It's an excellent game, but not without its fair share of caveats. It's a prime example of everything japanese narrative gets right and wrong at the same time. I like at how they used rather heavy themes without being an outright tear-jerker and with an positive message overall. It also completely lacks subtlety in anything it does. Characters are sometimes trope-y to the extreme. Certain twists are very predictable. Sometimes it feels like the stakes aren't as high as it should be.

Gameplay-wise it also does the best and worst of the genre. Its tactical options are great in offering more than just raw DPS to roflstomp everything on your path. But the combat also overstays its welcome at times. Technically it has no "flaws" in the combat, but it still gets tiring.

And more importantly: WHY THE FUCK IS THERE AN SWIMSUIT DLC FOR THIS GAME? For crying out loud man...

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.

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.

The Little Tail Bronx games continue to be, to me, a symbol of what I have come to appreciate and love about video games over the years. From its humble origins as a quirky PS1 platformer, to the ambitious, gorgeous, and incredibly fleshed out successor on the DS, this series has spanned two decades of very little success, but undeniable passion. CyberConnect2’s team very clearly has a love for this series, and despite losing a lot of money due to the series’ lack of being known to the world, they are still at it, expanding this world, and with the release of this game, a trilogy despite a lack of success. There is a lot I can say about this series as a whole, but I want to start by saying, I believe FUGA: Melodies of Steel is once again another triumph of a game from this team. A new direction for this series that has changed complete genres, tone, and feel from their past platforming entries, into a strategy RPG, life sim, visual novel based adventure. It is such a bizarre little game that has just about everything that the series is known for baked into its DNA despite the extreme shift. I love it wholly with all my heart.

These games are niche simple little adventures that don’t often feature the most enriching gameplay experience, at least for most people. But they make up for it with their insane visual detail, beautiful world, and intriguing lore and characters that make the games such a treat. Personally, I actually really enjoy the gameplay loop of Tail Concerto and especially Solatorobo; even I have to admit they aren’t the most in-depth games. They’re like the comfort food of games to me, something where the simplicity is able to make way for depth or become it.

With FUGA, a lot of those similar arguments come up, and I think I personally heavily disagree with the criticism lauded towards its gameplay loop. This is a very different take on strategy RPGs where you technically have a full party of 12, but they all share the same HP and Mana system. And it is also very difficult, decently long, and honestly exhausting. A full chapter can take a good two hours, and if you are not careful, you can instantly find yourself in a terrible situation. I can definitely understand it seeming unappealing, but personally, I really found myself adoring the loop of the game. Much like the war these children are facing, battles feel like they take real doing in order to succeed, you need to be paying attention at all times or else everything will be for naught. Resources are scarce, you don’t even get money in this game, so deciding to take a more dangerous route is a genuinely risky move that can certainly pay off, or shave an hour away from your game time in total shame. And the exhaustive feel really plays well with the tone, this is still definitely a kid’s game, but even in concept, having to deal with twelve children dealing with the effects of essentially World War II is just grim, and you can feel that wear in the gameplay. I love it dearly, it can definitely veer into the more egregious habits of the series at times, but I think they absolutely nailed what they were going for here.

However where this game truly shines is that aforementioned passion that you can just feel here. The characters you get here are incredibly simple, but the charm that makes a game like Solatorobo shine is still present and wonderful. I love all these designs, and with such a wide range too, and considering the situation they’re in, there is a real threat that they can just die if you feel yourself desperate enough to sacrifice one of them. The music is once again amazing, with tracks like the main boss theme really standing out as a truly wonderful and haunting piece that plays as you are likely dealing with the stress of incredibly powerful attacks. Gasco feels as fleshed out as any of the islands you visit in previous games, and most importantly, the art of this game is absolutely unreal. So many gorgeous pastels, and water colours make every character pop. And there is just so much wonderful art, even getting all of their ending chapter cards from a bunch of Pixiv artists was just such a treat. The aesthetic is just wonderful, you can really tell they had a ton of fun with it.

I think it can be very easy to be critical with games like Fuga because by no means is it a masterpiece. I can definitely make a lot of critiques about the game being shallow or frustrating, and I definitely do have some nitpicks I would like to see addressed in the second entry. But honestly, I’ve come to realize with games I want something that interests me and is willing to show me something in earnest. Even in spite of its darker premise, Fuga is still the same comfort food that made me love Waffle and Red’s previous adventures. It is a game that welcomes you with open arms and wants to show you all the cool ideas, and art, and worldbuilding that it has come up with, and there is just such a wonderful joy to it all. With this game being a financial failure, the fact the team essentially looked at it, and essentially went ahead and announced the sequel a year after its release is a sheer sign of love. And it's a love I too share for this wonderful series. I urge you all to give it, and the other Little Tail games a shot. I can only hope you would get as much from them, as I did.

On one hand, I think the people who refuse to play Disco Elysium because it's "too mean" or because Cuno is so vulgar are depressingly childish.

On the other hand, after the fourth fat joke about the fat character, who is fat, I lost all desire to help anyone in this game and shut it off.

Everyone's a hypocrite somewhere!

A decent foundation that's led down by several aspects.

1) The game is too long and too many of the encounters are samey and start to repeat themselves. Repetition can be somewhat mitigated by making the leveling process rewarding and fun, but I don't think that was the case here.

2) The presentation is really boring. The way you're constantly driving from left to right, looking at nothing but your vehicle the whole time makes the game feel even more monotonous.

3) The micro management feels tedious. The way menus work makes it more annoying than it should be to switch out your party members and their partners. Same goes for the Tanaris sections, where the way from A to B can feel a bit more tedious than it should be. Feel like you shouldn't walk around the Tanaris but rather make it a menu.

4) The combat, while pretty challenging at times and dependent on ressource management, is a little let down by it's story bosses. Never are those the actual challenging part of the game. Which leads to the next problem:

5) The soul cannon. The big interesting game mechanic that pretty much got me interested in the game or at least more curious about it. The harrowing decision of sacrificing a character for good to get out of a sticky situation is a really cool idea, but doesn't work, because there's never a reason to use it and you even get a bad ending by doing it. The whole mechanic is useless and not encouraged to use at all. Honestly, the game would work better as a shorter roguelike, where a sticky situation is more likely to occur and can't be save scammed or if the game forces them on you anyway and the decision who to sacrifice is what it's all about.

And finally:
6) The story. I can't even really say much about it. It was bland and the characters felt like stereotypes. Obviously nobody can have a huge stake in the main story because since they can be sacrificed, nobody is allowed to be really relevant. So the party feels like one big hivemind aside from one example.

So, even though this was super negative, I don't hate the game. I like myself a turn-based game that forces me to manage my ressources and time (AP) to take priority in one thing over the other. The decision making is what made the game for me. It's the Persona style of RPG, where everything you can do has an advantage, but you could always spend your time in another (better?) way. Deciding if I want to cook for great buffs and EXP boosts, working on relationships, go for more materials or plant more vegetables can be tough! And the biggest success of the game for me.

I'm probably going to give the sequel a shot to see if they made it a bit more interesting. Some of the critique I had are things I could look past in the sequel (like a mediocre story and the presentation, whatever) but I hope the game gets more challenging, encourages the use of the cannon maybe and works on the QoL stuff.

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.

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!

Meine Güte was ein Spiel.
Ich bin wirklich froh über Fuga gestolpert zu sein.

In der Regel mag ich keine "Vertierlichung" von Menschen, weil es die emotionale Bindung verhindert und keine nennenswerte Vorteile hat.

Hier finde ich den Artstil aber so gelungen, dass es mich nicht gestört hat.

Um das Spiel vorweg zusammen zufassen:
Für mich war es ein Valkyrie Chronicles light.

Es hat ein neues Kampfsystem, das nicht so komplex wie bei VC ist, aber auch nicht so selbstlaufend wie in einem Standard JRPG.

Die Story ist nichts besonderes und auch die Spielwelt wird nur angeschnitten. Eine wirkliches Worldbuilding entsteht nicht. Der Großteil der minimalistischen Story dreht sich um ein kleines Land, das von einer Militärmacht angegriffen wird.

Doch gleich zu Beginn ziehen einen die Stimmung, der Soundtrack und das Gameplay rein.

Es ist nie zu leicht, aber auch nie unlösbar schwer. Man hat während eines Kapitels mehrfach die Möglichkeit schwere Gegner zu machen und damit mehr Erfahrung und Gegenstände zu erhalten, als bei leichten Gegnern und kann hier spontan die leichtere Route nehmen, wenn ein Kampf mal nicht so gut gelaufen ist. DAS ist die beste Lösung für Schwierigkeitsgrade!
Schwerer = belohnender.
So fühlt man sich nie verarscht, wenn man im Vorfeld schwer auswählt, weil man es ja auch hätte einfacher haben können oder unterfordert, weil man sich eben nicht mehr unnötige Arbeit aufhalsen wollte.

In jedem Kapitel gibt es 2-3 Punkte an denen man eine Art "Daily Life" hat.
Man kann 20 AP im Panzer verwenden um mit Leuten zu sprechen um die Bindung zu erhöhen, etwas zu Kochen, was bis zum nächsten Rastpunkt verschiedene Werte erhöht oder seinen Panzer ausbauen.

Am meisten überrascht hat mich der Soundtrack.
Keine der oben beschriebenen Punkte wirkt je langweilig, weil die musikalische Untermalung immer passend und charmant ist.
Gerade die Endbossmusik ist perfekt.

Alles in allem sicher kein Muss wie VC, aber dennoch ein schönes kleines Spiel für Zwischendurch.

(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.

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.