Early Access Examination: Crimson Tactics: Rise of The White Banner

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: PC

Crimson Tactics: Rise of The White Banner is a Strategy RPG developed by Black March Studios. It is largely inspired by other SRPG titles like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, and recently released on Steam Early Access. Being a game large in scope, in a fairly complex genre, there is a long road of development still ahead of it, but we're going to examine it as it exists now and see if it lives up to the pedigree of the game's that have inspired it.

Story is probably where the game shines the most as the developers really pinned down that high fantasy aesthetic, complete with Game of Thrones-esque intrigue. The Kingdom of Wendalle is in turmoil as their king was recently killed by those allied with the ambitious Empire of Asalia. Meanwhile the Dukedom of Swozalta, formerly a tributary state to The Kingdom, is facing the threat of rebellion and is currently hard at work to drive the rebels into a final defeat. These rebels rally under the titular White Banner and your avatar, the young knight Arlys Frink, eventually joins this rebellion after he comes into conflict with his commanding officer. Together with the rebels, and others met along the way, Arlys Frink takes on Swozalta's Duke, Arsenio, and his various lackeys and hirelings. With the stage set the plot then devolves into betrayal, murder, politicking, and more throughout the games "Arcs", which serve as the game's chapters. As far as main characters go, Arlys Frink is one of the most boring protagonists I've ever encountered. It's shocking that he's not a completely blank slate for the player to take on as that's what he feels like. Meanwhile Blazh, an ally you encounter early on, is relegated to a supporting role even though his arc feels like it would better serve as the main character's backstory. There's potential for a good story here, but there's some quirks in the writing that keep it from being perfect. Also, there isn't much interaction with NPCs that usually help with worldbuilding. Most of that flavor text, and background history of most of the game's villains, is found via menus in the "archive" and not actual dialogue or gameplay. I didn't actually reach the end of the Early Access build of the game, but of course the game is not complete as of yet, so there's still lots of time for these kinks to be hammered out.

I hope the Prologue scenes eventually are epic.

Am I playing an Ultima game?

Combat is the core of any Tactics game and the system here is rather simple, but does have some unique elements of its own. You control a small army of your own (Oddly enough more the size of what is seen in the Fire Emblem series as opposed to Final Fantasy Tactics.), face off against a series of enemies, and fight until one of you is dead. You have story-centric units on both side, and generic, replaceable ones that round out the roster. Each character has a job that can be changed, and they level up following the completion of the battle; if they survive that is. Crimson Tactics is somewhat unique in that there's a mount system where characters can battle atop a horse, or even a dragon. This is a nice touch but it also draws attention to the fact that just about every enemy you fight in-game are humans, with no relevant "monster" armies to speak of. Combat has the typical SRPG nuances where bonuses to attacks are given if you are above, to the side, or behind your target. Though in my experience these bonuses were very inconsistent within actual gameplay. Permadeath is also the name of the game here with non-story centric characters being permanently killed if they are not revived within three turns after losing all their HP. This is a mechanic similar to what is found in Final Fantasy Tactics and adds a level of urgency when one of your units falls. And fall they will as Crimson Tactics deviates from many other SRPGs in that the entire enemy army is active right from the get-go and aren't "activated" when you get closer to them. I'll talk more about this in a bit, but it's another factor that separates this game from others in the genre for better or worse. There actually isn't a lot to discuss at the moment when it comes to battle, except maybe that you're going to want to immediately crank up the speed slider to max, as there aren't a lot of surprises here for those who've played the games that inspired this one.

Dark story is dark.

Look at those lifeless, totally still, soldiers.

Battles in Crimson Tactics are LONG and take far too many turns to complete. Generic enemies should not take 3-4 hits to kill, and every enemy unit should not immediately move inward to fight you. These are standard across the SRPG genre, especially those that not like Final Fantasy Tactics that feature larger armies. Speaking of tactics, it currently feels less like a tactics-based game and more like a standard RPG that just happens to have field movement. The game's balance is all over the place and RNG is also really annoying. Battles are mostly determined by the first couple turns (as in who gets in the first kills) and can go in completely different ways depending if attacks land or not. Characters can block attacks behind them, spells can miss, and killing long-range attackers can be an absolute chore as they'll do everything they can to run away from you. Many early battles have enemies that you can't defeat and eventually flee battles, but this is implemented in a strange way as they slowly walk off the map, unable to be killed, even if they're the last enemy alive. Far too enemies do this and it feels like poor writing that gives enemies plot armor like this. Maybe if they just teleported out of the battle this wouldn't be as annoying, but as it stands it adds rounds to battles that already drag on. If you're getting bored with battles though you can turn on AI and just not fight at all, something I'll admit I did a couple times to see if the AI got a better hit rate than I did. I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but the AI-controlled characters make some of the strangest choices and one probably shouldn't rely on it all that much.

This actually happened when I turned on AI.

Why was this one of the first maps?

Before I go on there's something big I want to mention. I don't want to nitpick this if it turns out the developers aren't native English speakers, but seeing as the game appears to be developed in English first, I'll mention it. There are a lot of oddities with the game's text in general that feel that the writers aren't native speakers, or are unaware of certain aspects of Western culture. Every character talks with that sort of faux Old English you probably expect in a world like this; the problem is that it all sounds extremely forced and fake. Obviously it's not a current way to speak, but the way it's written here it feels like someone unfamiliar with English in general trying to mimic something they may have heard on TV once. This is prevalent in just about every scene and it makes Crimson Tactics feel like a B-movie version of what they were probably going for. Also, a lot of the names seem really odd and... off, for lack of a better word. One just has to look at the main character, Arlys Frink, to see what I mean. You can't change his last name at all and I can't imagine who would think that "Frink" would be a good name for any hero. (Does he also make you laugh and think too?) There's even a characters with names like "Rusty Alvin", and one of the key villains is even named "Arsenio". (Google that name to see who that name makes one think of in most of the Western world.) Once again this could be a cultural thing, but a simple Google search, and maybe a story editor, would've fixed these issues and saved the overall tone of the game. Lastly, the game is called "Rise of The White Banner", there is a very real in-game reason for this but do the developers not know that "raising the white banner" is literally the universal symbol for surrender? At best it doesn't feel like a powerful, epic title, and at worst feels like poor AI-generated translation trash. I could go on about how "Conflict Arises" is a weird way to start a life-or-death battle too, but I think I'll leave this topic alone for a bit. I'm not sure why these choices were made in writing, but I hope that the entire script is touched up before the game launches.

Like, seriously, what is this dialgoue?

I REALLY hate his name...

Let's tackle the complicated topic of Graphics. Crimson Tactics looks great for the most part, the characters are 3D models and everything looks smooth and well-detailed. I'm a fan of the character designs too, at least as they appear in the character portraits. If only this translated to how these characters move and interact on the maps. First of all, every map in the game is a square in the middle of nothing. This is most likely inspired by area maps as found in Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, but it's worth noting that there aren't any sprawling areas, and everything is rather small in scale. Characters on these maps stand stock still like statues most of the time and have nothing in the way of idle animations, not even the unique main character units. Also, everyone has the same (extremely slow) swagger walk animation no matter what it is they're doing. It almost feels like they bought a stock walk animation from the Unity store and shoved it onto every character. That or decided that they only needed to animate walking once and they'd be golden. It doesn't matter how dire the situation is, and what the consequences are, everyone walks on-screen like they're getting ready to deliver a WWE pay-per-view promo. Besides walking with an awkward gait, character models are hard to tell apart and usually look like one another. There is some level of customization as the game goes on, but it almost feels like the job of making the characters unique has been hoisted onto the players. Oh, and while you can speed up battles, everything else pretty much plays at the same speed. It's quite jarring seeing the slow, swag walking characters enter and leave the frame to deliver their lines, and I hope that something is done about this too.

Did I mention movement looks UGLY?

Spells are flashy, but don't do much.

Music is a mixed bag as I did like a few of the tracks here and there, but the sound mix seems really off. Everything is very quiet and there is way too much ambient noise going on most of the time. I had to adjust the sound quite a bit in the options menu, and I still felt that the sound mix was all over the place. Not all the music is good though, the music in the prologue was all but non-existent, and there are a few songs that sound like stock music from a sound library. The Prologue is by far the worst offender as it's meant to be a big, epic scene and it plays out slowly and mostly in silence. I've seen footage of an earlier version of the Prologue from an old demo and it's clear that the developers completely revamped that section. How did they somehow make it worse though? I don't mean to pick on this one section so much, but it's literally the first thing new players experience, and it has the added bonus of being the game's tutorial levels. Other than this part the music is mostly serviceable, but only a few songs go above background status. Maybe it was my own adjustments, but the music does get better a few hours in. There's also no voice acting to speak of, but with this script that might be a blessing in disguise. While it might be a bit much to wish that the game had better music, I do hope at the very least that the kinks in the sound design get smoothed out before the final release. And maybe something is done to make the Prologue actually epic, even if it means another complete overhaul of those battles yet again.

I want to try out Strategy next time I look at the game.

I don't know why, but this camp setting looks amazing.

Crimson Tactics only offers controls by way of the keyboard and mouse; there is no controller support at all. I'm not sure why they went this route as the entire interface feels like it'll have to be re-written if/when they ever decide to go with controller support. Maybe that will never be in the cards, but it feels like an odd choice for a modern PC game. With that said, I'm amazed with how clunky the controls are even when working with what is offered. Everything requires clicking on boxes in the top right, or using the numbered hotkeys, to perform every single action. For example, if you want to attack an enemy you have to click "move", click an available spot to move to, click "action", click "attack", click "broadsword", and then the enemy you want to attack. You have to do this each time for every action, and some even have more steps to them. There's far too many menus here, and for all the talk of the developers being fans of other SRPG games, you'd think they'd have played a few and would learn a thing or two about how to streamline this system, and borrow their streamlining. There's just a lot of extra clicking for everything and nothing feels intuitive. You'll spend a decent amount of time fighting with menus, and clicking all over the screen while trying to read the extremely tiny font. Also, camera controls used "WASD" and "QE" keys to move and rotate and I've never seen a game use these keys for moving this this type of camera. I repeatedly tried to use the mouse to move the camera, as most games do, and then I'd have to remind myself what I had to press. Oh, and by default there are controls always visible on the bottom of the screen, almost as if even the developers knew that they were using a confusing, non-standard control scheme. Unlike some of the other issues I mentioned, the controls can probably be fixed before the game gets a full release, and I hope that's the case.

There's a lot of work ahead of the developers to get Crimson Tactics into a full state, but they do seem up to the task for the most part. They seem very active within their community and have been working tirelessly to get bugs fixed as they've popped up over the last few weeks. They also have been taking most feedback to heart, and are open to discussion with just about every player with a question or concern on Steam and Discord. Seeing as it's still technically an unfinished game, there isn't much to say about replayability yet, but I'm hoping that the game does offer that down the road. There are separate "Tactics" and "Strategy" modes, though I'm not familiar with what the latter is yet. Also, there's the aforementioned AI-controlled party and several levels of difficulty, including Nightmare. So there's actually a lot to do here even if the current level of content doesn't take too long to complete. Hopefully this game doesn't turn into another Early Access horror story, but if the current level of activity is anything to go by, we'll be getting the full game sooner than later.

If only all battles could be this simple.

You too developers, you too.

I tend to be wary on recommending Early Access games in general. I wasn't even aware that this was an Early Access release until I looked more into the game's community when I was writing this. I assumed that it was leaving Early Access as I've seen videos of a demo from the game from over a year ago and a thread on a forum that mentioned that the game was getting released (with no mention of Early Access) December 2022. Now that is something that can't be helped, games take time and things come up, but I don't think Crimson Tactics deserves all the comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre that it's been getting lately. There is very little thematically, aesthetically, or even gameplay-wise that connect the games. Crimson Tactics also doesn't have half the production values, balancing, or polish those games have, and that's fine as it's currently still a work in progress. The bigger question is if it's worth the current price of admission as is today, and I have to say that I don't think it is. Perhaps if you're a huge fan of the genre they'll be something for you here, but I think most players will be frustrated by how good the game could be. It is priced $29.99 (with a launch discount at the time of writing) and I feel that this was a bit too high to launch with considering the state of the game. With that said, I do look forward to giving it another look further down the Early Access road (maybe at the end of the year), and giving it the full review treatment when it releases next year. Until then, get to resolving those conflicts!

For More Information on Crimson Tactics: Rise of The White Banner:
https://www.crimsontactics.com/

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Pros:
+ Great graphics and character designs that are inspired by games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre.
+ A storyline that is surprisingly deep, and shockingly dark, for the genre.
+ Lots of different ways to play the game, complete with several difficulty settings.
+ The potential for a really good game is here, and the game has been regularly updated on the way to Early Access.

Cons:
- Character animations are lacking and everything comes off really bland when moving.
- Odd word choices, character names, and overall wonky writing ruin the game's immersion.
- Music is largely generic and the sound mixing is very inconsistent throughout.
- Battles are slow and rely more on taking out enemies quickly and less on actual tactics.
- No really, everything in this game moves really slow.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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