Long Gone Days

[got_quiet]

Name: Long Gone Days
Status: Incomplete (Early Access, Final Chapter not published)
Site: https://laburatory.itch.io/lgd
Pairing: Gen
Description: Dystopian JRPG with some dialog and nice art

Of all the "It's not a VN" games in the VN category for the BLM bundle I've played so far, this is most not VN of all of them. This is very much an RPG out of the JRPG mold, with a few moments where you can make some dialog choices. But it stands on its own merits as a game and I enjoyed playing it, so I didn't stop even when I realized I'd be spending most of the time traversing maps and playing turn-based combat.

 

The structure of the game will be familiar to anyone who's played an indy JRPG before, but there are some interesting little innovations that I enjoyed. The combat to story ratio is flipped on its head. You spend a lot of time walking around the areas, working on a main plot and several side plots. There is also a great innovation where your major resource outside of health is morale, and morale is gained by doing sidequests and helping people out, or making the right choices. If you max out your morale you increase your ability to do critical damage in combat, and if you manage to drain yourself entirely of morale your damage is halved. This is a great way of tying the plotty part of the game to the combat elements outside of just earning EXP, which doesn't even exist in this game.


 

There are no random encounters in the game. Every fight is plot based, and there's also no money, so there is no way to stock up on resources. The fights can get hairy, and choosing to use morale, which is a limited resource, or items, which are also scarce, feels like a real choice reflecting the fact that you're are resourceless and on the back foot. Each win gives you an option of either giving the party a small morale boost, or a piece of equipment. Gear and battle items are scarce, because there are no random encounters, so in my experience it was almost always best to pick up an upgrade. There is also a slightly minor but odd mechanic outside the turn based combat where you have to snipe people, but it's wonky because the game runs by keyboard only, and precision aiming on the arrow keys is not exactly a great time for me. It's still a very forgiving element of the game, and seems to exist mostly for flavor.


 

The story is not unfamiliar to fans of JRPGs. It is set in a maybe slightly futuristic real world. The main character, Rourke, has been raised from birth to be a sniper for a strange nation called The Core. The Core exists completely under the earth, and seems to consist entirely of a military body run by a Father General. On Rourk's first mission to the surface he participates  in a false flag operation and unknowingly murders civilians. When he realizes this he's traumatized and desperate to find some way to escape his situation. A sympathetic medic, Adair, offers to give him a doctor's note, basically, and escort him to a medical facility so that he doesn't have to fight, but they are both branded as deserters for this and forced to flee. The rest of the game has them trying to survive being hunted, making friends with civilians who are trying to fend of invasion, and turning the tables on the agents of The Core. While the outside seems to be generally like our world, the game throws in little hints of worldbuilding about how the core operates that is titillating. For example Adair and Rourk, when forced to, give the same last name and then just shrug in agreement when asked if they're brothers, even though they've never met until the game begins. Later on you learn that The Core may be kidnapping women to serve as "mothers" for the Father General, so there's some real dystopian shit going on down there it seems.

While the plot isn't particularly elaborate, it has enough suspense and complications that I enjoyed it, and it helps a lot that the art is excellent. The pixel environments, the character sprites, combat animation, and even the presence of small cut scenes really show a lot of work went into this game, and as the shallow person I am it helps that everyone is super attractive. The drama of two young men being cast out and hunted by the only family they ever knew, finding kind people who help them, and figuring out their place in the world is right up my alley. And all of the six main characters have interesting personalities. There's even a character who refuses to fire a gun. He can still be in your combat party but is literally only capable of boosting allies. I like that the game is willing to push conventions like this in the service of character. There's also a small flavor mechanic where you can only talk to people if you have certain characters with you, because your main characters can't understand Russian or German.


 

Going back to the mechanics of choice in the game, they're pretty limited. You do have dialog options when doing certain quests, and your choices can have an effect on whether you earn or lose morale during quests. You also will verbally spar the bosses, and saying the right thing will give you a morale boost there too. The plot itself is completely on rails, but these little alternate plots are a nice touch. I would still be hard pressed to present this as a choice-based game though.

I have a couple of gripes. The combat is a little RNG based. Enemies have different places to hit, a la Fallout, and so missing can be extremely common depending on how you want to play. In general the combat isn't particularly engaging, but it's not the worst I've dealt with. I never actually lost a fight, although I came close once or twice. My biggest gripe is that the walk speed in the game is slow, and there is no way to run. (eta: There was a way to run, I just was a dummy!) The maps are relatively large, and the quests have you going back and forth across zones often, and it can feel tedious to do it all so slowly. As beautiful as the environments are, I still don't want to crawl through them quite this slowly. The game also is not super great at indicating when it is about to lock you into the next part of plot. I missed a significant number of the early side quests, aka 0%'ed of some in the early zones, because I accidentally forwarded the plot without completing the quests, even when I was actively working on them. I only figured out how to be careful about this some hours into the game. And because everything is so slow I just refused to reload and replay parts to fix my error. The inventory is also wonky. You can't compare stats on gear, as the HUD only shows you the stats of what you're wearing, so you have to keep swapping to see the numbers. The devs have said the final version of the game will have a revamped HUD, which will be a big improvement.

 

My final gripe is that the game is unfinished, so the nefarious plot of the Core is still unresolved. I think the final chapter is scheduled to be released so the game isn't stalled out, but what's out now does end on a bit a cliff hanger. That said I got into Long Gone Days enough that I'm actually going to keep an eye out for the update so I can finish it. The worldbuilding is novel, the characters are both good looking and engaging, and the story is one I want to see the end of.