Looks Like Reign
Revisit the past to restore the future in turn-based, narrative-driven adventure RPG Reverse: 1999 from developer Bluepoch. Starting with the final day of 1999, time has begun flowing in reverse. To make matters worse, temporal anomalies known as Storms threaten to erase important moments throughout history from existence. Play as the Timekeeper and harness arcane abilities to dispatch monsters and members of the rival organization, Manus Vindictae, and prevent reality’s collapse. With posh aesthetics, outlandish characters and robust battle mechanics, Reverse: 1999 proves it’s not just any old port in a storm.
Foul Weather Friends
Reverse: 1999 finds pirate and APPLe Radio host Regulus spinning her beloved records aboard her ship alongside the bowtie-clad apple, APPLe. After capturing a pair of mysterious agents, the four find themselves under attack by one of Manus Vindictae’s submarines. Believing their captives to be members of the aforementioned organization, Regulus and APPLe debate leaving them for dead while gathering their possessions. The agents explain that they were tasked with monitoring and reporting on Regulus due to the unauthorized use of her arcanist abilities (think witchcraft but tinged with science).
Choosing to believe her captives, Regulus sets them free, and the group abandons ship. Once ashore, Regulus and APPLe are approached by Vertin the Timekeeper and her devoted assistant, Sonetta. Vertin explains that Regulus must come with them to the St. Pavlov Foundation, as she is an unregistered arcanist. Suddenly, Manus Vindictae’s forces attack the group, and a brief tutorial introduces players to the game’s basic battle mechanics.
Umbrellas Up
Reverse: 1999’s characters use incantations to battle foes. These appear as card-like tiles in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Players can tap and hold each incantation to check its arcanum skills and bonus effects. To launch attacks, select your enemy, then tap the incantation or drag and merge two or more tiles to increase its attack power. Each character can only cast one incantation per turn, so merging spells comes at the cost of an attack. However, merging incantations gives players extra Moxie, meaning that characters’ charged attacks power up much faster.
During the heat of battle, Regulus manages to give everyone the slip by teleporting away using a stolen magical floppy disk. After searching the city, Vertin corners Regulus inside a barber shop and manages to persuade her to return to St. Pavlov’s HQ and help her record and address temporal anomalies. As the pair step onto the street, buildings begin to disappear and rain falls in reverse, signaling the end of this era. Vertin ushers Regulus and APPLe into her suitcase, which acts as a Tardis-like ark outside of space and time, and the screen fades to black.
Tell Me About It
Reverse: 1999 impressed the heck out of me. I’ve played my fair share of turn-based mobile RPGs, but few offer as much strategic depth and design as this gem. At times, especially in the beginning, this can feel a little overwhelming, but eventually actions feel intuitive. As you progress through the first couple of chapters, you’ll unlock several rounds of tutorials. These consist of waves of enemies with general guidelines as to how to successfully navigate these structured challenges. Many RPGs allow players to skirt the strategy aspects of their games and fly through with brute force. Not so with Reverse: 1999. After failing one tutorial a dozen times, I finally forced myself to read each incantation’s skill description, and strategy prevailed.
Which brings me to my next point—there’s a lot to read in this game since the story is primarily told through dialog with very few animation-only cutscenes. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, since 95% of the dialog is presented with (on the whole) superb voice acting. However, occasionally, the plot veers into convoluted territory, which makes getting to the game’s excellent battles a slog. Even when Reverse: 1999’s narrative went awry, its characters never failed to draw me back in almost immediately with interesting hints at stories to come.
Bells and Whistles
Luckily, even with head-scratching monologues, the game’s characters feel unique and compelling. Voice actors and gorgeous, off-beat character designs do most of the heavy lifting, but Reverse: 1999’s chocked full of compelling creative choices. Said choices include a sentient rocking horse, a UFO complete with a cow mid-teleport, an Amelia Earhart-inspired pilot and telekinetic twins. These things shouldn’t work together, but somehow, they fit perfectly within this magical world. Every character is inspired by important historical figures and famous works of art throughout history while remixing their designs in creative ways. While I’ve yet to see all of the characters I’ve obtained through the game’s free-to-play-friendly gacha mechanic included in the narrative, I feel certain that they’ll appear in future chapters.
Beyond its strategically dense mechanics and quirky cast of well-drawn characters, Reverse: 1999 features stunning special effects and an outstanding jazzy soundtrack. These two flourishes pile extra cherries on top of an already loaded sundae, with the former lending the game’s incantations the proper pomp and pizzazz. If you love complex strategy-heavy RPGs with a plethora of panache, this masterpiece in the making will set you right as rain.
