94/100

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say to say that indie roguelites have flourished in the past decade. Around 2017, starting with Monster Slayers, and shortly followed by Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and many other terrific deckbuilder roguelites, the genre quickly became saturated with titles that built off of the foundation that these games produced.

All of that is to say, there are a lot of these games out there, and despite the genre exhaustion that one could experience, Chrono Ark still managed to smash my expectations for the game. The tight gameplay mechanics, the fascinating story, the inviting art styles, the variety of fun music, and a great amount of content, BADA Games pull off a game that just hits on all fronts. Chrono Ark deserves to be compared to the best roguelites on the market and I firmly believe it stands strong among them. Let me tell you why I love Chrono Ark.

Gameplay

Chrono Ark is a deckbuilder at it core, but it stacks a number of elements on top of this framework to make a system that feels much more dynamic and unique than many other games in the genre.

Chrono Ark is party-based, with each run starting with two members and expanding to four during your journey. Characters fall into being damage-focused, healing-focused, or tank and utility focused, though most characters have access to at least two different playstyles. CA's characters generally have fewer cards than the characters in say, Slay the Spire, but this is made up for the fact that there are a whopping twenty characters to pick from, all with unique cards. It's fun to consider what units have strong synergies with one another - for instance, pairing multiple healers with Ironheart, who converts excess healing to barriers, and then using Ironheart's cards that convert barrier into damage. Your party commander, Lucy, is also a character, and you can spend the currency used to level up on her to up your maximum mana and to gain cards that help you draw more.

Chrono Ark also has a key mechanic called Overload that encourages you to treat your party like a proper team. Most cards, when played, cause their character to Overload for the rest of the turn, increasing their cost to play a card by one. This simple mechanic adds a terrific amount of diversity into the game - you can't simply overinvest into a single character to win, though sometimes, it may make sense to play overloaded cards for key wins.

Chrono Ark's approach to damage and healing is also very engaging. When characters take damage, their health is reduced, but the missing health becomes their healing gauge. If the character is damaged again before being healed, they take damage and their prior healing gauge is lost, and a new one is made in its place. This system encourages you to heal proactively, as healing past the damage gauge is significantly reduced, though not negated. Besides this, Chrono Ark also has a fog that creeps into battles over time that adds a number of debuffs, including preventing you from healing past the healing gauge.

These systems solves a lot of issues that other games can typically suffer from when it comes to balancing healing in a typical roguelite - many other games encourage you to either stall to play more healing, or make healing incredibly scarce instead. It's also nice that the game makes you feel like you can reasonably react to most attacks. Besides all of the above, some attacks come out instantly, and some attacks - especially enemies - come out after a delay, so there's also an element of anticipating what enemies will do, or planning your turn so you can react to what they'll do.

Chrono Ark also has an amount of RPG elements taken from other games - buffs and debuffs rule a massive amount of combat. In most fights, it's wise to slow down, and carefully read what each one does, as they often transform combat. Most boss battles truly live up to being boss battles by having unique mechanics rather than just having larger numbers to their names. The final bosses of Chrono Ark legitimately have better design than many proper RPGs that I've played, requiring every move to be carefully considered.

Minor detail: CC effects like stuns are really powerful in this game, and I appreciate that bosses are resistant but not immune, unlike many other games. It feels significantly better balanced and tuned than some other RPGs I've tried.

Virtually all of my time playing Chrono Ark, its combat felt incredibly engaging and rewarding to master. I'm looking forward to completely unlocks and trying new party combinations, winning the game with every character at least once, and completing the novel challenge modes. Though the game has metaprogression, it doesn't simply give you objectively better stats for the most part, which gets a huge thumbs up from me.

And, should it matter to you, Chrono Ark also features an Expert mode for those who want a punishing roguelite experience, and a Hope mode for those that want a more relaxed playthrough that allows you to retry fights (which is also enabled for most story missions, which I appreciated too).

The only thing I think I'd want out of the game is a similar incremental difficulty that other games have (StS's Ascension system or Monster Train's Relic system) - but the amount of content here still has me plenty satisfied.

Story

Chrono Ark's story centers around Lucy, a girl who mysteriously has lost her memories, before being told she's the center of a prophecy that says she'll lead a team to find the shards of time. Finding these will allow the society of the Ark to activate a time machine that will reset the world to a time before the apocalypse.

However, it's not long before we learn that the loop has more to it than appears. Should Lucy fail or succeed, the loop occurs nevertheless, with Lucy losing most of her memories, but subconsciously retaining some - and some other characters retain everything. I don't want to spoil too much more, as the story is really worth experiencing, but as the game goes on, it touches on a number of themes that work incredibly well - the nature of eternal life and death, nihilism, anger and spite, reality and fiction, betrayal, and sacrifice. There were very few moments that I ever found to be cliche or underwhelming throughout the entire runtime. Chrono Ark does a great job of incorporating its loop gameplay into its narrative and I commend them for doing it better than most stories that try to do something similar.

Besides everything previously mentioned, one thing that the game does that I also love is incorporating plot elements into the gameplay. In certain runs, you'll play what is effectively a challenge run - one of these even has Lucy as a party member rather than just as a character! - and these help keep you engaged with the story even more effectively.

Lastly, on the front of the characters, the game has a simple relationship system where Lucy can give gifts to characters to learn more about them, providing a small metaprogression bonus, and yielding a short conversation. For the most part, these were pretty simple, but they're also well-incorporated into the story, and some of the characters really feel authentically written - among the standouts was a religious fascist whose convictions were gross, and yet had me fascinated as her writing felt like it could be a genuine person. The conversations often tie the world's setting and themes in, where the characters debate ethics, their pasts, and topics that typically go beyond trivialities, and for that I really want to complement BADA's writers.

Art, Sound

Chrono Ark's art utilizes 2.5D , blending static 2D images with 3D scenery and some light 3D effects occasionally. The overworld features chibi sprites of the different characters, whereas battles occasionally feature 2D, hi-res poses of characters. Despite not being fully animated, the animations that BADA created nevertheless look terrific and feel appropriately dramatic. Occasionally, battles have unique animations that really up the experience - there's one late game boss fight that can even attack the cards in your hand with a unique animations that feels incredibly satisfying. Cutscenes also have great art, with some light static animation and well drawn scenes.

The music has a great variety - dramatic plot scenes have appropriately tense tracks backing the weight of an important reveal. Boss battles have everything from more traditional, dramatic songs to electro-swing, and pretty much all of it works for me.

Sound effects also help drive the weight behind powerful blows, critical heals, or crucial moments in boss battles. Some characters like Silverstein's Double Tap or Ironheart's shield slams feel devastating when complemented by their animations and sound effects - BADA simply nailed it.

Conclusion

This game is amazing. Seriously, I'm simply blown away by the consistently great quality in every aspect of Chrono Ark.

I'd recommend this game to:

• Any roguelite fans
• Any deckbuilder fans
• Many RPG fans

Even if you don't fall into the above, I really encourage you to consider trying Chrono Ark. It's a very rewarding game and my time with it has been a blast.