Prepare to see this screen quite often
Developed By Kadokawa Games
Published By NIS America
This Review is of the PS4 version of the game
The Story
The story follows Geoff a young man who is trying to become a citizen of the city Feste, along with his partner Vasily and his mentor Zeke, they take a simple bodyguard job for a woman named Anka, soon after they discover monsters with the power to destroy whats left of humanity, Geoff and the others will also discover that humanity themselves are just as dangerous as any monsters they will face.
Honestly there isn’t a lot I can say about Natural Doctrines story, as it gets quite complicated as it goes on, but it does feature quite a few different things, Politics and slight racism issues that pretty much make the story the best thing about the game.
Prepare to see this screen quite often
The Gameplay
Natural Doctrines greatest flaw comes in the biggest part of any game, firstly the interface is a complete mess, there are words and numbers and percentages everywhere, sometimes the words appear upside down, depending on where enemies are positioned. At its core Natural Doctrine is a Strategy RPG describing the game is nearly impossible when it comes to gameplay, I have no idea what I am doing most of the time, even after reading the tutorial multiple times I don’t understand how to perform certain attacks, I usually just have to stick to using basic attacks which end up getting me killed, it doesn’t help as well that animations are slow and re-watching them is like watching paint dry. I have to admit something now that I’m not proud of, for the first time ever in a game I HAD to switch the game to Easy mode, I found this game too hard and boring that I honestly couldn’t keep playing for lengthy periods of time, the game never seemed to change either, battles were always dull and seemed to drag on and on, does this game have some good points to it? Yes, first the RPG elements in the game are quite good, leveling up comes naturally and works well, you can choose different skills depending on which character you’re upgrading, and secondly getting new equipment was always fun, I’m a type of gamer who gets a kick out of becoming better equipped in games and Natural Doctrine seems to do a good job in that regard, however it still doesn’t help with the difficulty of the battles.
The Sound
For what it is the Soundtrack of the game is quite good, it’s usually pretty quiet though but for the most part it’s still quite good. For Voice acting, the game is mixed, the main character Geoff is voiced by Kyle Hebert who played Adult Gohan in DBZ, as well as Kamina in Gurren Lagann. he performs his job quite well, Vasily on the other hand is incredibly annoying, she has one of those annoying peppy and high-pitched voices that so many characters seem to have in these games.
I couldn’t find any music on the game so you guys get a picture. Enjoy…
The Graphics
This game is not a massive release, such as Assassins Creed or Call of Duty, so don’t expect AMAZING visuals but I do find the visuals appealing, at least when it comes to the character models, environments on the other hand are very poor, mostly being very dull and colorless as well as blurry and blocky, something I found very interesting is that you can change the character’s portrait from Realistic to Anime styled which I honestly found very cool, obviously I went with Anime, since it’s one of my favorite pastimes.
Lasting Appeal
Natural Doctrine is about standard length, the game spans around 30 hours depending on your style of play. As per usual there is a full set of trophies to acquire so trophy hunters could get a good bit of time out of this game.
Final Thoughts
I had high hopes for Natural Doctrine before it’s release but they were all crushed once I started the game, The story while being very good, and the Soundtrack being decent, just can’t hide the fact that the combat is one of the worst I’ve ever seen, as well as the whole game being mess, if you’re looking for a good SRPG there are a ton of other games to try, I would recommend Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics
My Score – 4/10
The Good
The Bad
Natural Doctrine is available now for PS3, PS Vita and PS4. Thanks go to Reef Entertainment for supplying the game and assets used in this review. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on this review in the comments section below and be sure to stay tuned to UGNN for all your gaming news and reviews and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter & YouTube.
Review By Jonnie Dixon
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