Miasma Chronicles, by developer The Bearded Ladies and publisher 505 Games, reminded me of a lot of games I played in my earlier childhood with a few twists. What were those games? I wish I could remember to tell you, but that doesn’t really matter. Miasma Chronicles really surprised me when I first booted it up. I honestly was expecting to be a lot like Nitro Kid, my 3rd review with Gaming Cypher. However, it, while having the same properties, is worlds different. The first thing I want to touch on is the story. I have a lot of questions. The biggest one I have after playing the game would be who is Elvis’ mom? That question has a bunch of little questions I could tie to it, too. What did she do that makes her so important? Why did she give Elvis the glove he wears?
What on earth happened that made Diggs (a literal robot) Elvis’ brother? How did she get on the other side of the Miasma wall? She’s this mysterious person that is the reason for our gameplay. Objective: Get to mom, but with a bunch of other smaller obstacles in the way. Other than that, there are more typical aspects to a dystopian type game that I was less surprised about. For example, the rich living in their safe, secluded areas away from the Miasma. Another thing is humans and machines living together as seen with Elvis and Diggs being brothers. The Miasma, the plague in this game, changes the environment around them. Although, I will admit I found it strange that they mention the Miasma affects only the United States. But I suppose among other things, like frogs turning into monsters and the mayor being a head with mechanical legs, it isn’t the strangest thing ever. All this to say that while I have a lot of unanswered questions, I really liked the story. It’s obvious the developers put a decent amount of time into it, as well as character development, animations, and cutscenes, which made the game enjoyable to play.
The next thing I’d like to touch on is obviously the gameplay. It’s a tactical turn-based game with some elements of stealth. I will preface this section by saying I am still not a huge fan of turn based games. With that being said, I will admit to enjoying the gameplay in this title. They add in some mechanics that make the gameplay more interesting, despite it being hard to adjust to at first for me. One thing that I really liked were the ambush and flank options. I could split up from my group and go into a battle by myself to kill the enemies in an ambush. I would say this was especially helpful when there were large groups of enemies just because it decreases the amount of time I actually have to spend in turn-based combat. The other aspect, flanking, is a double-edged sword though. While it’s nice to be able to flank enemies and get guaranteed damage on them based on your positioning, enemies are also able to flank you. Unfortunately for me, they often did. There’s a lot of cover on the field, but they don’t always grant full cover from the enemies. To my knowledge, there’s full cover, partial cover, no cover (obviously haha), and cover where you could potentially be in danger of getting flanked. It’s sometimes difficult to navigate that, and it did end up in death and having to restart quite a few times for me. But hey, what’s a game without its challenges? Besides that there’s typical talent trees to improve character gameplay, limited turn play, multiple abilities to tap into, etc – the typical things you’d expect in a turn-based game.
The last things I want to touch on are sort of miscellaneous or things I’d like to see. I really liked the in-game environment. I’m not much of an explorer or completionist myself, but I really appreciate the lack of boundaries the game has. You aren’t tied down and expected to finish one thing at a time; you can explore and collect things around the map and talk to various individuals like you could in any game. And if you ever wanted to get back to your main objective, all you have to do is press R (on PC at least), and you’ll be guided back to your quest. I do wish that whenever you used that mechanic it would highlight things you could pick up. Sometimes, it was hard to tell if I could pick up things or they were just naturally part of the environment. Eventually, I got the hang of it, but I think it’d be nice to have, especially toward the beginning of the game. The other issue I had pertains more to gameplay. I wish your turn for one character didn’t automatically end once you attack. Sometimes I’d be in the perfect position to just take out two enemies, but I’d shoot to kill one and then my turn would end, and it’d snowball to me having to restart. Obviously, it would affect some power dynamics in early game and even in later game, but it’s something I am used to doing in other turn-based titles. In the end, it was a bit frustrating not being able to do that.
Other than my little complaints, I really did enjoy the game. I would probably say it’s one of my favorite turn-based titles (not that there’s many). I highly recommend Miasma Chronicles, especially if you like these sorts of games or are just looking to pick up a game with a good storyline/plot.
Score: 8.5/10
For more information, visit: https://505games.com/games/miasma-chronicles/
Related: Reviews by Maryanne Fadonougbo
"I've enjoyed gaming since I was little, playing games like Pokémon, Rayman, and Naruto every day. Besides that though, I've always had a love for writing. Now I am combining the two for the best of both worlds! My ultimate goal is to do narrative design for video games."
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