Last week, I finished playing Battle Chasers: Nightwar.

We first talked about Battle Chasers: Nightwar a couple years ago as one of five upcoming turn-based RPGs to look forward to. At the time, I was interested in the game despite being a little wary of the randomized dungeons.

I knew nothing about the Battle Chasers universe going into the game, but it stands on its own well enough. It begins with the main characters being shot down over an isolated island, which leads to figure out just what is behind the sinister activity on the island.

It isn’t story-heavy, but that didn’t bother me a lot. The story is fine and accomplishes its goal, and there are some optional conversations between characters when you stay at the inn that gave it a nice touch. I liked the characters, and unlike in a lot of story-light games where the characters end up feeling bland, their optional interactions helped highlight their personalities. There’s also a lot of lore in each dungeon that helps flesh out the world.

Now, the randomization was the one thing I was wary about going into it, and it was my major frustration with the game.

Dungeons aren’t entirely random, but the placement of rooms and items in them is randomized when you reset the dungeon. This means if you go through a given dungeon twice, you’ll probably encounter many of the same things, but in different spots.

It leads to some annoying designs, like teleporters being found in rooms right next to each other, but the part that really bothered me is that the lore placement is also randomized. Each dungeon has a number of lore pieces to find, and I wanted to read them all. Due to the randomization, however, sometimes I’d find the same piece multiple times in the same run or go through a dungeon three times before I found what I was missing.

Repeating the dungeons to get all the lore and level up felt a bit like filler, and I would have preferred more optional “exploration areas” and side quests in its place.

Overall, however, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a lot of fun. It has a good turn-based combat system, and you get points to set “perks” for each character. You can change these perks anytime out of combat, which makes it fun to change your perks for different strategies or as more powerful perks become available. And despite the repetition, the general gameplay loop of clearing out dungeons before returning to town and opening up the next segment of the map is enjoyable.

It also has a friendly approach to encounters. Not only do enemies appear on the map, but they won’t respawn until you rest at the inn. Dungeons, meanwhile, stay as you left them until you either clear them or tell them to reset. If you leave a dungeon partway through to rest at the inn, all the monsters you defeated will still be gone when you return.

The world map disappointed me a little bit at first, since you really just follow set paths instead of freely wandering across the map, but I got used to it. It still has secrets to discover and reasons to explore.

So while the randomization can lead to some frustration and it isn’t heavily story-driven, Battle Chasers: Nightwar is still a fun addition to the turn-based RPG genre. It ends with a sequel hook, and if that means another game is coming, I’d definitely be interested in playing it.