The Tenth Line is a sideview platformer/turn-based JRPG, a commercial project created by Deltree, earlier known for The Reconstruction series (which I haven't played yet), and involving some other people like Keith Burgun (who has had a few game design articles of his translated in Russian, to an intrigued, if polarized, response.)

I'll preface this review by admitting it marks an unfortunate break from my long-standing policy to always finish the game in question. Tenth Line demo became an exception to this, as it managed to consistently overheat my laptop's GPU in its third (and probably final?) area. True, my laptop is nearly seven years old, so I don't fault the game for it. Most people have better tech and won't experience the issues I had. Whether they'll be inclined to stick with it for longer then I had might be a different matter.

Gameplay

The main problem with The Tenth Line is that in its current state, it feels hopelessly disjointed, in every way possible. It is certainly an ambitious game, and you can feel the effort put into every part of it - just as well as you can feel those parts cancelling each other out. Essentially, The Tenth Line has the exploratory gameplay of a Metroidvania platformer and the turn-based JRPG combat. You go through the platforming levels, regularly switching between your characters to get past a certain obstacle or get bonus items only one character can reach. Whenever you run into the enemies, you're transitioned into the turn-based battle screen. This could've worked, but not in the way it's implemented here.

For instance, what usually distinguishes action platformers from other genres with the sideview perspective, such as brawlers, is the sense of speed and mobility as you go through the level. One thing people often overlook about the classical Mario is that it wasn't always pits and pipes: its worlds regularly began with a nice stretch of perfectly flat ground to get you up to speed. Levels in the Tenth Line are aggressively cramped, and you are hard-pressed to take ten steps without running into an enemy and getting into a battle often lasting several minutes, killing any sense of momentum before it even began. This is especially true if the enemies possess a ranged attack, as they often do. The aforementioned third area, Indigo Tines (a dreary forest at night-time) even has magical enemies who can both snipe you from outside the screen, and whose attack is self-guiding and will go through obstacles: this includes shooting directly downwards through the platform they're standing on, with zero warning (no charging animation or anything), so it's basically impossible to dodge the first time round, and forces you to start the combat from inferior position. The sneak attacks that supposedly give you combat advantages are outright impossible for such foes, and often rely on blind luck for the rest: when failing and getting hit provides such a disadvantage, it's rarely worth bothering.



Cramped levels cripple the metroidvania elements as well: sure, it's very nice that each character has an on-map ability correlating with their personality. In the demo, the headstrong Princess will push (jarringly out-of-place) solid white stone blocks for others to jump on, roguish anthropomorphic fox Rik (called a kobold in this world, appropriating the term from the frail, dart-throwing, too-poisonous-to-eat bastards of D'n'D and Nethack's fame) will throw rocks to knock down wild fruit, and Black Dragomage Tox can destroy certain obstacles through the right kind of elemental breath (fire on brambles, but poison onto thick roots, for instance.) However, none of this requires any genuine exploring to find, as they're all in plain view, and barely a full screen apart from each other. Obtaining items in that way feels almost obligatory, and using the abilities turns from a bonus activity to busywork.

Nevertheless, there's a clear design reason why levels couldn't have been made longer: it's simply not a good one. Essentially, the three characters you have are always present on screen as separate entities: speeding off as one leaves the other two standing in place, and you need to manually take control of them to get them to catch up. This is not merely there for the aforementioned environmental puzzles, but plays a notable role in combat too. The further you leave your allies behind, the longer it would take for them to join you in combat, and being reckless makes you weather the first, or perhaps even the second, turn of battle all alone. Obviously, longer levels would've made the running to-and-fro already present outright interminable. The burning question: why not simply treat the three of them as one, with the "Switch Character" button simply changing which character is currently rendered on screen and gets to use their on-map abilities?

Certainly, the approach The Tenth Line currently uses feels more realistic...until you run into your first enemy, that is. Then, you'll quickly discover that what looks like one ruffian on map is invariably upwards of a dozen in practice: I think the combat screen supports a maximum of 15 enemies at one time (which you'll see often), and the dreaded offscreen reinforcements can be even larger. Few players would consider such drastic dissonance between the way their character and the enemies function a good thing. Sure, they'll accept it when they benefit as a result (no-one asks for the enemies in Darkest Dungeon to be given Death's Door saves, after all), but seeing the rules rigged against you like this is frustrating at best, and infuriating at worst.

It's especially jarring because Deltree and co. did try a novel approach to making the level-up and upgrade system less abstract then usual and better integrated with other gameplay functions. At its core, it's much like Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid...




except it's a) much more compact, for obvious reasons; b) not connected between the characters; there are no locks you can bypass to start learning other character's skills, which is just as well and c) moving forward on it requires both level-up points AND items to place in the empty slots. While you could do that in the FFX, too, you didn't have the opportunity to even try filling everything until the endgame; here, this is system's bread-and-butter, and the items are everything to be found in your inventory, such as actual bread, water bottles, rotten fish, etc. with different items giving differing bonuses to health, defence, attack and such. It is a clever system, but it's again at odds with the rest of the game. Another thing best platformer/Metroidvanias are known for is the way the upgrades are few in number, but meaningful in effect, both by letting you access areas you couldn't earlier, and by changing your relationship with entire enemy classes: the way Spelunky's Spike Boots let you crush basically everyone you jump on, even the carnivorous plants that instantly killed you earlier, is a good example. This upgrade system is all about incremental changes that require a seemingly disproportionate amount of of menu-based actions. Here are some tutorial screens introducing the various system:







One thing I haven't mentioned about the game before is how intrusive its tutorials are. Not only are they obviously this long and text-heavy, but they literally require you to press the exact button it wants at the time to advance past them. It's extremely discouraging when a supposedly PC game is so controller-centered in practice, it almost never lets you the escape button for its traditional purposes, such as leaving the menu. The main problem, though, is the timing. When these walls of texts are dumped onto you, none of these systems feel important or necessary. Enemies in the starting area (and in the one Shivbury fight), are all easily crushed without bothering with such. Indigo Tines, though, suddenly spikes in difficulty, forcing you to try and look back to what these systems mean...only to discover not much changes anyway. Here's a typical battle at the start:



This an optimistic scenario, where you get the first attack. Otherwise, you'll get the screen filled with all 15 of them, and because by that point these enemies are usually too durable to get uniformly dispatched in a single turn (like it was in the first area, the Tangle), the game will get to that point regardless. There's also a ridiculous optional "boss fight" against a wolf pack, which starts at full strength and refills itself completely several times. In all, with this many enemies that attack at the same time during their turn, upgrades providing you with +2 Defence or +3 HP feel meaningless. Sure, it does change something in the long run, but it's just hard to detect, and to get excited about. The various "training" upgrades that apparently use up an item to increase some stat by 2 or 3 and reduce another by a similar amount while they're active feel so self-defeating that I never bothered. Stuff that gives Tox's bonus elemental breath attack abilities (in addition to his default dark magic) is cool, sure, as is the ability to go into battle with one type of breath, then eat something else equipped into the pouch to change it. The problem, though, is that you have no idea what elemental alignment the enemies are until you actually do fight; no NPC or other such in-game source tells you this about the enemies in the incoming area AND even if you do know, you can't reliably judge the composition of the enemy party from their on-map sprite, as only one is shown and there are usually several present.

Really, though, even if all the above wasn't an issue, the actual combat is still not something I would enjoy much. Sure, there are nice things about it, like the card-styled interface that cycles through the abilities in order, or the eventual introduction of assist characters. There's some synergy between different abilities, and after fighting through the same respawning encounter above for the fifth time, I did figure out a way to clear it much more efficiently. Scanning is a free action AND the description you get of the enemy is completely different depending on the character, which is really cool (same goes for inventory items, too.) Nevertheless, the reliance of large waves of cannon fodder undoes practically all the charm. When you have 10-15 enemies on screen, all of which are weak individually and can only do 2,3,5 points of damage each with one or two equally pathetic attacks, skills that only target one creature feel next to useless alongside those that attack the entire column. Skills that target a single row of three are somewhere in between the two, but are sadly limited to the front row, which already receives a lot of damage, so it often feels like you're wasting attacks by not being able to target the backline.

All of these skills also require some kind of QTE to be entered to work. The mechanic can be pretty cool in games like OMNIS: The Erias Line (sadly, still only a demo after a failed Kickstarter) or Dreams of a Hero. Here, however, everyone on your side executes their actions at once, so the only QTE that works is one where each character only ever uses one button, and you can hardly go wrong with just pressing those three as fast as possible regardless of what the prompts ask you. Defence is similar: sure, there's technically timing involved, but when 10-15 creatures all decide to attack at once, some sending a spray of magic darts that hit everyone, making sense of it is fool's hope. How well your characters come out of that phase usually depends much more on who the AI chose to target then your performance.

Enemy's turn is also when the reinforcements arrive. The mechanic initially appeared during the first boss battle, and I naively assumed that was all his doing and the reinforcements will stop once he's dead. Sadly, it turns out that nothing at all can impact on how many will arrive: you can even wipe out the entire column of enemies in one turn, then see it refilled the next. Every combat thus becomes a grind to hold out and cut through the cannon fodder until the goddamn exclamation mark behind each column is finally greyed out; hardly fun, especially when you have no idea how many reinforcements there actually are until they decide to stop. Perhaps some will enjoy such combat, but I have my doubts about its viability in an era where Darkest Dungeon sold in excess of a million copies, and there are also smaller games like Halcyon 6: Starbase Commander, which I started playing in earnest after giving up on this demo, and its "JRPG in space!" combat completely annihilates what's on offer here.

To round off this section, I should mention there is a weird kind of shopping system I didn't get to use because of the scripted ambush driving me out of town, as well as the minigame, "Quad Pro Quo", which I haven't tried, but is apparently so robust it's planned to be distributed as stand-alone browser/mobile game. I guess it's a nice idea, and there are two instances where you can engage in it in the town of Shivbury, but by that point, I was more concerned by other happenings.

Storyline



The main cast of The Tenth Line are the arrogant, often spoiled Princess (who is not given a name for some reason) of a faraway foreign kingdom Easania, which sounds rather boring in spite of its Orwellian name, who was kidnapped by the Shepherds of Apocalypse cult to be sacrificed, and then runs into the roguish, practical kobold Rik and wise and distant (practically Asperger's like) Dracomage Tox. The two are down on their luck and resort to eating scraps and sleeping in basements (though Tox's robe seems immaculately clean in spite of that) and Rik decides delivering her back home in exchange for a royal reward was just the break they needed.

This is pretty much all the information given to us in the intro, yet there is far more text involved, which mainly drags the same few points out. It also happens to be a truly slow text; you can force it to display all at once, thankfully, but if you don't do that



Then this takes 27 seconds to display



And this, a full minute.

Beyond that, though, it quickly becomes obvious that The Tenth Line's plot is initially driven by its least interesting character. Princess' only defining traits are a desire to get home, and her royal arrogance: from pointedly addressing the duo as beastmen several times in the opening, to the various complaints about food, shoes & accommodation in Shivbury that are tiresome to sit through. I suppose the intention is to start off with a clearly flawed lead and set her up for a lesson by the end, but it is still wholly uncompelling. I suggest the one way to make this better would be to move the timeline back a little, and start the game with her actual kidnapping and escape. That way, at least, we would get to experience firsthand what Easania is like as a country, what the King and the rest of Princess' family were like, and just form all-around connections needed to care.

In contrast, her companions are not only more likeable and easier to follow, but also act as a window into all the lore surrounding the beast-folk, which is by far the most interesting part of The Tenth Line. Just like the item and scan descriptions, the optional conversations in Shivbury change completely depending on the character you're speaking as, and the result is great. Seeing the demeanors alter subtly or not so subtly depending on who the speaker addresses, the various attitudes to beastmen from full acceptance to mild stereotype and amused fascination for Rik (one girl believes kobolds cannot ever overcome their desert feline origins and live outside of packs, and is surprised when Rik is the exception; another, Sara the Sailor, memorably offers him the role of their ship's mascot.) Tox, meanwhile, is targeted for more clearly violent reactions, since the titular Ten Lines



Which can always be found in the menu, for your perusal.

..not so subtly imply his kind would lead to the end of the world. The lesser Lines apparently coming true is thus one plot hook for the future; another is the suggestion Tox will be their instrument (especially clear when the group stumbles onto the skull of a lynched black Dracomage, and after some grieving, Tox actually absorbs the dark power from it.) There are also already the discussions about the nature of the free will, though, and thus the hope the plot won't devolve down the same rails most "prophetic" stories do. After all, it's driving force is still the Princess and the faceless cult after her, who appear completely boring and one-dimensional, which makes the first Assist Character's motivation (to destroy the Cult) even more boring in turn.

A clear problem is that in the areas I've been to in the demo, there was not a single defined antagonist, which is really alarming given the amount of violence you do in the game. I already found it somewhat strange when the first few cultists were apparently killed off after a bit of generic, yet almost polite banter with the Beast Boys, yet this was a mere portent of what's to come. Simply put: you cut your way through dozens of bandits (many of them kobolds like Rik) to get to Shivbury, with absolutely no clear reason as to why they're there when their population outnumbers that of the only nearby town, why so many of them are attacking you when Tox and co. are so poor, and little explanation as to how Rik and Tox managed to get back and forth from the town normally. The first boss, "bandit leader", does not say a word, and so these mysteries persist, 50 or so dead bodies later.

After such body counts, the arguments about shoes and such are annoying, and verge on sociopathic, while the "hilarious" revelation from the Blacksmith that Princess had been using a decorative blade to cause such carnage is utterly infuriating. Like I said, things do not get better in the forest. There's perhaps the implication the enemies there are only out to get rid of dracomages like Tox and protect their territory, but this is flimsy regardless. The one question that was running through my mind during this section before my GPU stopped tolerating the going-ons was why so many Drakelings, the offspring of couplings between Lizardfolk and Dracomages, and thus presumably rare, would gather in such a place to die like this.

Aesthetics (art, design, and sound)



Best-looking image in the game.

Music and sounds are much like the rest of the game. They're fine, and you can tell the compositions have a fair range of instruments involved, with the first area theme incorporating birds' chirping, etc. Yet, the result is again wholly forgettable. Meanwhile, the graphics generally look very good. The menu/UI elements look cool, there's no doubt about that, and the busts are really well-drawn (though sometimes the expression poorly fits with what is being said). However, their detailed look does clash a with the more pixelised look of the characters on map, as well as the more hand-drawn style of the backgrounds.

The backgrounds themselves also look fine, as you can ascertain from the many screenshots above, and there's also the extra step of using multiple layers in foreground and background. Yet somehow, it never impresses as much I think was intended. Sure, very few people can do Darkest Dungeon-level art, and I didn't expect that. Heroine's Quest, however (now present on RMN as well!), is wholly pixel-art yet looks so much better, with every level screen feeling like a painting come to life. A recent commercial game, The Final Station, is made in the same engine as this and puts the "multiple layers" function to a truly striking effect. I'm not sure why this falls short. Perhaps it is the result of artstyle clash; perhaps the palette used makes everything feel a little smudged and indistinct, with few stand-out details. Somehow, even a giant spiked tentacle coiling and uncoiling in the far background (which no-one in the game is surprised by, or bothers to explain) manages to look routine, though perhaps this is more reflective of my attitude towards the game by then.

Conclusion



I have decided to go against my own rule and publish this review as is, partly because no-one else has stepped up by this point. After all (p)reviewing commercial games from site members like that is likely even more important then their "normal" projects, because the costs of failure are so much greater. I also still think that there's promise in this setting, and the team behind it can create something much better than the current mess of loosely connected events and systems.