Harvester of Eyes checked out the strategy RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Review: Children of the Zodiarcs – A Gritty Deckbuilding SRPG!

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Gamespace has reviewed the tactical RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Our Review of Children of Zodiarcs

We don’t see them around as much anymore, but tactical RPGs are still alive and well; just far fewer in number. Every couple years, I still go back and play Final Fantasy Tactics or the original Disgaea for a trip down memory lane, and every now and then a pleasant surprise pops up here in the present to scratch that itch. This year, that appears to be Children of Zodiarcs from Cardboard Utopia and Square Enix, and it’s a very welcome addition to the tactical RPG genre. Our Children of Zodiarcs review…

Life In Lumus

The fictional world of Lumus is one that’s seen better days. Much of the populous has fallen victim to the corruption and greed of corruption of nobles who play their political and economic games in praise of the almighty wealth that lines their pockets. But, with a drought upon the lower classes all it takes it a spark to ignite a flame. That flame comes in the form of Nahmi and her allies as they wage a hit-and-run war on the Toran Empire who enforces the boot-to-neck mentality against the people.

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To Build A Fire

While far from perfect, I do hope that Children of Zodiarcs is going to be its own spark-to-kindling to reignite public interest in the genre. We have no shortage of RPGs, but tactical RPGs have always been the least recognized, overlooked, and as time went by their releases slowed from a slow drip to barely a trickle. The card and dice system goes against the traditional norms, but ultimately it gives the game more character that allows it to stand out not just for itself but shows the genre is still capable of doing new things and still very much worth paying attention to. Now, if they could just get that mess of a story under control…

SCORE: 8.0

PROS: 

• Blends the old school tactical RPG formula with a new card and dice system

• difficult enough to challenge but not overwhelm

CONS: 

• The story is a mess littered with translation errors and odd dialogue choices

• no feeling of comradery among party members

TechRaptor has reviewed Children of Zodiarcs:

Children of Zodiarcs Review - Turn Based Tragedy

A success story from Steam’s much maligned Greenlight program, Children of Zodiarcs managed to outshine the crowd in that hit and miss marketplace, gaining backing through Kickstarter and with a little help from Square Enix’s indie publishing label Square Enix Collective along the way. The title relies heavily on the unique hook of its tactical SRPG combat system, which is essentially a digital reimagining of a tabletop game. In this game, a hand of cards and a roll of the dice will respectively determine what your attack options are and how successful they will be. This engaging system is framed by a world of deceit and violence where the rich oppress the poor with an iron fist and the poor, in turn, do what they must to survive.

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It’s convenient devices like this that help sum up my main issue with Children of Zodiarcs.  The world and story surrounding it are shallow. The depth of the utterly brilliant turn-based combat system only highlights this. If you’re a fan of Strategy RPGs or turn based games I wouldn’t let that put you off trying this game out for yourself though, the combat is worth it and you might even find more to love in Lumus than I did. I can’t fault the core gameplay here, I just wish the rest of the package was as appealing.

Summary

One to try for fans of strategy RPGs, Children of Zodiarcs has a solid combat system with an interesting hook. The game is let down by a poorly told story that fails to satisfy but it does have it's moments nonetheless.

Pros

• Enjoyable Combat System
• Engaging Deckbuilding
• Nice Art Style
• Great Soundtrack

Cons

• Weak Story
• Unlikable Characters
• Unnecessary Padding
• Repetitive Missions

Thanks Farflame!

The Buttonsmashers checked out the tactical RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Children of Zodiarcs Review

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A story-driven, tactical RPG set in the fantasy realm of Lumus; a world divided by affluence and poverty. Take control of Nahmi and her fellow outcasts, utilising a brand new deck and dice based combat system to strike a blow to the noble Lords’ and Ladies’ unquenchable thirst for profit.

Gamereactor has reviewed the tactical RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Children of Zodiarcs

The dice rolling, card playing tactical-RPG from Cardboard Utopia is finally upon us.

Children of Zodiarcs is a turn-based tactical RPG, using a hand of slowly unlocking and expanding cards as player character abilities, and a handful of virtual dice which modify the card's effects. On the outset the game feels big, but both the unusual story and the battles themselves wind up feeling a bit more intimate than you might expect, for good and ill.

Battles in Zodiarcs take place in sections of territory with obstacles and enemies placed on a movement grid. Each side in a conflict takes turns moving and attacking, with win/loss conditions being the only real outcome, other than perhaps a few conversations between characters at key moments being cut off if a character is defeated too early. The terrain is somewhat climbable, sometimes with different avenues for engaging foes. It is unclear sometimes which characters have line of sight, and how far one of your attacks can reach on the vertical plane, making some advanced planning a lot more difficult than it should be. All character abilities are expressed in cards, dealt in hands of up to seven from a custom deck of abilities unique to each character. When used, players roll dice to activate abilities, alter damage, heal, draw cards, get an extra attack, and block melee retaliation damage, with the dice that are rolled equipped beforehand out of a pool of dice reserved for each character.

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In addition to one autosave slot and four manual saves, the game has one save slot that allows you to save mid-battle, and strangely that slot still exists even after the scenario is beaten, allowing you a chance to try it again if you wanted to, until it is overwritten. It's important to manually save if you ever intend to go back, though, to preserve your overall progress. The scenarios on Normal difficulty are not crushingly difficult but often challenging, requiring the player to think about how far they advance, not just who they should hit first. Hard difficulty is, however, pretty overwhelming, and you'll likely be reloading a lot if you try it.

Patch 1.0.1 for Children of Zodiarcs has been released:

PATCH NOTES: Patch 1.0.1 is now available!

Howdy, players.

Patch 1.0.1 is now live for Children of Zodiarcs. Here are the patch notes:

Tweaks and adjustments

• Fast forward enemy turn feature has been added. Hold the buttons down shown in the top-right corner to speed up the game during Enemy Phase.
• Difficulty adjustments in Story Missions 4 and 5. Be aware that if you have Suspend saves in missions 4 or 5, these difficulty changes will not show up. Your manual and Auto save slots are fine so if you want these changes, start missions 4 or 5 from the beginning.
• Tweaked XP system so it's now easier to level-up your under-leveled heroes. Now when you do 0 HP damage, you will get proper amount of XP.
• Reduced the strength of the beige background during dialogue

Bug fixes

• Fixed the bug where enemies in Story Mission 8 do not level scale in Hard difficulty
• Fixed the bug where if Xero is heavily under-leveled and he gains XP from attacking /counter-attacking an enemy, he gains thousands of XP and it takes several minutes for all of it to count up. However, if he has massive amounts of XP overflow, it will still count it each time but it will slowly deplete each time he gains XP and levels up. It's not a perfect solution, but with this bug fix it'll eventually end and he'll return to normal.
• Fixed duplicate text in the art book (Collector's Edition / Upgrade only)

Dual Shockers has reviewed the tactical RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Children of Zodiarcs Review — An SRPG With the Heart of the Cards

Cardboard Utopia aims to mix the SRPG genre with board game mechanics in their story-driven title Children of Zodiarcs.

What does it take to stand out in the strategy RPG genre? The SRPG genre has more or less held the same systems and mechanics since it first began and was popularized with the release of games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. Since then, many following SRPG games seem to mimic these battle systems without adding that gripping element that made those titles so memorable: the story. However, that might have changed with Children of Zodiarcs.

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Children of Zodiarcs is the game that story-driven SRPG fans have been waiting for. It’s evident when playing through that the developers at Cardboard Utopia are passionate about delivering a product that could potentially fall in line with some of the genre’s greats. However, by adding unique mechanics and a focus on character growth, Children of Zodiarcs stands out as simply a great SRPG.

Score: 9/10

The story-driven tactical RPG Children of Zordiarcs has been released today:

Children of Zodiarcs

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Children of Zodiarcs is a story-driven, tactical RPG set in the fantasy realm of Lumus; a world divided by affluence and poverty. Take control of Nahmi and her fellow outcasts, utilising a brand new deck and dice based combat system to strike a blow to the noble Lords’ and Ladies’ unquenchable thirst for profit.

Story
Professional thieves on the trail of an ancient relic, the group infiltrates the glittering halls of a corrupt noble’s private chambers in pursuit of their target, narrowly escaping the wrath of the city guards at every turn. Desperate to find an escape, they seek refuge in the city’s seamy slums and brave the sunless pits of the underworld. Out to get them are heavily armed city guards, rival gangs and psychotic families of subterranean cannibals. Abandoned by the system and used by selfish criminals, these young companions will be forced to come to terms with their own reality. But be warned - in the world of Children of Zodiarcs, no one escapes unscathed!

KEY FEATURES:

Combat Cards
Each of your party members’ attacks & abilities are bound to combat cards. Drawing different cards during battle provides you with ever changing combat possibilities every time you fight!

Empower Cards through Dice
Once you’ve chosen your attack, physics based dice allow you to roll for bonuses! Favoring symbols over numbers, these dice deliver attack, defence, healing, and special ability modifiers.

Influencing Lady Luck
To add yet more layers of stratagem to Children of Zodiarcs, you can craft dice to favour your play style, and re-roll up to two dice every time you throw. You need not fear being at Lady Luck’s mercy!

A World Full of Characters
Along the way you’ll come to learn about Nahmi - stolen from her homeland as a child, Brice - forced to survive on the mean streets of Torus; Zirchhoff - a charismatic bandit leader who employs young orphans to do his bidding: as well as many more mischief makers.

Building Decks
Each playable character comes with their own customisable deck. This allows you to tailor their skillset to the types of attacks and abilities you want to have in your hand during the heat of combat.

A Fully Orchestrated Score
Children of Zodiarcs’ music captures the feel of tactical RPG classics with its fully orchestrated soundtrack composed by the award winning team at Vibe Avenue.

Join Nahmi and her team in a harrowing tale of the downtrodden’s struggle for survival in a world where mystical forces are overlooked; and the people in power are solely concerned with profit. Do you have what it takes to overthrow a corrupt system?

Worthplaying checked out the upcoming tactical J-RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

PS4/PC Preview - 'Children of Zodiarcs'

Children of Zodiarcs is a tactical JRPG with collectible cards and craftable dice combined with classic tactical gameplay, rich story, and memorable music.
A genre usually reserved for home consoles and handhelds, the Japanese style of strategy-RPG has seen some recent action on the PC. Most of the games are ports of older titles from the PlayStation family, but the representation is appreciated nonetheless. In a few weeks, we'll see Children of Zodiarcs, a game that breaks the genre mold in several different ways. For one, it comes from Canada and is published by Square Enix under its Collective umbrella that supports indie titles. It also happens to be released day and date with its console counterpart, and the gameplay mechanics make this feel distinct.

The story has a number of beats you'd expect from anything influenced by Japanese storytelling methods. You play as a band of thieves, mostly comprised of kids from the slums who want to rob the rich and kill anyone in their way. The specific targets of wealth are the Zodiarcs, relics from an ancient time that grant the user power if they know how to wield it. As in many RPGs, the characters are engaging. There's a caring brute who acts as the caretaker of the kids, and there's a fan of the thief who's gotten herself in a sticky situation. The concerns of the two main children give the story some depth in small snippets without being preachy.
[...]
Based on the battle system alone, Children of Zodiarcs provides an interesting spin to the strategy RPG. Though you aren't expecting crazy combo action or complicated teamwork when taking out enemies, the use of dice and card mechanics adds enough of a difference to make things feel complex while remaining accessible. It'll be interesting to see how the final product fares when the game releases.

God is a Geek has checked out the upcoming tactical RPG Children of Zodiarcs:

Children of Zodiarcs is a tactical RPG with a big difference

Far from child’s play

Children of Zodiarcs started life as a Kickstarter campaign from a small group of industry veterans and pros that have decided to branch out on their own and create a passion project, as many nostalgia-inducing throwback games to be. Zodiarcs positions itself as a tactical RPG mixed with dashes of collectible card gaming and table top dice rolling. Not a mix that is completely alien nowadays but certainly something of a challenge to get right when you consider the amount of balancing required for each of these types of games on their own. Overall, though, Zodiarcs seems to be doing a respectable job of it.

Narratively the game delivers a compelling story so far and provides just enough world-building without taking away control from you for too long. This is a god-send for this kind of game because the narrative is delivered in the same way that Final Fantasy Tactics – clearly a huge influence – and Fire Emblem with non-interactive sections of storytelling preluding each battle. While this is a wholly expected way of delivering story in such a game, it does mean that if you have little interest in the combat elements of the game there’s not a whole lot else to draw you in at this point of development.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

The crowdfunded RPG Children of Zodiarcs will be released on July 18, 2017:

Release Day Announcement Trailer

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KillerGymSox is showing some Children of Zodiarcs gameplay:

Children of Zodiarcs Kickstarter Beta

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I decided to show off a little bit of the Children of Zodiarcs Beta developed by Cardboard Utopia. The Beta is a work in progress and does not reflect the quality of the final product.

According to this new teaser trailer the Strategy RPG Children of Zodiarcs will be out in early 2017:

Children of Zodiarcs Teaser

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The successfully funded J-RPG Children of Zodiarcs is close to reach more stretch goals:

Hello hello, everyone!  Jason here, once again.

You have all been so amazing. We are almost at the $135,000 CAD mark for the Underworld Arena. We’re already starting to work out some cool ideas on how to work it into the game’s lore. Fun times!

Tomorrow (unless something happens), I’ll have nice update for you. Erica has been working hard on concept art for one of the Torus districts. It’s looking really great and I can’t wait to show you some of her process that got her to the final piece :)

We still have a lot of cool stretch goals, so please help to spread the word about Children of Zodiarcs! The more stretch goals we reach, the more we can put into the game :)

[...]

Children of Zodiarcs has met its Kickstarter funding goal.

More information.

Cliqist features a short preview of tactical JRPG Children of Zodiarcs.  CoZ is doing really well on Kickstarter right now, and is being backed by the Square Enix Collective.

Children of Zodiarcs begins its Kickstarter pitch by asking “Do you wish there were more indie games inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force, Tactics Ogre, and the best of Tactical JRPGs?”  As a matter of fact, I do. I also like “story-driven” games with “unique, memorable characters” so my interest levels are high for this one.

It’s an interesting twist on the use of dice in many RPGs where your roll determines success or failure. Here, the dice “reflect varying degrees of success and alternate outcomes”. Once you’ve rolled your dice you can then pick the ones you would like to re-roll in order to fine-tune your bonuses. The idea, of course, is to try to move the emphasis away from luck and towards tactical planning, which makes sense in a tactical JRPG.

It’s an interesting twist on the use of dice in many RPGs where your roll determines success or failure. Here, the dice “reflect varying degrees of success and alternate outcomes”. Once you’ve rolled your dice you can then pick the ones you would like to re-roll in order to fine-tune your bonuses. The idea, of course, is to try to move the emphasis away from luck and towards tactical planning, which makes sense in a tactical JRPG.

More information.

Children of Zodiarcs has premiered on Steam Greenlight.  It's a tactical JRPG reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics, with the addition of fun tabletop-style cards and dice added to battles.  It will hit Kickstarter on January 20.

Thanks, Black Rune!

Update: Apologies for the double post.

Children of Zodiarcs is a story-driven, single-player Tactical JRPG that combines traditional tactical gameplay with the thrill of collectible cards and craftable dice!

Children of Zodiarcs was inspired by our deep love of Tactical JRPGs, namely Final Fantasy Tactics and the 16-bit Shining Force games, as well as a love of playing board games and collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering. We decided to bring these passions together to make a game that would resonate with fellow fans of the genre, as well as to push the envelope in fun and exciting ways.

We're launching a Kickstarter on January 20th, 2016! Click here for FB event!

STORY

At the heart of an evil empire, a group of young outsiders rebel against the corrupt system that holds them down.

Professional thieves on the trail of an ancient relic, the group infiltrates the glittering halls of a corrupt noble’s private chambers in pursuit of their target, narrowly escaping the wrath of the city guards at every turn. Desperate to find an escape, they seek refuge in the city’s seamy slums and brave the sunless pits of the underworld. Out to get them are heavily armed city guards, rival gangs and psychotic families of subterranean cannibals. Abandoned by the system and used by selfish criminals, these young companions will be forced to come to terms with their own reality. But be warned - in the world of Children of Zodiarcs, no one escapes unscathed!

GAMEPLAY

For the combat in Children of Zodiarcs we wanted to utilize something traditional enough that fans would recognize, but to also use a dynamic system, new to the Tactical JRPGs genre.

Whereas past games in the genre had static lists of attacks and abilities that you brought into battle, Children of Zodiarcs uses a system that pulls the experience of tension, anticipation, and adaptation from cards and dice.

In Children of Zodiarcs, cards take the place of all abilities and attacks, drawn from your custom build decks during battle. This means that your strategy has to change on the fly and you are constantly challenged. This also means that while luck is a factor in combat, it’s a factor that you influence through deck building and dice customization. While you will know WHAT you have in your deck, you won’t know WHEN you’ll get it, making each card draw an opportunity for new strategies to emerge.

Our dice are symbol-based, with each symbol having a different effect on the outcome. But like your decks you will also have the opportunity to customize and craft the dice your heroes bring into combat, effectively stacking the odds in your favor.

Want a dice with more swords for stronger attacks? Equip one. Don’t have one? Craft it using collected loot die as ingredients in a recipe.

The ability to build your deck of cards and customize your dice makes combat in Children of Zodiarcs about how well you can adapt to changing situations. It took us months of prototyping to find the perfect balance between tactics and influenced luck, but we have been consistently playtesting with Tactical JRPGs fans, and they are excited about what we have to offer.

The strategy RPG Children of Zodiarcs needs your vote on Steam Greenlight:

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Children of Zodiarcs is a story-driven, single-player Tactical JRPG that combines traditional tactical gameplay with the thrill of collectible cards and craftable dice!

Children of Zodiarcs was inspired by our deep love of Tactical JRPGs, namely Final Fantasy Tactics and the 16-bit Shining Force games, as well as a love of playing board games and collectable card games like Magic: The Gathering. We decided to bring these passions together to make a game that would resonate with fellow fans of the genre, as well as to push the envelope in fun and exciting ways.