An underappreciated mix of Turn-Based Strategy and RPG.
Let's set the scene. It's an alternate take on mid-1930s history, with your character and their selection of friends (and enemies) hopping into the 2nd Europan War. This war is for a mineral known as Ragnite which apparently can be used for everything from fuel to medicine, so it's no wonder the evil Empire wants to invade your country to steal the bounty of resources apparently hidden underneath.
The main character, Welken, son of a famous General from the first war, is a bit of a nature geek and makes endless references to studying plants and animals, which sometimes helps out his squad during their battles. Although the link is sometimes a little tenuous.
Moving onto the combat, which is where you'll spend most of your time, it's all very well laid-out. Unless you choose to go digging, you're not shown any stat screens and you don't have to juggle any numbers to work out what's going on. Before the battle you're given the list of conscripts and asked which ones you want to use, and this is where you need to pay attention to the mission objectives. Different classes have different skills and weapons, from your enemy-detecting Scouts to your machine-gun toting Shocktroopers, rifle-weilding Snipers and anti-tank Lancers, each one has a valid place in the combat. Thankfully, they all have the ability to heal both themselves and their allies, so you don't need to worry about assigning a healer. Engineers repair your tank and can restock ammo, so they are pretty vital too.
You're assigned a number of move points at the start of a combat round. Infantry will use one of these up, while a tank will use two. You can order a unit to retreat (if it's injured or if you just want to replace them with a different class), and both this and ordering their replacement both uses a movement turn. Once you've selected a unit, you're stuck into the only real-time part.
All of your unit positioning is real-time, which is really good because it lets you look around the map and work out a decent tactic for sneaking past an enemy, or finding cover. Each unit's movement bar decreases and you run, and obviously when it's empty you're stuck on the spot. Scouts and Engineers get more, Shocktroopers and Snipers hardly get to move at all.
Attacking is simple. Once you're in position, you hit R1 and enter aiming mode. You're given a target reticule, which shows the area you're aiming for and the maximum spread the shots will take. Some units have limited ammo, but you get an extra shot back per combat round.
Some of the story is a little odd. Not to give away any spoilers, but one of your guys has an unhealthy obsession with vegetables. I sense a moral message in there somewhere. You also stumble onto a winged pig that understands English. Your guess is as good as mine on that one.
The voice acting is mostly good, although the script is a little odd in some places. I don't know if this could just be down to it not translating from Japanese very well.
The art style is really nice, making the whole thing look like a watercolour painting. It uses comic-book style visual sound effects though, which I'm not so fond of. It has the audio already and those seem a little unnecessary, jarring with the otherwise subtle graphical style.
The cut scenes are fairly short, but most of the time require a button press to advance the conversation. This is my biggest issue with the game in general. If you're playing the audio anyway, you shouldn't need to manually progress the conversations. It messes up the timing of some of them too, as it's impossible for someone to interrupt someone else when you have to wait for the first person to stop. It's not a game-breaking issue, but it's something I'd have dumped early on.
Ideally I'd have gone with an 8.7 or 8.8, but 9.0 is the closest it would let me go.