The Guided Fate Paradox Review

The Japanese do enjoy a role playing game with an anime/manga look; The Guided Fate Paradox is one such game. You take on the role of high school student Renya Kagurazaka, who has become a god after winning a lottery in a mall. Renya must travel through the Copy World in order to affect changes in the Original World and make people’s wishes come true. Hopefully that wasn’t too complicated for you!

In essence The Guided Fate Paradox is a turn based role playing game where the majority of your actions take place on a grid. As you take turns with your partner to fight the turn based enemies if you’re successful at moving through the hordes of evil you collect various equipment for Renya and his companions to use which help uncover new attacks and spells. With all the dungeon crawling you begin to level up, although at times the difficulty level will jump randomly. One moment you’re taking down various monotonous enemies until you suddenly come up against a big curve in the difficulty. In one respect this helps the tactical side of The Guided Fate Paradox but on the other it does not feel natural with the jumps in difficulty.

It’s important to pace yourself accordingly, if you try to rush through a dungeon then there’s a good chance the enemies contained within may actually become strong enough to cause you serious problems and a lot of dying. The dungeons are randomly generated so you could argue no two dungeon tasks are the same but unfortunately the repetitive nature of the enemies can make things a tad on the frustrating side. Now you can die in The Guided Fate Paradox but to an extent that’s no bad thing (just make sure you save before you enter a dungeon), when you die you come back, remember you are God after all, you may lose some of the experience you have gained before you died but your ‘base’ points remain the same so you technically come back stronger.

The Guided Fate Paradox is an addictive game which is largely down to a reasonably interesting story and lots of level grinding and customisation. Detailed customization featuring of crazy armour, weapons, and more. If you want tank treads for legs or maybe race car legs then The Guided Fate Paradox allows you to do this. You lay out statistic tiles on a grid which can be improved upon by directing energy through them and taking advantage of the various Holy Artefacts that you come across.

Graphically The Guided Fate Paradox is a nice looking game, very bright and well-drawn whilst the dialogue is better than average, the voice overs don’t grate either so from a plot point of view is pleasant on the eyes and ears whilst taxing on the brain. Bear in mind that this is your standard Japanese RPG so if you’re not a fan of them then The Guided Fate Paradox is not the game to convert you. The other angels/characters you interact with and help you are a fairly forgettable bunch but they won’t annoy you, luckily the fairly witty dialogue helps break up the level grinding.

The Guided Fate Paradox is as interesting as it is strange. If you’re willing to put the time and effort whilst enjoying the somewhat witty humour then you will experience a very involving and at times very difficult game. You will of course lose several hours of your life to this mildly addictive and relatively entertaining game but there are very few opportunities in life when you get the chance to play God so you may as well give it a go in The Guided Fate Paradox!

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 3 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.