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The premise behind 7 SEVEN The Thousand Year War is remarkably simple; recruit and train up troops to go out and move from town to town, battling big bad monsters. Luckily there’s much more to it than that, and it turns into a fairly deep RPG. At the heart of the game are the player’s troops. Made up from a number of different classes, such as Witch and Knight, the player has to recruit a balanced squad and sort them into a formation.
This formation comes into play during battle. The player can have all their melee fighters at the front, with the medics at the back ready to heal, for example. Players can rotate the formation at will so the troops at the front will go to the back, and those in the second row will now be pushed forward. Watch out though, because troops age at the rate of two years per day and will get weaker, before eventually dying. Also, when they are injured, if they don’t recover within three hours they will die.
The player can only have a limited amount of troops active at any one time, although this can be increased by building an inn at the base camp. In fact, building at base camp plays an important role throughout the game, having an effect on the player’s action points and other parameters. So, for example, building a lumber yard, stone quarry and iron works will see to it that the player has a constant supply of materials. These materials can be used for upgrading buildings, or to help in creating items and weapons for troops.
Occasionally there will be monsters that are too powerful to defeat, and in these instances the player can call out to online friends for assistance. In a flip of a coin, the player can also join someone else’s game to help team up and defeat a monster. It’s all very social.
It looks and sounds good too, as one might expect from a company such as Namco Bandai. The game harks back to the SNES/PS1 era, in a good way of course!
The main downside is that while the main game is free, progression is extremely slow unless the player is willing to partake in some micro-transactions. Battles can get frustrating, as attacking will see the player’s spirit points reduced, and when they run out the player has to wait five minutes for just a single point to regenerate (a standard attack costs two points). The alternative is to pay a small fee to have it all recharged instantly.
Overall 7 SEVEN The Thousand Year War is a good game, with plenty of depth, providing the player has the patience or money to help progression.