Don’t like the way it’s going? Had a party wipe? Simply rewind time and change it. But beware: changing any action erases all subsequent actions as well, and enemies will alter their behavior according to your new path. This even includes undoing the death of an ally due to an ill-timed decision. However, if you decide you don’t like the way battle is shaping up, you do have the ability to rewind time back to the first Heartbeat on the screen and alter the characters’ actions any way you like. At the press of a button, time moves forward one Heartbeat, and party members and enemies alike carry out a half-second’s worth of action. There is one more crucial ability the player has control of: time manipulation. It leads to a lot of considerations and the “tactical” part of the game’s description really cannot be overstated. On top of that, many commands require different lengths of time firing a particular arrow shot, for example, takes up three Heartbeats, with indicators marking where the bow is drawn and the arrow released. It isn’t a simple matter of ordering a unit to cast a spell or move the precise direction for each command must be indicated by dragging an arrow across the screen. It’s now the player’s task to fill these increments with commands that the characters will then carry out, choosing from an impressive list of on-screen icon and movement abilities. These timelines are split into fourteen equal sections - the Heartbeats - representing a total of seven seconds of combat, though the final four always represent future actions. Underneath the dungeon view are two timelines spreading across the screen from left to right, one for each character. During combat encounters, time is measured in Heartbeats, with each Heartbeat taking up a half-second of combat time. This is where the bottom of the screen comes into play. It does make any difference to what players see, but the game comes to a sudden standstill as time freezes. But open a door or round a corner and encounter enemies, and combat mode sets in. The first is adventure mode, where the two on-screen characters in the party move about the in-game maps as you would expect, exploring, looting treasure… general spelunking, really. There are two modes to Iron Danger’s gameplay. It’s when one pays attention to the bottom fifth of the screen - helped by having someone like Action Squad Studios’ Sami Timonen and brothers Jussi and Antti Kemppainen nearby to break things down - that things go from bog-standard to uniquely exotic in no time at all. At first brush, however, the game looks like any number of other isometric dungeon-crawlers set in some fantasy universe or another. It’s only been one day on the E3 show floor, but I have a strong feeling Finnish developer Action Squad Studios’ tactical RPG Iron Danger has done enough to mark itself out as one of standout titles as the show.
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