So they finally created a game with challenge, minus boring intro cut scenes, and a fresh idea to combat interface... It comes down to this, upon playing, it's not for many of the modern gamers, the generation of "we're all winners" and "gimme a trophy".

Very rewarding game after you get used to the battle system.

The only reason there is a story is to try and justify you going out and killing stuff.

An excellent SRPG that fans of the genre will likely enjoy. The game also recently received a patch which fixed some of the difficulty and buggy issues.

I'm the kind of critic who can forgive general roughness, sub-par graphics, and bizarre idiosyncrasies if a game's core concept is a solid one. As such, Natural Doctrine is the sort of thing I would ordinarily champion, happily looking past minor problems in celebration of the things it does right.

The zone system and linking are great concepts

Moving one character three pixels too far over means annihilation

Natural Doctrine is far from a ‘bad game', it has great ideas but it seems to be struggling as it virtually always sticks you in compact situations where strategy goes out the window and luck plays a far too important role.