Are you a fan of RPGs but are looking for a more realistic turn-based title with a more grounded story? Long Gone Days answers your call by providing players with a military themed story and gameplay. Control Rourke as he realizes the true horrors of war and embarks on a mission to rid himself of past mistakes and save those who he feels are innocent. As of right now, Long Gone Days is only 3-4 hours long—as this is an early access title—but upon a future update, it will reach that of 8-10 hours for more to enjoy. However, if you want to experience a great indie RPG now, then we fully suggest reading further to see what is so awesome about Long Gone Days.

Long Gone Days takes the traditional turn-based RPG style and mixes it up a bit. Players will control Rourke alongside several others caught up in a sudden war and must survive against enemy forces. Battle soldiers and drones in battle picking your hit spots for maximum efficiency. At times, you will also need to shoot enemies with your sniper rifle picking them off during real time movement. Long Gone Days isn’t your average turn-based RPG and you should be ready to be wowed by what it can offer you as a fan of the genre.

For his whole life, Rourke only has known his military lifestyle within The Core, an underground country meant to train young soldiers such as himself. However, when Rourke finally is sent above to the surface, his perception of the world changes quite abruptly. After Rourke learns a harsh truth during his mission of “great importance,” he realizes that the world he knew must be left behind. Rourke alongside a fellow medic named Adair will abandon their military life and go on the run to discover the truth behind war and the realistic consequences of it. Welcome to Long Gone Days where war isn’t as black and white as you might have thought it to be…

There are times here at Honey’s Anime where we find games completely by accident. Case in point, while researching for an article about indie games we came across an interesting title made by developer BURA called Long Gone Days. When we watched the trailer, we instantly found ourselves wanting to check it out and after several hours we realized we made a good choice with buying this early access game. Why do we say that though? Let us tell you why in our review of Long Gone Days for the PC.

In Long Gone Days, players assume the role of Rourke who has been bred to be a soldier within a placed called The Core. After his first mission though, Rourke goes against his colleagues and ends up with a target on his back. Now Rourke must ally himself with others who have various reasons for fighting against The Core and will have to survive their numbers and force. At first glance, Long Gone Days just seems to be a regular military RPG but that is where you would be all too wrong if you fall into this trap. Long Gone Days is more than your traditional title and we will explain that by first talking about the gameplay itself.

Unlike most RPGs, Long Gone Days isn’t about fighting hundreds of pieces of loot and/or leveling up to overpower your enemies in combat. Instead, every battle in Long Gone Days is planned by either the story or by your actions during exploration. When you do enter battle, you will notice enemies can be attacked in several ways. Players can aim for specific body parts—the head, chest and arms—with differing results. The head offers the most damage to be dealt by the player but is the hardest section to hit, the body can be hit almost 100% of the time but doesn’t offer much damage and the shoulders are a mix of both but with a chance at paralyzing the enemy upon a successful hit. You can also use skills in combat and while these are guaranteed attacks/support moves they come at a big cost. Removing the usual MP—magical points—seen in other titles, Long Gone Days uses morale points for your characters and these points aren’t the easiest to obtain.

Morale points can be obtained after winning a fight and in other ways in Long Gone Days such as completing a side quest or by choosing a good dialogue choice during narration. While having high morale can lead to attacks rarely missing, a rage-like mode that increases attack when its 100% and skills such as healing or area of attack moves, morale can also have detrimental effects if too low. Your characters will miss more often and they won’t be able to use skills. Long Gone Days as you can tell puts a greater emphasis on doing side quests and being smart about dialogue then just running around fighting hundreds of baddies to go from level 1 to 30. You will only ever find better equipment in Long Gone Days but you will need to rely more on smart tactics during combat and exploring the world to really have a good chance at winning, especially during the chapter 1 end boss.

Now as we mentioned several times above, combat isn’t the only thing you’ll be doing in Long Gone Days. Players will explore various areas, talk to NPCs and learn more about Rourke’s environment and how the war is affecting it. What’s even more interesting is that when you talk to some NPCs you will understand the pains of not speaking a foreign language as you see different language being presented to you rather than everyone speaking the same. It adds this feeling of true war and how it can affect those who bare no ill will towards their attackers. Later though you will gain a means of translating and will find yourself suddenly shocked by how translation barriers can be a cruel reality of war. Long Gone Days we said was realistic and we weren’t lying about that.

Let us also not forget there are other things to do in Long Gone Days. Seeing as how Rourke is a sniper, there will be times where the game removes the turn-based element and aims for a real time format where you will hit moving targets with his sniper shots. These sections aren’t constant in Long Gone Days and just offer a nice reprieve from exploration and battles. We do hope to see more of them in the future full game though as we loved these moments in Long Gone Days. We do also hope they get a bit harder to do in the future but that’s a minor issue and not one that we will dwell on much.

Graphically and sound wise, Long Gone Days is just perfect. While exploring the world uses very simple animation and art, the real level of beauty comes in the form of the hand drawn characters and impressive level of detail to them. Characters have an anime-like tone—which we will never complain about here at Honey’s Anime—but equally don’t look outrageous in design. Just like everything else in Long Gone Days, there’s a high level of realism with characters and how they express themselves when happy and or upset. The music also hits all the right notes with an impressive soundtrack that ranges from epic to melancholy and a mixture of both. Long Gone Days looks to be at the caliber of a high-end team of artist and yet we know team BURA is an indie group which makes it even more impressive. We can’t wait to see more characters and songs in the full version when it releases in the future.

Finally, let us remind everyone that this is an Early Access game. Long Gone Days isn’t 100% completed and that means its roughly only 3-4 hours long at the moment. Equally, we tried using controllers during our playthrough of Long Gone Days and noticed it didn’t work too well which we think probably is because team BURA is more focused on the core gameplay elements and less on the minor things like controller support. Yes, Long Gone Days at the moment ends after chapter 1, but we did get in contact with the developers and they said the final product could be up to 8-10 hours. That excites us truly and when we do get the final version to play, we will most certainly do an update review to say our experiences with it.

Long Gone Days grabbed us by the hearts from the moment we entered this war story and never let go. Developer BURA took what could have been a generic theme of war and added a sense of realism that even triple A titles don’t do very often. Rourke’s short journey felt epic in every faucet of Long Gone Days and when the chapter 1 conclusion occurred we longed to re-enter his tale and see more of this war. With solid turn-based gameplay and removal of the usual themes such as leveling up and grinding for better gear, Long Gone Days feels akin to a strategy RPG where actions matter more than just how many levels your hero is. We could gush about Long Gone Days for pages more but we think just saying this will show how much we loved this game. We fully recommend picking up Long Gone Days right now at this very second if you want a compelling story fused with an awesome indie RPG title. Amazing music, awesome CGI and impressive visuals during combat make Long Gone Days one of our favorite indie games in some time here at Honey’s Anime.

We have played many indie themed RPG titles here at Honey’s Anime and while most are okay, none have ever hit us as hard as Long Gone Days. Everything from the gameplay to the art and music hit the perfect melody for Long Gone Days keeping this short—but powerful—title from ever not being enjoyable. We can only pray more of Rourke’s story will come out soon as we need to play more Long Gone Days more but for now we will wait for more from team BURA. Thinking of picking up Long Gone Days? Tell us why in the comments below and if you have already played it, let us know your thoughts on Long Gone Days. Remember to not stray too far from our hive as we have more game reviews coming to you all curtsey of us here at Honey’s Anime.