Playing A Game Nadia Was Here PC

The combat-oriented demo of Nadia Was Here managed to both impress me with its unique gameplay, and scare me away from the full version.

Nadia's battle system is organized into lanes, sort-of like Mega Man Battle Network or Radiant Historia. They're narrower, i.e. only one party member and one enemy can fit in a lane, but the interesting part is that - while those other games are all turn-based - Nadia is real-time, with a continually-ticking attack timer on each character.

The result of this combination of mechanics is that you can move a party member into a lane to strategically attack an enemy, and then move out of an enemy's lane to avoid being attacked. And since enemies can also move, there is an element of evasive strategy to staying ahead of them.

The practical consequence, then, is that you have to keep track of all the concurrent, slightly-offset attack timers; and continue moving around just to survive. It's a startling amount of micro-management for an otherwise simple premise.

I admire what this system was able to pull off, but have no interest in subjecting myself to more of it.

Progress: Didn't finish the demo.