If being humiliated and demoralised by in-game defeat is synonymous to Mel’s downfall, achieving victory in battle is a feeling equivalent to earning a billion dollars just for punching your life-long nemesis in the face.

It's still one of my favorite games this year, but the flaws keep me from recommending it to everyone; this is a game for those who love the genre, and want an old-school tactical RPG challenge.

There’s a thin line between rock-hard gameplay and a broken game and while Natural Doctrine runs up to that line repeatedly it manages to never actually cross it. What it does manage, however, is to be a great example of the genre while also doing very little to bring it into the twenty-first century.

There are some interesting pieces in this puzzle, but once they form the final picture, you'll see something very different, and sadly not entirely enjoyable.

Natural Doctrine isn't atrocious, but it does have a lot of issues. It's as frequently enjoyable as it is repugnant, an experience that will often blindside you with cheap deaths that reek of artificial difficulty.

Now, I don’t want to act like this is an actual bad game. It’s not. It just has multiple things that make it far too difficult to play.

It’s shocking to see something this bad on a current gen console, and it’s really sad to think that someone released this and asked for money.