Natural Doctrine

Did You Know?

• The game's setting is a universe where humans fight other races with magic and swords, and the fortress city Feste serves as humanity's home.
• The protagonist Geoff is a guard soldier tasked with clearing goblin dens to secure resources for humankind.

Gameplay

Natural Doctrine is a tactical role-playing game centered on the idea of natural selection. Its turn-based combat puts large groups of allies and enemies on a big battlefield, where time can be adjusted on the fly and each unit takes up one space. When units clash, they set up encampments; if an encampment survives the turn, units can retreat to it. Soldiers can also take cover behind objects. Outside the city of Feste, minotaurs, goblins, and orcs build bases to launch attacks from, with the field divided into a grid. The game includes single-player and multiplayer modes, the latter offering versus and co-op play, cross-play, and cross-save. In multiplayer, players can control non-human species and compete in a card battle game using their own custom decks. The story follows protagonist Geoff alongside two women, Vasily and Anka.

Development

Natural Doctrine was first unveiled during the September 2013 SCEJA Press Conference. As Kadokawa’s first wholly self-developed title, it was planned as a PlayStation 4 launch game but saw two delays before its April 2014 release. Director Atsushi Ii, best known for his work on Patapon, led the project. Character designs came from Atsushi Ikariya, a Fate/Zero veteran, in collaboration with ufotable. Producers were Yoshimi Yasuda and Kensuke Tanaka. Noriyuki Asakura composed the soundtrack, and the ending theme is a cover of King Crimson’s “The Court of the Crimson King.” NIS America handled the North American and PAL localizations in Q3 2014. Following Japanese player complaints about difficulty, a July 10, 2014 patch introduced an easy mode, a more thorough tutorial, level-specific strategy tips, extra save checkpoints, and the option to speed up enemy actions. It also added three online co-op missions across all platforms, plus extra-hard missions exclusive to PlayStation 4.

Reception

The game received mixed reviews on all platforms according to Metacritic. Famitsu gave the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions scores of one seven and three eights, and the PlayStation Vita version one six and three eights. Heath Hindman of PlayStation LifeStyle noted that while the mechanics of the Japanese PlayStation 4 import were interesting, the user interface and level design needed improvement, and the pacing felt slow. Hardcore Gamer described the game as punishing and unfair, with little room for tactical experimentation. In its first week in Japan, the game sold about 18,000 physical retail units across all three platforms. As of July 2014, total sales across the three platforms exceeded 50,000 units.