Etrange Overlord PC review — Walk with me in hell

When the creator of a beloved series makes something new, it’s normal to wonder just how close it is to what came before. Etrange Overlord is brought to us by the original creator of Disgaea (who only apparently worked on just the very first game) and shares some very obvious DNA with that series. However, it’s also got an incredibly different gameplay focus, as it’s real-time action as opposed to turn-based tactics. That action isn’t all that impressive and, by the end of the game, some poor decisions pipe in to weaken the experience, but the charming story and characters do a lot to make it worth it regardless.

Etrange was engaged to the crown prince of Edelstein before evidence appeared that she was planning to knock off the royal family. Naturally, this ended up cleaving her head from her shoulders, resulting in her waking up in Hell to a cadre of demons looking to torture her. These demons couldn’t have known that she had powerful dark magic abilities, which she uses to start subjugating the minions of Hell’s Overlord, with the obvious goal of removing him from power and taking his place. Etrange Overlord moves forward from there, but to spoil things would do you a disservice.

The narrative and dialogue sequences are the best part of the game. The story is as briskly paced as it is entertaining, taking us through three acts that waste very little time moving the plot forward. Dialogue sequences frequently accompany the game’s missions, and optional story sequences pop up as well, many of which actually feature important information that you won’t get if you stick to the mandatory sequences. The characters are likable and expressive, I was continuously looking forward to seeing how things were going to play out, plus the dialogue is just plain funny much of the time. There are also numerous short musical numbers where the game turns into a bit of a musical, which is cute.

The rest of the game, however, isn’t as impressive. Etrange Overlord is divided into three acts, each with its own map that you explore from an isometric perspective. There’s not really much to do in these save for picking up the occasional sparkling item or travelling to the next mission or optional cutscene marker. Missions let you bring four of your crew members into the fray and have several types. There are missions that task you with defeating all enemies, plus you’ll capture points, race to deliver 15 items before the other team, defend a character, or sometimes fight a boss. There’s not much variety to these, though.

You’ll often go up against a generous host of enemies, but missions are typically just a few minutes long. You can swap between any of your four characters, but the gameplay is limited and not all that satisfying. Each character has a somewhat unique default attack string as well as a special attack that you can only use when you’ve collected a certain item. The computer controls your other three crew members and is of dubious usefulness, as it’s prone to getting itself killed. You can revive downed teammates, which can at least keep the throngs of foes off your back temporarily.

Crew members use either melee or ranged attacks and can all have their attack strings levelled up by farming materials and paying a fee. Everyone can also use a dash that gets them out of harm’s way and moves them around the small arenas faster. It’s serviceable and not unenjoyable, but it’s far less engaging and deep compared to Disgaea‘s tactical combat. The writing, game structure, and characters all feel very much like those from that series despite this. You’ll mostly move about the map in a large vehicle, which also functions as your base. Here you can make upgrades and buy materials.

You can also eat meals before missions for buffs, but I never really messed with this. One of the other unique aspects of Etrange Overlord is that missions have items you can pick up that move about on lanes. You can customise and upgrade these as well, but that requires a healthy amount of farming for items, making it a bit of a chore. The game’s mostly pretty easy for most of its runtime, too. The first act is the longest as it makes up about half the game, whereas acts two and three are the back half. This surprised me, but the game didn’t need to be any longer than it is.

I was even grateful for this by the end due to a particularly irksome feature that shows up partway through. Areas you’ve conquered can have revolts if their denizens are unhappy, and you can designate members to go on trips to these areas to bring back materials. If said denizens reach maximum unhappiness, they’ll revolt, and it’ll be up to whoever is doing dispatch runs in the area. If your team loses, you often get a staggering debuff, such as not being able to upgrade your weapons or purchases becoming twice as expensive.

This comes to a head toward the end of the game when revolts tend to happen after every single mission. What this means is that you’ll complete a mission, you’ll often lose a revolt, and then you’ll have to travel to that area and replay one of the previous missions to clear the revolt, which got on my nerves severely. This is worsened by the fact that clearing a revolt would often cause another revolt to show up, so you’ll sometimes just be replaying multiple older levels one after another instead of progressing the story. I strongly disliked this aspect, and it’s very blatant padding.

Etrange Overlord can also get pretty frustrating in the last region. You have 16 characters to choose from, but grinding out upgrades for your whole team is more time-consuming than I would have liked, so I mostly just focused on upgrading five of the characters. In the last region, however, the game pointlessly forces you to use a team of specific characters. If you haven’t farmed materials to upgrade those characters, then you have to stop what you’re doing and replay past levels to power them up (or you can spend massive amounts of currency buying the necessary materials to do this.)

This has its issues, though, as getting characters up to their max level requires you to wait for dispatches to finish in the last region, as characters all have unique items that can only be acquired through these means. It can take multiple missions before a dispatch will be successful, so this means you have to keep replaying old missions while waiting for this to happen. Etrange Overlord is already pretty short overall, clocking in at around nine or ten hours, but it would be even shorter without this blatant, pointless padding. It doesn’t help that some of the late-game missions can be fairly cheap. One has the tendency to stunlock your entire party due to piping in more enemies than the AI can handle.

Then again, the game does end shortly after all of this comes to the forefront, but the damage is done. For most of its runtime, I was decently amused by Etrange Overlord‘s simple gameplay while being very entertained by its story. The game does become far more grindy and aggravating in the end, but I still absolutely don’t regret experiencing its narrative, which I won’t be forgetting any time soon. It’s a shame there’s so much unnecessary padding and tedious grinding, because this is a charming, simple little adventure when it isn’t trying to waste your time.

Consider checking out our previous review:

Project Songbird PC review — Why is there combat? |