Congratulations! You’ve been randomly chosen to become God. Because the newly appointed ruler over all creation, you will be whisked away to the heavens above to meet your holy duties–which might include battling mermaids and flirting with angels.
Such is the fate of Renya Kagurazaka, a daily, mild-mannered, dime-a-dozen, completely generic highschool student. That’s right: The Guided Fate Paradox presents a very nightmarish scenario where God is, actually, one in all us. It is a goofy premise, since a whole lot of this fate guiding involves helping a weak-willed zombie find his courage or a knightly couple fall in love.
Sadly, the sport chooses to not embrace this silliness, and instead gets slowed down in a workaday, good-versus-evil plot culminating in a workaday, good-versus-evil showdown. The undeniable fact that you’re playing as God is of no real consequence; it’s only a flimsy rationale supporting the game’s singular purpose: level grinding.
The Guided Fate Paradox is a turn-based role-playing game played on a grid. Combat and exploration usually are not separate modes, so every step your take, or attack you’re making, counts as a turn. When you act, your partner acts, after which your entire enemies act in unison. As you fight, you collect equipment for Renya–aka God–and friends to take advantage of, which confers new attacks, spells, or other special abilities. It is a play style corresponding to the roguelike genre, but with a Japanese RPG twist in character advancement and death.
Paradox’s woes start with leveling up, that is divided across many systems. By juggling these different systems, Paradox makes you’re feeling as though you’re getting stronger, however the complexity of this method also makes it obscure exactly how strong you’ve become.
Renya may hold the title of God, but in practice he mostly just runs around punching robots within the face.
This is mainly vexing when Renya is humming through a dungeon, dropping all challengers with a single blow, and some floors later wanders right into a foe which could do the identical thing to him. Finding a cheerful medium where your abilities are reminiscent of your foe’s is a rarity, that is disappointing since those moments are when Paradox is at its best. They force you to prevent and view the battlefield, and thoroughly calculate every action.
Surmounting this type of encounters is a triumph, but it’s short-lived. Renya inevitably outpaces his foes, after which it’s back to the mindless slaughter. Some different enemy types would help cut up the monotony, but Paradox has just a handful of various foes and none of them are especially interesting to fight. Many simply behave like zombies, wandering aimlessly until they spot you after which relentlessly attacking you until defeated. A handful of boss encounters offer complex challenges, but other than those endeavors, enemy encounters are simple affairs. One of the vital complicated enemies you encounter is a snail with a shield covering its face. The shield blocks all attacks from front, and the snail follows you around. Besting this devious adversary requires the whole trickery and guile of maneuvering someone behind the snail for a flanking attack.
A type of stage gimmicks, including explosive traps and moving platforms, try and put a spin on these encounters. However, the enemies and stage gimmicks don’t play off one another in interesting ways, unless by total accident. The only real constant in Paradox is the grinding: a circular system that rewards grinding being able to do more grinding.
Not even death can stop the grind. One of many cheapest items within the game allows you to escape from any dungeon with all equipment in tow, so there’s really no excuse for dying. You can even safeguard your best equipment in a unique vault that allows you to continue to make use of it without the phobia of losing it upon death. And if the worst should come to pass, you do not have an excessive amount of to fret about as long as you be sure you save your game before entering the dungeon.
You’re rarely with out a companion, but they lack any kind of tactical finesse.
After you end the sport–a feat that may easily set you back greater than 40 hours–something interesting happens. A survival dungeon is unlocked. This dungeon negates all your base stat advancement, and allows you to use only the items recovered in that dungeon. You could improve your characters and their items, just as you’ll within the remainder of the sport, but that progression is lost if you leave the dungeon. This goes far toward providing a consistent, satisfying challenge. Both Renya and his enemies start on the same level and advance along an analogous curve. Play smart, and you may make life easier for yourself by getting prior to that curve. Alternatively, in the event you rush during the dungeon the enemies will quickly outpace you.
With its intricate leveling system and randomized dungeons, The Guided Fate Paradox succeeds in making a game which could easily gobble up biblical amounts of time. It’s just too bad all that point spent finally ends up feeling like a waste when there is not any great payoff for all that tough work.