Dark Deity

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Note: This review has been directly sponsored by a kind donation from Jamie and His Cats. Thanks again for your generous contribution!

Dark Deity is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG released in 2021 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game puts players in the role of a group of young graduates from a kingdom’s military academy thrust into a war started by a king more focused on revenge than good policy and sound strategy. Dubious about the wisdom of their leadership, these recruits strive to make the best of a bad situation.

While the story is an interesting approach to the genre, the rest of the presentation makes it all too clear what game franchise Dark Deity seeks to imitate – this game is clearly inspired by the classic games in the Fire Emblem franchise of Strategy-RPG titles, with anime-style character portraits and some really nice pixel art 2D visuals, including some really nice fluid battle animations, much in line with Fire Emblem. This is backed by orchestral music that isn’t especially memorable but does a good job of fitting the tone and setting of Dark Deity.

Overall, the presentation here clearly does a good job of drawing inspiration from Fire Emblem, but the gameplay doesn’t quite reach the same level of success. This game has the basics down – you’ll move units on a tile-based battlefield, with both melee and ranged units in the mix of battle as well as those on horseback. This game even does an interesting take on Fire Emblem’s traditional “permadeath” mechanic, with your units in Dark Deity suffering a milder “perma-injury” whenever subdued in battle – they’re not permanently lost to you, but they’ll have a small permanent reduction in stats as a penalty, to encourage you to take better care of your fighters in battle.

In theory, this mechanic is more gentle than Fire Emblem’s permadeath, but I feel like, in practice, it just ends up being a middle-of-the-road solution that won’t please anyone. Those who prefer permadeath will be disappointed that this element of challenge has been dulled, while those who hate it will still feel like they’re forced to be overly-analytical and cautious in every battle or suffer for it throughout the entire rest of the game.

That’s not to say that players who crave a challenge won’t find it here, either, and in fact I think Dark Deity has surprisingly early difficulty spikes on every mode but its easy mode. This isn’t helped by the fact that this game has little in the way of a tutorial for newcomers or those looking to wrap their head around this game’s take on Strategy-RPG game mechanics, as all this game’s so-called “tutorial” offers is little more than an in-game manual and glossary.

There is one other area I find Dark Deity lacking compared to its inspiration, and that is in the strategy of combat itself. Dark Deity lacks the “weapon triangle” of most Fire Emblem games, and while there are character relationships that grow over time, it’s nothing compared to the intricate mechanics seen in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Rather, instead of weapons that are naturally weak against some opposing weapons and strong against others, every character has four interchangeable weapons that are functionally nearly-identical, save for different stats. Needless to say, this is a pretty poor replacement.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Dark Deity is a bad game. Quite the opposite – I think the story is interesting and the core Strategy-RPG mechanics are sound. I just can’t help but feel like this game is chasing the shadow of Fire Emblem games from two decades ago, and still coming up a bit short. And when compared to more recent games in that same franchise, like Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Fire Emblem Engage, it’s even a more uneven contest. What’s more, players who subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack can play two of the older Fire Emblem games on the Game Boy Advance app, and those who subscribe and buy a Nintendo Switch 2 will soon be able to play Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance as well. With all of these better alternatives, it’s hard to recommend players to spend their time with a weak imitation.

tl;dr – Dark Deity is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG that is clearly designed to imitate classic games in the Fire Emblem franchise, and while it gets the basics down well enough, it lacks some of the great gameplay nuances of those games, and that’s not even mentioning how more recent Fire Emblem games have evolved. While Dark Deity is still decent, it’s hard to recommend when there are so many better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: B-

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