Future Tactics: The Uprising - Worth Its Price. Almost Exactly
Future Tactics: The Uprising is officially a strategy role playing game, but hard-core strategy fans who cut their teeth on games like Disgaea might find that misleading. It's not as complex as a lot of other SRPGs, which could make it a nice introduction to that genre, but you could argue that the complexity is what makes the genre appealing. Take away some of the combat depth, and there's not a lot left.
Certainly Future Tactics is like an SRPG when it comes to characters and plot. The story is never going to carry you along. For what it's worth, Earth has been invaded by aliens called the Creatures. Seeing as the Creatures can mysteriously regenerate, the resistance isn't going too well. A young man called Low discovers their secret, the Immortality Engine (stop me if you see an original naming concept, please), and he and his friends set out to stop the evil and claim back the Earth.
What this means in practical terms is performing a number of missions. Like most games, while the mission descriptions vary, they all come down to one of very few essentials: kill everything, get to point X, reach the exit, etc. The missions put you on a battlefield, and this is where the meat of the game is.
Combat is turn-based: your team has all its turns, then the enemy has all of its turns. For each character you control, the turn will basically go; pop up, run round, hit stuff, duck down, rest, and hope no stuff hits you. You get a nice green circle that shows you your range of motion. When you stop moving, you'll get a blue circle showing you how far you can move after your action, which is important for the aforementioned ducking.
"Action" normally means using either your blaster or bazooka-type weapon - you get more options as the game progresses. And this is where Future Tactics makes its point of difference: targeting. You target your blaster by using an unbelievably shaky reticule which you have to get in the right place twice: once to make your initial lock on your enemy, and then again by lining up the intersection point of floating cross-hairs as close to that lock point as possible. The closer you are, the more damage you'll do. It's an absolute pain to use, and as close-enough does a fair amount of damage anyway, you might find you give up on even trying to aim properly. Ballistic weapons do wider area of effect damage and target using a sonar-style 'sweep'.
Where FT gets real style points is the damage your weapons do to your surroundings. Even the most underpowered blaster is going to tear huge chunks out of the scenery, and that's something everyone gets a real kick out of. It's strategic too, not just for fun: you can blast yourself holes to hide in after your turn, or try to hit opponents with the few indestructible objects, like boulders. And occasionally you'll find items buried in the level, upgrades that make your weapons more powerful or allow you to fire twice, for instance.
At the end of your turn, you have three options: heal, shield or rest. This is the most tactical decision you'll have to make. If you're hit while healing, you take greater damage. Shielding means you take less damage, but decreases your movement in your next turn.
Unfortunately, sometimes the level design all but negates any tactical decisions you might want to make. For instance, the battlefield might be so narrow that you can't manoeuvre and your only choice is to try to tough it out to the end.
Graphics are simple but nice, colors bright and bold, almost cartoon-style. Monsters are well-done, but the characters themselves tend to be a bit wooden and inexpressive, and there's an odd blurry quality to some of the background textures. Fortunately, the destruction effects when you blow up hills, buildings, etc, are really nicely done and gratifying, with the exception of the odd clipping problem. Voicework is good, and unusually done with refreshingly English accents.
The game comes with 'boot camp' and multi-player 'battle' modes as well. Even so, it doesn't seem to have a great deal of replay value. There just isn't enough depth to it. All these games become repetitive to some extent, but Future Tactics camouflages it less well than others.
Overall Rating: 6.9
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