Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers Review

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers is your most basic JRPG experience: nothing flashy in terms of graphic with just enough intrigue in the story, no matter how cliche, to keep playing and see things through to the end. Set in a world where time doesn’t flow naturally, but rather has gears that spur it onward, Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers see an event where time stops completely and strange creatures made from everyday appliances attack people. In order to flip her world right side up, Sherry and Isaac, a robot created by her MIA father, must crank those gears and restart time.

Combat in Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers is turn-based, using the speed stat to determine who will take their turn first. Encounters are not random and you can see enemies walking around. Unlike other games in the genre, you can’t strike an enemy in order to gain a first strike in combat, rather you have to walk into them from behind. And I mean directly, from behind; if you’re even slightly off to the side, your advantage won’t register. It’s weird that it requires such accuracy and I gave up going for the first strikes early on as a result. During battle, you use basic attacks or skills and you can also guard or use items. Some attacks deal elemental damage, and you’re not required to “scan” an enemy before finding out what their weakness is. Combat isn’t particularly challenging, save a few fights against bosses.

None of the attack animations are particularly flashy—but then the same can be said about most aspects of Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers. There’s absolutely no voice acting, despite the presence of a few animated cutscenes, but the 3D character models are expressive—sometimes to the point of being caricatures. Their art style is reminiscent of a cartoon I watched in my childhood, Jimmy Neutron.

Party management is also standard for the genre. Skills are unlocked as your character levels up, so there are no skill points to assign—in fact, you can see the scope of the skills each character can learn from the get-go, via the in-combat skill menu. Equipment falls into one of 5 slots: weapon, hat, top, shoes, and accessories. Equipment can be bought from shops or found in chests while exploring and weapons alone can be fitted with the Mods. Mods fall into one of two categories: Core Slots and Sub Slots, into which only the corresponding More can be installed. Mod’s increase stats. Isaac is the only party member that is a slightly different story: after you gain access to the workshop, you can begin crafting gears for him, which changes his job class and therefore how he attacks. Gears also change Isaac’s appearance, a cute bit of attention to detail that I appreciated.

The world itself, while thematically strong, is very linear, having no hidden secrets other than the occasional and obvious treasure chest. Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers are also relying on invisible barriers to funnel you into the next area, a practice I’ve never agreed with as it just makes the world seem limited and without depth. The environments are detailed and nice to look at it, so it’s a shame there’s not much more to them.

Performance-wise, Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers have an ungodly and an incomprehensible number of load screens that pop up whenever you enter or leave a narrative exchange and when travelling between locations. Given that the graphics don’t have the fidelity of the recent Final Fantasy VII remake, I cannot for the life of me figure out why they happen so frequently. They’re usually only a few seconds long, but this is one of the rare occasions where quantity trumps quality. Expect 15-20 hours of gameplay in order to finish the story, though upwards of 30 if you’re looking to grind for the platinum. Most trophies can be gotten naturally by completing the story, though some more grindy ones will require luck and patience.

Not bad, but not great. Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers is a competent JRPG, but it pales compared to other titles in the genre. Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers will probably appeal most to younger gamers and newbies to turn-based RPGs rather than long-time JRPG fans. There’s just not enough here to recommend Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers outright, but if it’s on sale and you don’t mind simplicity, it’s worth a look.

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