Let's get this straight from the start. Resonance of Fate is both strategically hard, and an absolute behemoth of battle system complexity. If you don't have patience or the willpower to spend a few hours familiarizing yourself with the gameplay dynamics of a new title, you may skip over this one right now.

Resonance of Fate - also known as End of Eternity in Japan - is a JRPG with a twist. Think Borderlands vs Final Fantasy XIII. This single-player story attempts to deliver a fine balance between traditional questing and turn-based gunplay, and for the most part succeeds.

In Resonance of Fate, you start off and finish off with 3 characters: Vashyron, Zephyr and the adorable Leanne. The characters' appearances are fixed but for a pittance of in-game money - known as rubies - you can customise their outfits extensively. I bought Leanne a sexy pair of glasses to make her look more like a blonde Bayonetta. Each character has 3 weapon skills (machine guns, handguns and throwing weapons) which all start at level 1 and level up as you gain XP with the weapon type in question. The total level of each character is the sum of their individual weapon levels.

You start in the somewhat washed out-looking but otherwise beautifully rendered Ebel City. Many of the areas in the game are split into zones; the display handily fades out at the edges to warn you you are about to cross a boundary which is a nice touch. Zone loading times are snappy, taking only a couple of seconds.

The graphics are pretty but not groundbreaking. The entire game is based around a giant steampunk-themed tower where the last surviving humans live. This theme works well and fans of steampunk will love it - the rest of us will enjoy it too. Some of the cut scenes are almost up to FFXIII standards, but others are graphically weak.

Audio-wise, the world music-style soundtrack is beautiful and never gets tiring. The voice acting is passable and doesn't get too stale.

The story-telling is predictably bad and disconnected, although the characters have quite the twisted sense of humour with plenty of swearing and sexual jokes to amuse us. Vashyron can often be found subtly hitting on Leanne or commenting on her "natural beauty".

Resonance of Fate has an intriguing and unique map system. Areas are not unlocked through story progression; rather each level of the tower is made up of a large number of hexagonal areas, with the levels connected by various elevators. Initially all the hexes are locked, but by acquiring energy hexes - which are easily available as loot - you can place them on the grid to open up new areas. Many of the hexes are just through-paths where you will hit upon random encounters as you travel from A to B, others are towns or quest areas. The hexes come in various Tetris-like shapes so some forethought is required to place them optimally to reach a point on the map.

Things get more complicated when coloured hexes are introduced. Some hexes can only be unlocked by placing down an energy hex of the same colour on it, which serves as a convenient way to limit your progress until you start hitting upon mobs that drop the specific colours needed to progress. In addition you get station hexes (which can also be traded at your guild for coloured hexes), which are little towers you can build that allow you to rest and save your game somewhere other than in the home town.

The map also features terminals which provide bonus effects and have a certain power requirement. Placing a coloured hex on a terminal activates it. You can then place adjacent coloured hexes to it and all of the connected hexes with a matching colour receive the terminal bonus, for example increased drop rate, reduced damage etc. The idea is to link terminals up to critical dungeons to improve your chances. The system adds a layer of complexity to the game but works very well.

Questing also adds a twist. The game is split into 16 chapters, each with 1 or 2 story missions that have to be completed to progress to the next chapter, plus a number of side-quests. These quests can be picked up at the bulletin board at your guild. When you complete the story missions, you have the option of advancing to the next chapter whenever you choose. You can therefore elect to complete all the side quests or fail the chapter, yet still progress the story. This nice system gives you all the time you need to finish the side quests, which are usually of the courier, mob killing or item looting varieties.

Now let's come to the real meat of this game: the combat system. If you thought the combat system in FFXIII was smart and innovative, think again. Resonance of Fate's implementation is what the FFXIII combat system should have been - but be prepared to have nerves of steel and the patience of a saint.

The game's prologue rams all the combat features down your throat immediately. There is no 10 hours of drawn out tutorials here, the learning curve is very steep indeed and I must admit I had to take a break for the day half-way through the tutorial because it was so complex. My copy of the game didn't come with a manual, so it is a godsend that there is an in-game one you can refer to at any time. It is very important to take the time to read this and use the practice arena otherwise you won't have a clue what you're doing when the first encounter hits. Even when you've started to grasp it, it will take you at least a couple of chapters to figure out the nuances and best strategies. If you can't be bothered to read the manual, don't buy this game. You will not survive without it.

Explaining the combat system fully would take several pages so I'll try to summarise. There are only two types of weapon in the game: handguns and machine guns. Handguns cause normal, direct damage, and machine guns cause what is called scratch damage. Direct damage works in the manner you would expect. Scratch damage also drains the enemy's HP, but to make it take effect you have to convert it to direct damage by using a direct damage weapon. The key here is, scratch damage is much easier to inflict in large quantities, and a single shot from a direct damage weapon will convert it into direct damage, so there is strategy in choosing the order in which to use your weapons.

Combat is turn-based and weapons and items (such as heals) must be charged before use. As you level, you can charge a weapon multiple times before firing, and if you can charge enough, your character's learned skills have a higher chance of proc'ing. Charge rate is directly proportional to the distance from your enemy. You can move around in real-time when it is your go; your enemies charge their weapons too which is indicated by a little bar above their head, and if one becomes full, you will be shot at and lose your turn, so timing your shots well is key to your success or failure.

Interestingly, the game also features a cover system which works well. Position your characters behind boxes or bunkers and they will be immune from enemy fire - however like everything else, the cover objects also have an HP gauge so will be eventually destroyed. Using cover appropriately is also absolutely vital to winning tougher battles.

At the bottom of the screen you have a number of so-called bezels. As long as you have at least one bezel remaining, your party will only take scratch damage. When a character's HP reaches zero, they are healed by 1000 HP and one bezel is expended.

Bezels can be used in other ways. A tap of square will pause the game and initiate a Hero Action. In this mode, you can position a marker to indicate where you want the character to go, then activate it. During Hero Actions you are immune from enemy retaliation so you can swing by them with a multiply-charged weapon and deal massive amounts of damage, but it costs one bezel.

And therein lies a big part of the strategy: if you run out of bezels, you enter “critical condition”. In this situation, you can no longer perform Hero Actions, your attack speed is slowed dramatically, the enemies inflict direct damage and your scratch damage gets converted, making you extremely vulnerable. Bezels can be recollected by destroying enemies or enemy parts, and also by performing a variety of special moves, but as an added twist, they go into slots which can be broken by enemy fire. When this happens, the bezel slot shatters into four pieces on the ground and you will have to guide your characters deftly to pick them up again, as without slots, you can't re-gain bezels and get out of critical condition. The enemies can also pick up the bezel shards to heal.

When a Hero Action intersects the position of your other two characters, you gain a resonance point. Any other action causes a resonance point to be lost (the colour of the anchor indicates this, fortunately). Collect enough resonance points and you can perform a tri-attack, where all three characters move and attack simultaneously around the triangular area created between their positions.

Resonance of Fate has an excellent body part / shield system. Each body part or shield portion is shown in an arc around the character, so line of sight is what determines which portion you are attacking - ie. whichever portion is facing you is the one that will take damage when you fire. The twist is, when you shoot from the air during a Hero Action, your fire targets the main body and the shields or body parts randomly with each shot. This leads to strategising: take one of your characters on a flyby of the baddie, take down some of his shields with scratch damage, then approach from the ground with another character, orient yourself to be facing a depleted part, then shoot and you will go right through to the main body.

Getting your enemies airborne is equally important. When airborne, you will sometimes have the opportunity to stop an arrow rotating around a circle; stop it in the right place and you get a bonus shot, which means you can fire repeatedly once your weapon is charged until the enemy hits the ground again. Timing is once again essential: wait until the enemy is just about to hit the ground so you have the maximum possible charging time, then let rip.

Airborne enemies are also susceptible to gauge breaking - where the enemy's HP bar is split up into sections that can't be recovered once depleted (much like some FPS games) - and smackdowns - which restore your bezels to full.

After all that, you may be relieved to know that you have infinite ammo except for special weapons, and there is no mana to worry about. The level of strategy cannot be adequately explained in text: you have to pay attention to many bars at the same time: your bezels, your party's HP, your enemies' HP, your enemies' charge, your resonance points, your charge time, and the amount of turn you have left (moving and firing reduces a bar indicating when your turn will end). Placing your characters properly, using cover, skipping turns when appropriate, selecting the right weapons, using well-timed Hero Actions, deciding when to expend bezels, deciding which enemies to focus on, getting airborne at the right moments, deciding which body parts to go for, and even switching targets mid-action and maximising your resonance points by intersecting your Hero Actions with the other two characters' locations are all absolutely essential to winning.

What this leads to is a situation where there are only a small number of mobs in each dungeon, but you must learn the best way to take them down over many, many attempts, perfecting your strategy bit by bit for each mob area individually. Going in with all guns blazing is nothing but certain death. The result is that defeating bosses in Resonance of Fate is simply one of the most rewarding feelings you'll ever have playing a video game. It is truly exhilarating to take down a boss after an hour of trial runs and preparation, and gives a really, really satisfying sense of achievement that you will find in very few other games.

The game map is reasonably big, but as I had clocked up 14 hours after 3 chapters, and with 16 chapters to play through, Resonance of Fate is epically long and will keep you busy for absolutely ages, if you can get into it.

A word on save points. You can only save at your home or at station hexes you have constructed. Dungeons are split into areas and you can suspend the game after each area is complete and return to it later, but be prepared to spend 2-3 hours between saves at times. I really think the game should let you save during a battle, because once you're half-way through a dungeon, you can't get out and you can't save until you've cleared the current area, which can take many attempts. Other than the graphics, this is one of the game's only flaws.

As in Borderlands, weapons in this game can be customized and there are an insane number of options available. Each weapon has various module slots of different shapes, to which you can attach any item with a matching shape. Scopes, magazine expansions, fire rate tweaks, you name it, it's here. There is a trophy for adding 10 customization modules to a single gun, to illustrate how much I've understated the potential here.

All the other things you would expect are here: status effects are present and correct, characters have attributes and although there are no classes, the way you equip your characters basically determines how they will perform. Plenty of special weapons like hand grenades and molotov cocktails are at your disposal. Once you hit chapter 6 you will have access to tinkering which will let you craft and melt down your own guns to your own specifications.

1. Brilliant combat system
2. Endless weapon customization
3. Very long with a good mixture of story missions and side quests
4. Pretty but not amazing graphics and soundtrack

1. Extremely steep learning curve that will put off many players
2. Very hard; dedication and perseverance will be required

Just as with White Knight Chronicles, I feel that this game is under-rated in the media and will probably slip past most people without being noticed. Resonance of Fate is definitely for hardcore RPG fans only, but at the same time the map and combat systems make it substantially different from anything you'll have likely played before.

In my score I have rated the game as if you are an RPG fan and know what you're getting into here. For the rest of you it's worth a 7. You must have supreme patience, but if you can handle that, I thought it was bloody brilliant.