Gonna focus mostly on the Gameplay/Battle System.
Kami no Rhapsody has a lot of interesting aspects related to the Gameplay/Battle System, with some flaws it brings, I will dissect each aspect and how well they land:
1. Battle System: Very good.
If Eushully's other game, Kamidori Alchemy Meister battle formula reminds me of Fire Emblem, then this game from Eushully, Kami no Rhapsody battle formula reminds me a lot of Tactic Ogre or FFT.
Strategic positioning is key and you want to position your units well if you don't want to get punished for overextending a unit into a group of enemies.
I enjoy a lot of the Eushully gameplay touch they added to this formula
2. "Accuracy vs Evasion" System: Good
Instead of relying on RNG, you simply need Acc ≥ Evasion to hit and any attack lower's the target evasion by your accuracy, so even your lower accuracy units can still hit after reducing their evasion first.
This places a greater emphasis on strategy instead of luck with ways to increase accuracy/evasion to impact the outcome and puts control in the player's hand when they know that a dodgetank can be guaranteed to dodge 1 hit from an enemy with lower accuracy.
3. Rune )Progression) System: Pretty good, but with a major flaw
instead of gaining levels + stats in the normal way, you instead gain runes that boost your stats.
Each character currently recruited gain runes after clearing a map for the first time only and are therefore non-repeatable to prevent grinding them.
This ensures you are never excessively over- or underlved and every subsequent map feels very balanced as you don't need to grind for lvls.
Unfortunately, the major flaw is that newly joining characters don't gain any of the runes you received before they joined, so they can have a hard time keeping up with old characters, especially your main trio of Protagonists who are guaranteed to receive every rune you get from clearing maps throughout the game.
My advice is to delay any optional missions as much as possible so future joining party members will also benefit from gaining those Runes and only clear them once the game gets too challenging or you have all characters recruited (full roster near the start of chapter 9 when the last guy rejoins).
4. Godmedals (Equipment): Pretty good, but with a nitpick
Godmedals are basically skills/equipment that can either boost stats, use skills, allows traversing terrain, removing obstacles like trees/rocks, open doors etc.
You can customize your units with them before the start of the map.
While I like this system, the small nitpick is that you can't change Godmedals during battle and can cause trouble when you suddenly find out you need a specific one to remove an obstacle or have no idea what the maps looks like and change Godmedals accordingly.
It makes it harder to dive into the game as you have to first enter to check the map, exit and then set the Godmedals. Sometimes even reset midway if you realize you miss a Godmedal that could be great in the situation you are in halfway through the map.
One example is during a Tower in Chapter 3 where you can encounter Gargoyle/Golems partway through the map that take 1 dmg from basically anything even their Wind weakness, thanks to their shield. It's best to reset, equip a Godmedal (Pierce) that ignores said shield on a Wind unit and easily deal with them to save yourself time and frustration in the long run.
5. Mana system: Flawed
Mana is required to deploy units or use skills and often gained slowly per turn when maps have a real or arbitary (protect this NPC) time limit.
Biggest problem is that most skills are way overpriced, especially the 30 Mana ones, which I never used in a practical sense in either of my 2 finished playthroughs.
Most of the time, the mana you could spend on skill is almost always better spend on deploying another unit unless it's a cheap 1-2 mana skill or to use Magic skills against enemies that are nearly immune to physical hits.
The cost to deploying a unit relative to using skills should be way bigger, as it stands now you could spend 8 mana to deploy a very strong unit that can deal a lot of dmg each turn or spend 4-8 mana on a skill that does slightly more dmg against 1 enemy.
They really should've reduced most skill cost or change starting Mana + deployment cost relative to skill cost that using a skill doesn't sets you back nearly a full unit deployment in terms of mana.
As it stands now, 99% of the time you deploy a new unit to put your in a much better position as most skills are rarely worth their mana cost.
In fact, there is a Godmedals that reduces Mana skillcost by 1, but sadly there are no superior variants of it.
At best, you can spam cheap 1-2 mana skills by reducing them to 0 cost, but reducing 8 or 30 mana skills by 1-2 mana barely does anything from keeping them overpriced instead of using that mana to deploy a new unit.
6. Closing thoughts
Sometimes a game can click, sometimes it does not.
Overall, the game does click with me and I can still really enjoy the gameplay past it's flaws.
The ways to circumvent some flaws for me is by encouraging a specific gameplay style of " rush through the main missions to get new characters and never use mana on overpriced skills, but rely on efficient 0 or low mana attacks, while spending the mana on deploying more units".
Kami no Rhapsody has a lot of interesting aspects related to the Gameplay/Battle System, with some flaws it brings, I will dissect each aspect and how well they land:
1. Battle System: Very good.
If Eushully's other game, Kamidori Alchemy Meister battle formula reminds me of Fire Emblem, then this game from Eushully, Kami no Rhapsody battle formula reminds me a lot of Tactic Ogre or FFT.
Strategic positioning is key and you want to position your units well if you don't want to get punished for overextending a unit into a group of enemies.
I enjoy a lot of the Eushully gameplay touch they added to this formula
2. "Accuracy vs Evasion" System: Good
Instead of relying on RNG, you simply need Acc ≥ Evasion to hit and any attack lower's the target evasion by your accuracy, so even your lower accuracy units can still hit after reducing their evasion first.
This places a greater emphasis on strategy instead of luck with ways to increase accuracy/evasion to impact the outcome and puts control in the player's hand when they know that a dodgetank can be guaranteed to dodge 1 hit from an enemy with lower accuracy.
3. Rune )Progression) System: Pretty good, but with a major flaw
instead of gaining levels + stats in the normal way, you instead gain runes that boost your stats.
Each character currently recruited gain runes after clearing a map for the first time only and are therefore non-repeatable to prevent grinding them.
This ensures you are never excessively over- or underlved and every subsequent map feels very balanced as you don't need to grind for lvls.
Unfortunately, the major flaw is that newly joining characters don't gain any of the runes you received before they joined, so they can have a hard time keeping up with old characters, especially your main trio of Protagonists who are guaranteed to receive every rune you get from clearing maps throughout the game.
My advice is to delay any optional missions as much as possible so future joining party members will also benefit from gaining those Runes and only clear them once the game gets too challenging or you have all characters recruited (full roster near the start of chapter 9 when the last guy rejoins).
4. Godmedals (Equipment): Pretty good, but with a nitpick
Godmedals are basically skills/equipment that can either boost stats, use skills, allows traversing terrain, removing obstacles like trees/rocks, open doors etc.
You can customize your units with them before the start of the map.
While I like this system, the small nitpick is that you can't change Godmedals during battle and can cause trouble when you suddenly find out you need a specific one to remove an obstacle or have no idea what the maps looks like and change Godmedals accordingly.
It makes it harder to dive into the game as you have to first enter to check the map, exit and then set the Godmedals. Sometimes even reset midway if you realize you miss a Godmedal that could be great in the situation you are in halfway through the map.
One example is during a Tower in Chapter 3 where you can encounter Gargoyle/Golems partway through the map that take 1 dmg from basically anything even their Wind weakness, thanks to their shield. It's best to reset, equip a Godmedal (Pierce) that ignores said shield on a Wind unit and easily deal with them to save yourself time and frustration in the long run.
5. Mana system: Flawed
Mana is required to deploy units or use skills and often gained slowly per turn when maps have a real or arbitary (protect this NPC) time limit.
Biggest problem is that most skills are way overpriced, especially the 30 Mana ones, which I never used in a practical sense in either of my 2 finished playthroughs.
Most of the time, the mana you could spend on skill is almost always better spend on deploying another unit unless it's a cheap 1-2 mana skill or to use Magic skills against enemies that are nearly immune to physical hits.
The cost to deploying a unit relative to using skills should be way bigger, as it stands now you could spend 8 mana to deploy a very strong unit that can deal a lot of dmg each turn or spend 4-8 mana on a skill that does slightly more dmg against 1 enemy.
They really should've reduced most skill cost or change starting Mana + deployment cost relative to skill cost that using a skill doesn't sets you back nearly a full unit deployment in terms of mana.
As it stands now, 99% of the time you deploy a new unit to put your in a much better position as most skills are rarely worth their mana cost.
In fact, there is a Godmedals that reduces Mana skillcost by 1, but sadly there are no superior variants of it.
At best, you can spam cheap 1-2 mana skills by reducing them to 0 cost, but reducing 8 or 30 mana skills by 1-2 mana barely does anything from keeping them overpriced instead of using that mana to deploy a new unit.
6. Closing thoughts
Sometimes a game can click, sometimes it does not.
Overall, the game does click with me and I can still really enjoy the gameplay past it's flaws.
The ways to circumvent some flaws for me is by encouraging a specific gameplay style of " rush through the main missions to get new characters and never use mana on overpriced skills, but rely on efficient 0 or low mana attacks, while spending the mana on deploying more units".
.
