My formative years were full of games from a variety of franchises. However, I remember very fondly spending time sitting down to play the GBA, DS, and 3DS games in the Fire Emblem franchise. Truth be told, when I saw the first bit of gameplay for Dark Deity last year, the nostalgia hit me in the face. I reviewed Dark Deity when it was released on PC and enjoyed myself quite a bit. However, when it was released on Switch I knew it would be well worth revisiting.

In Dark Deity, follow the story of a group of warriors who are plucked from humble beginnings to be conscripted into King Varic’s army. The initial group of warriors you command led lives as students at the Brookstead Military Academy, but find themselves graduating prematurely. The King conscripted all students regardless of age or rank, hoping to enhance the strength of his forces. Seems standard for a game such as this, right? Young people being thrown into war and strife, led into adventures they never would have expected?

Over the course of Dark Deity’s storyline, you gain an army of 30 playable characters who can ultimately branch out into 54 classes total. Some characters will share class options, and they can be further customized still by weapon upgrades. Each character has 4 possible weapons they can use, and as they level and gain “Tier Tokens” you can upgrade their chosen weapon to build them into a certain playstyle.

Like some of the earlier Fire Emblem titles, you move from cutscenes directly into turn-based strategy battles. There isn’t any sort of exploration involved, and you’ll often find yourself going from cutscenes, into your camp menu, and directly into combat afterward. The camp menu is where you purchase items, see bond scenes between your characters, upgrade their stats, and so on.

Each class has certain strengths and weaknesses, so when you go to make an attack you can see a projection of how well (or how poorly) you will do against your foe. There are varying difficulty levels you can choose from, but regardless of difficulty, you’ll have to be strategic in how you plan your fights. Dark Deity offers a lot of freedom to customize your fighters, so there is room for many different playstyles.

Since the development team has been patching and updating the PC version, I’m pleased to see that the Nintendo Switch version has benefitted from that to some degree. I haven’t run into any of the bugs I ran into on the PC version. However, the loading times are just as pervasive as they were in the PC version, which is strange. I would have expected loading screens on Switch, but there are just as many on the PC version as there are here, which makes me wonder what optimization was done or even could be done to minimize this.

While I wouldn’t say the storyline is on par with a Fire Emblem game, I think there is a lot to love here. The art is colorful and well-drawn, the characters are interesting and unique, and overall there are a lot of great elements in Dark Deity. In fact, I would say that playing it on Switch definitely gives that old-school “Playing GBA on the way home from a long trip” vibe if you’re after something like that.

Nostalgia aside, if you like games like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc, then I think Dark Deity will be something good for you. It isn’t a perfect game, the loading screens get a little annoying and the gameplay gets a little repetitive, but it does what it is meant to. It is definitely an Indie gem that has a pretty great home on Nintendo Switch.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Dark Deity was provided by Freedom Games for this review.

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Dark Deity

$24.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Lots of Progression Systems
• Great Tactical Combat
• Variable Difficulty
• Fun Characters
• Pretty Art Style

Cons

• Lots of Loading Screens
• Mildly Repetitive Gameplay