Tactical RPGs are a popular genre as it is, but with the announcement that Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles is on the way, they’re more in focus than ever. There are already plenty of great tactical RPGs to choose from while you wait for Final Fantasy Tactics, and one upcoming title with a novel take on battlefield strategy deserves to be added to your list, too.
Announced in June, Never’s End is a tactical RPG that doesn’t yet have a release date, but does have quite a pedigree behind it. The team working on the game is made up of games industry veterans, including pixel artist Masayoshi Nishimura, who previously worked on the Square Enix RPGs Triangle Strategy and Octopath Traveler. But more than the history of its creators, it’s the new ideas Never’s End brings to the table that makes it most exciting.
The game’s basic setup isn’t particularly groundbreaking. The world has all but ended, being overrun by monsters and leaving the last remnants of humanity scattered. You lead a small group of survivors eking out a living in the ruins while trying to push back the darkness.
But when it comes to combat, Never’s End does a lot differently from other tactical RPGs. The first thing I noticed when battle kicked off is the absolute flood of information on screen. Every item and character has a specified weight. Combatants have meters tracking health, stamina, and time. Ground tiles even display the ambient temperature around them. It’s a lot to take in, but presented with a clean interface that makes it unexpectedly easier to keep track of, and it can all be used to your advantage in battle.
All of that information ties into systems that make combat in Never’s End feel physical and unpredictable. Similar to games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Divinity: Original Sin, Never’s End features environments that can change radically based on how you interact with them, and manipulating the elementals is a key part of strategy. In a demo playable at BitSummit and also shared with press, players can learn the art of fire magic. Instead of just giving you the ability to fling fireballs, this ability lets you affect temperature directly, by lowering heat on one square of terrain and raising it on another. That lets you freeze or immolate foes when they reach extreme temperatures, but that’s just the most obvious part of the system. Creating temperature differences between tiles will cause wind to push anyone between them, letting you shove enemies away or move your allies out of danger.
Pushing and pulling characters is a huge part of battle strategy on its own, too. Pushing an enemy into an obstacle will damage it, while shoving someone off a cliff knocks them down, staggering them for a turn. Weight comes into play here, as heavier objects damage lighter ones when they collide, and also cost more stamina to move.
Stamina itself is just one resource you spend to use abilities, the other being time. Every action has a set time, and optimizing the amount you have to attack by carefully positioning yourself and manipulating the battlefield is also crucial to come out victorious.
It’s a lot to keep in mind, and in any given turn of Never’s End I played, I always felt like I had at least a handful of options for how to proceed. It can feel overwhelming in early battles, but combining all these systems to start a fire, then use a gust of wind to pull an enemy from a height into the blaze gives such a unique thrill that more straightforward battle tactics simply can’t match. On top of all this is a flexible weapon system where every armament feels entirely distinct, with advantages against different armor types, varied ranges, and unique abilities for each one. It feels like a game you can sink your teeth into for a long while, poring over stats and tactics with every turn and using a huge number of strategies to your advantage. Never’s End doesn’t have an announced release date, but it’s immediately become a game I’ll be keeping a close eye on.
