Resonance of Fate Review: How Stellar Ideas Can't Make Up for Lost Potential
Put yourself in this perspective: you play through a game for dozens of hours. There are some aspects of the game that frustrate you, sure - maybe there’s narrative elements that don’t sit well with you, or gameplay pacing that begins to ware out by the end of the title's duration - but you still manage to enjoy the overall experience that game provides. When you watch the credits roll and begin reflecting on the experience you just went through, you ask yourself something: was this something that lived up to its potential?
We all ask this when engaging with any art, whether consciously or not. As a consumer, I want to enjoy something as much as possible. I think very few people want to spend their time and money on an experience that’s subpar. When we see a movie or play a video game that we’re going to invest a part of our lives into, so too are we going to have expectations and hopes for what that experience will provide to us. The idea of potential comes from those very expectations and hopes. The intrigue that a plot provides in its inciting incident, a hook that communicates to the audience what’ll be unique to this experience, the general first impressions that an experience leaves - all of these and more are what paint the picture of potential in our mind.
In a year where I’ve been playing catch-up on a lot of titles that have been clogging up the neverending pit that is a gamer’s backlog, I wound up playing through Resonance of Fate, acclaimed developer Tri-Ace’s PS3/XB360 JRPG (rereleased in 2018 for PS4 and PC) that is fearlessly unique in its combat and style compared to the studio’s other titles. Taking a break from their typical Star Ocean fare, Tri-Ace approached Resonance of Fate (known in other regions by the objectively cooler-sounding name of End of Eternity) with the idea of making an RPG that was unlike any other.
Naturally, the very idea of a JRPG that is designed to be unlike any other game of its genre on the market is one that intrigues a lot of JRPG faithful, myself included. Upon walking into the title, I came in with my only expectation being that it would a turn-based battle system that integrated gunplay and real-time movement and strategy. Outside of that, I was blind as to what Resonance of Fate would be like. What I ended up getting was a game that, in itself, is a lesson of how a game can fail to live up to what it could have been. Resonance brings so many interesting and fun ideas to the table, yet flounders with a rushed, unfocused story and frustrating enemy and level design that ultimately sours an experience that could have been generation-defining. Despite being laden with ostensibly unique ideas, Resonance is a reminder that poor execution is what can keep something from meeting its potential. More than that, this game is a lesson for how great concepts need to be confidently implemented to stick with audiences - something the Resonance fails to do. Let’s dive into how Resonance of Fate fails to meet its potential in the face of clearly having a lot of thought put into it.
One of Resonance of Fate’s most unique ideas is the very implementation of its overworld map, which plays as much like a jigsaw puzzle as much as it plays like navigating from one area to another.
In the decade leading to Resonance of Fate’s original release, one can see a growth in desire to experiment with the typical setting of a JRPG. The high fantasy backdrops seen in the Dragon Quest, Tales of and earlier Final Fantasy titles of the ‘90’s and early 2000’s slowly became less prolific in the genre, as titles like Persona, Star Ocean, and even Kingdom Hearts proved. Suffice to say, there was an increasing demand to see different kinds of worlds for players to explore in these kinds of titles.
Setting is something that Resonance of Fate particularly excels in, as no other JRPG before or after it has a similar world. Sometime in the distant future when the world has been severely polluted, an artificial world called Basel has been built on Earth while it cleanses the planet. The world of Basel itself is unapologetically steampunk in aesthetic and stylish in execution. Main characters Vashyron, Zephyr, and Leanne sport contemporary, albeit aggressively anime clothing styles that help illustrate the personality of the population of Basel. Moreover, the sheer look of the world is one that has distinct personality to it. From the starting town of Ebel, players can see moving gears in the distance, with sunlight peaking through its rotations. Basel sells itself as a world that doubles as a contraption meant for purifying a larger world through establishing the artificial nature of the world without ever directly pushing it in the player’s face.
Of course, the mechanical nature of the world of Basel becomes all the more apparent when navigating its map. Whenever not in a town or dungeon, Resonance of Fate features a world map to explore, a concept that genre veterans should easily find themselves comfortable with. However, navigation of this world map is in itself an illustration of the world’s mechanical nature, as simply moving to different parts of the map requires the use of different panels and putting them together like jigsaw pieces to create pathways that lead to new towns or dungeons to explore. This turns accessing as much of the world map as possible into a minigame. Using panels as a means of filling in as many spaces is some of the most rewarding means of progression in an overworld that I’ve seen in a long time, as rewards (such as weapon parts, accessories, healing items, and even more panels) are consistently given to players that make an effort to fill spaces and make the overall map as navigable as possible.
While the countless cogs and gears that populate the environments of Resonance’s towns and dungeons are aesthetically intriguing, navigating and exploring these environments isn’t as enticing as it is in the overworld. The drab color palette certainly doesn’t help either.
Of course, this mechanical nature of the world, when inside the game’s numerous towns and explorable dungeons convey the world’s perfunctory presence through its aesthetic, masking an otherwise unremarkable degree of exploration and player freedom. The game’s towns are presented in PS1-era-style fixed camera angles, which, while certainly bringing its own charm, only further highlights how little these towns provide outside of a handful of NPCs to talk to and a few treasures to pick up. In fact, it’s in these locations that the title’s incredibly muted color palette shines through. While the visual design of the game’s setting is one that has a lot of unique charm and style, that design is unfortunately torn down a peg through the browns and grays of the world - an unfortunate commonality in a lot of seventh console generations titles. This gives the world a rather drab look, which could perhaps be indicative of a somber world with an emotional story tell it. Is this the case, though?
It’s a natural question to ask, and yet it’s one that Tri-Ace struggles to answer.
Resonance starts with intrigue well enough - an intro cinematic shows our characters Leanne falling off a bridge in the upper plates of Basel, only to be caught by a generous Zephyr as they both fall down to the lower sections of the artificial world. The game then cuts a few months later, with Leanne and Zephyr in addition to Vashyron working as a guild to complete various oddjobs in the city. While working as a guild, a plot involving Leanne’s past, particularly as it relates to Cardinals experimenting with lifespans.
While the plot offers initial intrigue and promise, what prevents this story from being a driving force for the player to continue playing is its tonal disambiguation. Indeed, Resonance of Fate feels like it doesn’t quite understand the kind of story it wants to tell. The long cutscenes with the high-class Cardinals running experiments on human life while assigning lower-class guilds to do trivial tasks implies the intent to tell a story about morality and classism, however many wacky (and oddly juvenile) story beats (with a particular mission involving a wine delivery coming to mind) regularly clash with the more serious premise that’s present in some cutscenes. Each chapter of the game involves Vashyron and company going on a mission for a client - the contents of which are relatively light-hearted and slice-of-life-esque, filled with awkward dialogue that lack any connection to the main conflict in addition to lacking any character growth. There were numerous occasions where I found myself interested by an idea brought up regarding the lifespan experiments that’s brought up in a cutscene, only for it to immediately to be discarded for multiple hours, and its place, I was left with another fetch quest plot that didn’t take advantage of the world nor the main conflict at hand..
To put it plainly, Resonance has an interesting premise for a plot that’s buried in filler content. Typically, I’m fine with filler content so long as it’s filler done right - essentially, what you do with filler content can justify the existence of such filler content. The main contents of each chapter - focusing on a particular request from the denizens of Basel - would be fine if they focused on the relationships and connections with the main trio of characters, however only the bare minimum is explored with these characters. Outside of exploring Leanne’s past in the main plot, the game’s main trio of characters feel incredibly flat, offering little beyond their tired character tropes.
With the plot that comes off as tonally confused, an abundance of filler content that doesn’t significant develop the game’s world or characters, and a weak cast of characters makes for a story that struggles to, er, resonate with players. In a genre where long play times are typical, it’s perhaps more essential in RPGs than in any other genre to have characters and plot drive the user forward. Unfortunately, Resonance of Fate struggles to provide intriguing story elements to encourage players to see the story through. While a poorly told story certainly hurts any story-driven game, a great combat system and gameplay loop can salvage a title - which makes it hurt to see that Resonance of Fate comes so close to doing just that, but failing at a few critical turns.
Applying Scratch Damage with Submachine Guns, then applying that damage with with Direct Damage from Hanguns and Throwable Weapons is the main hook of Resonance’s combat. While the concept early implementation of the combat is unique, challenging, and fun, it unfortunately runs into the roadblock of having some fatal design flaws - namely that game’s difficulty spikes in its encounters and the cruelty of the dreadful “Critical” State that makes all characters exceptionally weak and vulnerable.
Let’s talk Resonance’s most unique and exciting aspect - its combat. In random encounters on the world map and in most rooms in dungeons, users will encounter battles that fuse turn-based combat, flashy attack animations, strategic placement of your three party members, and resource management. Firstly, Resonance’s combat system has two types of damage: Direct Damage and Scratch Damage. Codified by blue numbers, Scratch Damage quickly builds up potential, non-lethal damage that heals over time, while Direct Damage, codified by red numbers, inflicts that damage lethally. Put simply, Scratch Damage is meant for building up potential damage output, but will quickly decrease the amount of damage it deals over time, meaning that Direct Damage must be inflicted as soon as possible to maximize damage to enemies. So, for example, Zephyr could use a machine gun to deal 200 Scratch Damage on an enemy, then Vashyron could follow up with a handgun attack that deals 6 Direct Damage individually, which then does a total of 206 damage to the enemy.
This creates a unique layer of strategy throughout each encounter - do you choose to alternate between dealing Scratch and Direct Damage on all enemies? Or do you repeatedly attack with machine guns to rack up as much Scratch Damage as possible before applying Direct Damage at the risk of the amount of Scratch Damage being reduced over time? If I were to compare this system to anything, the closest would be Final Fantasy XIII’s “Stagger” system, where magic increases the damage multiplayer but don’t do much damage, whereas physical attacks deal the opposite, but even then - I feel like there’s enough nuance and room for experimentation in Resonance of Fate’s combat to feel distinct enough from any other RPG on the market.
In addition, there are three types of weapons that level up individually - handguns, machine guns, and thrown weapons -, and the sum of all three levels equal your character’s level. Moreover, instead of traditional experience points, each weapon class levels up via how much damage is inflict with that weapon class. So if you inflict a ton of Scratch Damage with machine guns, then finalize that damage with a hand grenade, you’ll see a significant increase in your levels for both machine guns and thrown weapons. This system ended up encouraging me to try out different party configurations throughout the ~30 hour adventure. To keep all three party members at a high level, you need to ensure that each of the three characters regularly inflict damage with all three weapon types. And as there are only enough slots to have two weapons on a character at once, that means you’ll be experimenting with different party configurations. This encouragement of experimentation without necessarily handholding nor telling the user to do so was bizarrely refreshing. Resonance’s restraint in letting me figure out its combat’s intricacies through experimentation despite its complex and unique mechanics is telling of how much thought clearly went into this system.
In addition, most enemies have pieces of armor that need to be broken in order to deal damage to enemies themselves. So if an enemy has an armor plating on the front of it, you’ll have to either deal Scratch and/or Direct Damage to break the armor, or simply position your characters to attack the enemy from behind where they don’t have armor.
Along the bottom of the screen during all encounters are red Bezels that can be expended to use Hero Actions - actions that cause your currently selected character to walk in a straight line to deal multiple attacks - perfect for dealing a lot of Scratch Damage to one or multiple enemies before following up with Direct Damage from another party member. However, to make the most out of this, your have to perform a Hero Action so that the straight line that you walk in is between where your other two party members are standing. Doing so increases your Resonance Points, which can then be used to perform Triangle Attacks - powerful attacks where all three party members will simultaneously charge and unleash attacks, with longer charges being possible with how far away each of the party members are from each other when the Triangle Attack is executed.
Is it complicated? Does it take a while for everything to click? Absolutely. But once you’ve gone through a few dungeons and have a had a chance to try out each of these tactics, you begin to strategize a lot about your characters’ positioning from each other, optimizing Hero Actions, breaking pieces of armor quickly, initiating Triangle Attacks to disrupt powerful enemies - all of this culminates in a combat system that makes each encounter feel an opportunity to strengthen your ability to strategize all of the combat’s mechanics. There’s a lot going on with this combat system, and to some it may even some unnecessarily convoluted, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t keep me engaged.
While the story struggled to motivate me to keep playing, the complex intricacies of the combat kept me curious to see how the game would ramp up in difficulty. The culmination of different viable strategies made enemy encounters and especially boss encounters exciting, as each brought about their own challenges with how to deal with armor and how to use the environment for cover when needed. However, there eventually reached a point where Resonance unfortunately crossed the line with difficulty, making seeing the game through to the end suddenly become a chore.
Resonance of Fate offers various weapons that can have numerous attachments applied. Optimizing a weapon’s performance through finding methods of attaching as many add-ons to a weapon as possible becomes a minigame in and of itself, resulting in monstrosities such as this.
Resonance of Fate suddenly falls victim to a severe difficulty spike. Not only enemies begin sporting larger health bars and inflict more and more damage, but there suddenly arises a flaw with Resonance's combat that suddenly makes each encounter bring more dread than joy. Bezels normally deplete either when you use a Hero Action or when any of your characters’ HP reach zero. A Bezel recharges 1000 HP, meaning that once you get to higher levels and have characters have over 5000 HP, you’ll then have six Bezels suddenly be depleted every time a character dies - something that quickly becomes a problem once enemies start dealing massive, often unavoidable damage. When you lose Bezels, they scatter across the battlefield and need to be picked up and recharge for regular use when either defeating an enemy or breaking off part of an enemy’s armor.
Where this becomes an issue is that when all Bezels are depleted and you reach a “Critical” state - something that will inevitably happen once you begin facing stronger enemies. All of your characters suddenly become very fragile to the point that it’s practically a game over. Your movement speed decreases and quite bafflingly, the damage you inflict is severely reduced - which becomes a big problem considering that you need to inflict damage in order to heal Bezels and get out of “Critical” state. This becomes a large annoyance later on when most encounters can easily put your party into “Critical” state.
How do you combat this? One way is to collect Bezel Shards, which can be found throughout the map, in treasure chests throughout the world, and defeating bosses. Upon collecting four, you get a new Bezel to use, however acquiring more Bezel Shards soon began to feel like a necessity to progression rather than a collectible to reward explorers and completionists. Collecting Bezel Shards become as much of an annoyance as the difficult combat encounters themselves, resulting in combat that, while once something that I found to be exciting, challenging, and rewarding, suddenly became something I actively avoided doing when possible.
The world and character of Resonance of Fate is one that excels on a conceptual level but fails on a practical level. While Resonance of Fate offers interesting ideas in its world, combat, and narrative, it unfortunately struggles with weaving these three components together to make a solid package. What results is a title that certainly shows strengths, but ultimately holds itself back.
This ultimately made for an experience that I couldn’t like nearly as much as I wanted to. While there are a wealth of amazing ideas that Resonance of Fate brings to the table, it struggles to execute them in an elegant way. Outside of combat and its story, Resonance offers a weapon customization system that’s as creative and engaging as it is visually ridiculous, and as mentioned previously, unlocking more access of the world map feels like a puzzle minigame in itself. The sidequests, while full of typical “collect X number of Y materials” or “kill Z number of enemies in this area”, do a good enough job in further encouraging and rewarding exploration with helpful items and weapons.
However, all of this isn’t enough to save a game that struggles to tell an engaging, cohesive story. This, in addition to Resonance’s combat that, while certainly having a lot of depth put into its mechanics, eventually crumbles in the face of its own complexity. I walked away from Resonance captivated with its ideas, but disappointed with how those ideas were developed and executed. That said, this combat system and this world that Tri-Ace built, more than ten years later, still have a lot of potential for exploration. Resonance of Fate builds a fantastic foundation for a sequel to improve its numerous small flaws.
Until then, however, Resonance of Fate can only truly be appreciated by RPG faithful - and even then, I can’t guarantee that they’ll enjoy the plot nor the inevitable spike in difficulty in the late game. All others wanting to play something unique should unfortunately look elsewhere.
Final Grade: D
Thank you so much for reading. Have you played Resonance of Fate? If so what are your thoughts on it? As always, feel free to join the conversation and let me know what you think!
