Customer Ratings & Reviews

Natural Doctrine is an enormous delight, but it comes with a lot of frustration due to its puzzling difficulty. Many battles will take a player about 45 minutes to a couple hours. It took me several nights to get past the first real dungeon and I am an avid strategy role playing gamer. This game is different though from the familiar and reminded me a bit of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter mixed with later entries in the Arc the Lad series. In a purely nostalgic way this game also reminded me of a Sega Saturn personal hidden gem, Mystaria: The Realms of Lore because of its fine game system but lack of other things (things both games share mentioned below) to really pull in the conventional gamer or add something different to the collection of a seasoned gamer. This game requires a lot of trial and error, but with some experimentation with the characters abilities battles start to become less of a mess. The trial and error factor could be good or bad depending on the type of player one is. Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, Baroque and Dark Souls (I & II) are similar in that vein, but one thing that is appealing about those games is that trial and error are part of the story. Dying is part of the story, game play and experience. Death is meta. That might have helped Natural Doctrine’s appeal, but death is like death in any role playing game, death equals a game over or a restart from an auto save point and even worse. Beyond that, if one character in the party dies it is game over. However, after a while this became part of the charm. I couldn’t sacrifice characters for the greater good nor could I be careless about one or two party member in a fight. The game challenged me as someone who enjoys strategy games and pushed me to change my tactics –tactics I use for almost every turn-based role playing type game and only tweak a bit here and there. The story felt very familiar but it is okay enough to not be turned off from the game, at least for me. The one thing that kept me entertained enough is that the story feels a bit more adult, even with its clichés and stereotypical cast. As I am in my late twenties, I find it harder and harder to relate to adolescent and cutesy characters in role playing games from Japan. The characters are flat if not static and anyone involved with the story will become more attached to a character by their abilities rather than their development in the story. However, for the right type of gamer, this game is pretty decent. For one it brings a gameplay experience that seems to be fading away. The harmony of this game is in its confusing/delightful intricate battle system, which as I mentioned before pushed me in the way I play these types of games. I am sure a player could try to grind away but that would take hours upon hours for a game that will feel anticlimactic at the end, I’m sure. The playability in this game is that if forced me to re-enter a battle and change my strategy and use items and techniques that I may never touch in other, similar types of games. This game is definitely a hidden gem, but it won’t be for everyone and those familiar with role playing games and strategy based role playing games may find some challenges, both annoying and satisfactory. Even with that said, it is a shame that this game is not as successful as it could be or as known because it provides a cross platform multiplayer experience between Play Station 3 and the Play Station 4. When I log on it is rare I see another player.