Soul Nomad

 
Soul Nomad is a SRPG I was reluctant to try before because I thought it looked complicated and difficult. I finally got to play the game mostly because I don't have any other games in English that I wanted to play on the PS2. Interesting playable characters are big factors in driving me to continue or complete a game; for Soul Nomad, most playable characters are not really that interesting, but I quite like the characters which are only playable after the first playthrough; therefore, for me, the real fun in Soul Nomad starts only after the first playthrough. After finishing the first cycle (after having seen any of the games ending), the "demon path" will be available.



This "demon path" is very interesting because the previous opponents the player faced in the "normal path" will join your party while your party in the "normal path" will be your opponents. For someone like me who likes to have the baddies join my party, I find the "demon path" to be so much fun. There are lots of screwed up mentality (in an uncool way) among recruited members in the "demon path", but that is fine, since the ones that I really wanted to use are only Dio, Gestahl, and Cuthbert anyway.

I like Dio best in this game (as a character and not really because of abilities), and it's a bit funny that he's not really evil in the "demon path". I'm only disappointed in Dio with his thunder-something field spell because the generic playable version of him (dracomage or something) has a multiple panel attack version of the thunder spell while Dio's only hits one panel. On the other hand, I'm quite surprised but pleased to see Dio's INT reach 9999 as early as lvl2000+ without the help of any INT enhancing room decors. Gestahl, I think is better than Median (Median is possibly the one with the most difficult stage & the strongest opponent in the whole game) simply because Gestahl has the very convinient Demon Force field tactic. Cuthbert is really just like the generic cleric with enhanced stats, he is much like Vitali, but I like Cuthbert and his fondness of laughing. There are crossover playable characters from Phantom Brave (Endorph/Walnut) and Grim Grimoire (Lujei). I don't like Endorph, but I love Lujei!

The most unique aspect in the game is the room and decor customization. The player can arrange one's squads in "rooms" with the unit leader of the room primarily deciding a squad's field tactics and overall stats of the squad (the other units in the room contribute stats increase to the leader). There are different available rooms that are generally unlocked by doing story map battles, and the rooms each have their own inherent abilities like increasing ATK for every panel moved. Room abilities can be added with "room decors", but the room decors can only be used once in story map battles (they can be used indefinitely in "inspection" battles).

The battle system employs the rock-paper-scissors style where the melee units are strong against ranged units, ranged units strong against mage units, and mage units strong against melee units. Anyway, about the game looking difficult and complicated, it is actually far from the truth. After getting the hang of the game (about the time one gets to the second or third map), I find that Soul Nomad is probably the easiest Nippon Ichi SRPG (that is, compared to the only other NIS SRPGs I've played: Disgaea 1 and 2), leveling up is easy thanks to some room decors and the convenience of Demon Force; the game even gets easier after having played the game in many cycles and obtaining the Cat's Paw room. Nevertheless, Soul Nomad is pretty fun game because of the customization of rooms, and the variety of possible playable characters.