hours), and (at the time of posting) with the sequel coming shortly in May, there's no better time to play Fuga (or get into the Little Tail Bronx series) than now.

The game has a lot of mechanics to keep track of but it reaches basically the exact balance I would want it to.
This game was recommended to me on a whim and I fell in love with it.
World's first RPG where I managed SP (MP) and actually enjoyed it.

Will be doing more playthroughs to 100% it.

Another stellar short rpg I will have trouble convincing people to play. Fuga is my 1st dive into the Little Tail Bronx games that isn't me looking at old silent let's plays of Tail Concerto and Solatorobo. Never found the 2 latter games anywhere in the wild and I was convinced they didn't exist. All this preamble to say that this is a very new experience for me. Now what I do know about and like are rpgs with time management. Fuga wants you to be balancing the needs and wants of 12 kids, which sounds daunting, but the children are unrealistically easily pleased and usually want something simple. The kids always want something you could feasibly do like making a meal you have all the ingredients for or upgrading a weapon with all of it's components ready. Really the AP requirements in the Intermissions feel more like a restriction on you so you don't get horribly overpowered early on. Most of the game is spent looking at the map and planning which route to use based on how well you're doing. The "war is hell" message is actually taught through the necessity to extinguish life by destroying as many and/or the biggest war machines throughout the map (jokes). These kids need a lot of xp to get cool new skills to deal with the baddest machines the Berman Empire throws at them. So the strategy outside of battle is to take what the game will call the "Dangerous Path" in every fork in the road. Yes you could take "normal" or "safe" but that's not advised unless you are really going to die if you fight a bigger encounter. One thing to note is that danger paths also usually give you consumables to replenish your HP and SP if it went REALLY poorly as well as better upgrade parts. Actual battles are pretty tough if you do the advised danger path spam, requiring a lot of resource stat management as well as figuring out what skills, enemies, and when you should use each. Sometimes it's worth having half your hp off if you need to conserve your sp and there's only an hp heal node coming up in the map. Now usually I hate timeline based rpg combat but I have absolutely no complaints with it in this game. It only makes sense that your machine guns are the fastest in the timeline and your cannons the slowest. All the kids control their own type of weapon with a buddy to passively support them and you can swap out any of your kids every timeline reset. It's really cool to just tag out all your party members at once to say set up your grenadiers to stat effect a boss before swapping to all cannons to get in obscene damage, then swapping back out to delay the boss on the timeline and start it all over again. Unfortunately there is a combo a little too good. The characters Chick and Socks synergize way too well by Chick reducing enemies' stat resistance and Socks following up stunning whatever you need. All grenadiers have lots of debuffs to give to enemies so you always end up having them in your party regardless, it makes cannons feel a little weak. I gotta say though that stunning the chapter 5 and 9 bosses into having ZERO turns did scratch the SMT part of my brain. With the story I feel a little weird with this game. The story is very light early on and told in a past tense 3rd party narrator way, which fine I guess it's more about the kids being friends right? I didn't get as much as I'd hoped as the affinity events are shorter than Fire Emblem's. The events are about as intense as kids passing through the hallway between periods at school. "Hey man can you please teach me how to talk to girls later? Move it tubby you're in my way you are so uncool fatso." And only at level 10 affinity do you really get anything. Honestly it feels more like the Taranis tank itself is the protagonist. We see it through it's long journey through Gasco and we want to see it and the kids by extension get stronger to liberate the whole country. Even when one child has a particular story arc it's in service to the Taranis because the Taranis is linked with the kids and all the kids are sad. The last 3rd of the story is very good with the finale having crazy biblical sized events happening throughout the country. I just want to say that I don't hate any of the children or find them all really boring or anything, it's just that the way they're telling the story isn't telling me what I would find interesting about them. I am anticipating playing the sequel to see what sort of improvements they make, and if I really like that I'll be hyped to the moon for the 3rd entry.

This game had some interesting ideas but ultimately failed to grab me after getting about 50% of the way through it.

I really enjoyed the premise of the game. The whole idea of a bunch of kids stuck in a machine they can't understand was very reminiscent of early Macross or Gundam. I liked that the battle system was simple yet had just enough tactical depth to it. Managing and upgrading the tank is cool too.

The big selling point of the game is the Soul Cannon and this is where I have some issues with the game. The problem is that I never felt the cost of the Soul Cannon was ever less than just starting over from the last checkpoint. Losing a crew member in this game is HUGE, and I never felt like it was better to do that than to just lose 30 mins to an hour of game progress to try a boss fight again or to redo a run through a chapter.

While I enjoyed the premise of the game, the plot never really grabbed me. I never felt really attached to any of my little Muppet dudes and found all their personalities really bare bones.

This is an interesting proof of concept but it's missing a few elements to really bring it together. I'm interested in the sequel to see how they improve things.

Losing the battle, better microwave the baby!

In all seriousness, this game was a pleasant surprise that popped into my Steam feed. Naturally, as a war story involving children, it can go to some dark places, but you can also minimize that through skilled play. The game also allows you to set your challenge to your ambitions, with dangerous routes that give more rewards or safer routes that make it easier to get through the level but give less long term benefit. There's a good balance of strategic gameplay, with all elements from buffs to status effects to healing support and raw damage having all their places in the game and being useful throughout. The difficulty curve is a little lopsided, with a fairly difficult early and end game and a breezy mid game. It's not the most involved or diverse RPG I've played, but I never felt bored or like the combat was played out at any point. About the only criticism I have past that is that 100% completion is very grindy, and will likely take multiple new game + runs to get everything. Give it a look if you can foot the price or if it's on sale!