Combat Specialists

Combat Specialists presents some interesting ideas, but it lacks polish. Although the current demo is only a half hour long, it is plagued by an excessive number of spelling and grammatical errors, some of which are minor, such as mixing up “it’s” and “its”, but more significant errors, such as a door being “ceiled shut” and the phrase “we’re are”, are also common. The lack of both a healing spell and an inn is quickly felt as enemies hit hard and spells cost large amounts of MP, meaning players will likely spend a significant portion of the demo simply grinding for money to buy consumables for the boss fight at the end. However, this issue leads to a larger, overarching problem with Combat Specialists – it feels tedious.

In its current form, Combat Specialists suffers from poor pacing more than anything else. The game opens with white text on a black background giving the basic setting, but the names of so many different factions and organizations are given that it quickly becomes nearly impossible to remember them. Next, the game jumps into a lengthy cutscene, but even after this cutscene ends the player still does not gain control as a tutorial, which has text which is hard to read, pops up explaining the controls and the player seems to be forced to wait for it to fade away on its own; it takes about six or seven minutes total before the player actually gains control. Once control is actually granted, the majority of the game takes place in a rather bland mine, the only exception being the first screen immediately outside the mine where players can buy consumables and a nice sword from a merchant and talk to some NPC’s, and most of the time spent in this mine will consist of running back and forth between the first three rooms to flip switches in a specific order to open a door. Although the mine has a nice ‘haunted’ effect which has ghosts appearing and disappearing, touching any of these ghosts does nothing and instead most battles are completely random. Many basic elements also just feel slow, such as movement speed even while running, the time it takes to open a treasure chest, and the significant amount of steps a player can take before actually getting into a random battle.

Combat itself is a bit of a mixed bag as well. Needing to rely upon consumables for healing is on its own not necessarily a bad concept, but even the weakest of enemies hits for nearly as much damage as a normal potion can heal and most spells cost 100 MP while a Mana Liquid only restores 300 MP; since most fights only reward about 50-80 gold and both Mana Liquids and High Potions cost 150 while the only equipment upgrade costs 1200, grinding for money quickly feels like a chore. Each character has a bar which fills up upon dealing and receiving damage and, similar to a Limit Break, grants access to a very powerful attack once it’s full, but a steep cost of 500 MP means the only worthwhile time to actually use these attacks is during a boss fight. While there are some interesting spells, such as the ability to scan an enemy and another which always steals a normal potion from an enemy, these are both tied to the same character while the four abilities the other party member possessed by the end of the demo were purely offensive in nature, three of which were fire-based. Despite having an ATB system, combat feels sluggish as enemies won’t attack while a character’s turn is up, all spells have a cast time, and the normal attack animation for either party member takes about two or three seconds, which becomes quite noticeable as the ATB bars stop filling while an attack is going off. Although combat has some significant issues at this point, there are still some enjoyable aspects, such as spells being interruptible if a character gets hit hard while casting and the demo contains an enemy type which is significantly less common than other types, but also stronger and more rewarding, so the potential for more rare spawn minibosses is an appealing one.

There are, of course, also some aspects of Combat Specialists which are simply good. While the setting of a mine was probably a poor choice for a demo, the aesthetics are great overall. The graphics come from a wide variety of sources, but fit together nicely and battle animations, with the exception of the rather stiff normal attacks, look great; enemies even animate differently when they are low on health or when they are in the middle of casting spells. The music and sound effects also come from various sources, and many of them are probably recognizable, but they consistently feel like appropriate compliments to the segments in which they are used. Somewhat surprisingly, even though the demo does a poor job of introducing the game’s world as a whole, it does a significantly better job in terms of introducing the protagonists, Dorius and Moriaty, of just what their job as ‘combat specialists’ entails, and of introducing a character who will likely be the main antagonist. Not to mention, even though the concept of ‘super soldiers with magical abilities’ is not a particularly unique one, it’s still usually a rather enjoyable one.

In the end, Combat Specialists is a game which has the potential to be great when it is fully released, especially if all of the planned systems not yet in the demo are implemented well, but only if a significantly greater amount of care and attention to detail are given to it in the future.