Vandal Hearts was a semi-obscure strategy RPG that made its debut on the PlayStation 1, like Kartia: The World of Fate and Sayuki: Journey West. The original game was most noteworthy for its surprisingly gory death animations and for being one of the first strategy-RPGs on the PlayStation. The sequel, despite being a better product, came out to relative obscurity, and the series faded away. It wasn't a franchise that many people expected to return, and yet Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment is a full-on revival of the series. The major difference is that instead of being released on a home console, Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment is an older franchise being revived as an arcade game for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network.

Flames of Judgment is set in the land of Balastrade, in the wake of a tragic war against the nation of Urdu. The two nations had gone to war, and their climactic battle would have ended with one nation being wiped off the face of the planet. Instead, the armies were devastated when a mysterious fireball fell from the heavens and destroyed both sides. It's been 16 years since the war ended, and players are thrust into the shoes of Tobias, a young boy orphaned by the final battle. Tobias and his friends are growing up in the Church of Restoration, a home for those who lost their families in the war. Before long, however, they find themselves embroiled in a newly rising conflict, as the war seems ready to start anew.

At its core, Flames of Judgment is a fairly basic strategy-RPG. Players are given control over a small group of warriors and have to defeat their enemies in turn-based combat by eliminating all of their hit points. The biggest notable feature in Vandal Hearts is that positioning and terrain are much bigger factors than in some recent strategy-RPGs. Depending on where you position your characters, you can gain major advantages over the enemy. Attacking from the enemy's side or back increases the overall damage you can do to them. If you attack from a distance with a bow or magic, the enemy won't be able to initiate a counter-attack. Surround an enemy with your allies, and you have the ability to launch a Team Attack, where other characters with occasionally launch a free second attack on the enemy. Perhaps most importantly, height can be a big factor in how much damage you do. Attacking from higher ground is the key to victory, while allowing the enemy to have the height advantage can doom you.

Unlike most strategy RPGs, Flames of Judgment doesn't have a completely traditional skill system. Instead, you'll be able to equip your characters with various weapons, which will influence their abilities. Equip a character with a sword, and he'll be good at basic combat and better at Team Attacks. Someone with a hammer can do a lot more damage and even hit multiple foes around them. However, the hammer's wide swing can hit allies as well, which makes a hammer user a poor team player. A bow user can attack from a distance and counter enemy bow attacks, but is more vulnerable to close-range combat. Finally, magic users can cast powerful spells to either damage foes or give special status effects to allies or enemies.

Characters can even use multiple weapons at once. You can have a sword user who also casts magic, or switch between a melee weapon and bow depending on the enemy's distance. However, you don't simply get these abilities right off the bat; characters must equip a weapon and use it in order to get better with it. Magic spells must be learned from books that you've equipped, and until you've mastered magic, you can't cast it without the book. Either way, this allows a lot of customization options for your characters, although there are also certain risks. Focusing equally on multiple skills will make your characters versatile but also make them weaker in general. You'll have to decide carefully if a character is better off using only one weapon or if he's better off as a versatile jack-of-all-trades.

In addition to your character's learned skills, each character also has unique abilities that can influence the kind of fighter that he is best at being. Connor, for example, has the Frenzy ability, which occasionally grants him an extra attack when he kills enemies. This makes him a great choice for a melee fighter, since he'll do a lot more damage and have a greater chance of taking down foes. Calvin, on the other hand, has the Magic Haste ability, which occasionally buffs his reaction stat every time he casts a magic spell; this means that Calvin's a lot better at magic instead of toe-to-toe fighting. One interesting twist is that your main character, Tobias, isn't really specialized in any single skill set. He can be a mage, archer, swordsman or some combination of the three if you so desire. His special ability allows him to survive one potentially fatal blow in battle, and since the game's over if he dies, this is a pretty useful skill.

Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment is an odd game in that it doesn't really feel much like an arcade title. What little we got to play of it in our demo made it feel more like a long-lost PlayStation 1 era RPG. Admittedly, the graphics are nicer, but it still feels very familiar to a veteran of the original games. The end result is an experience that should be quite pleasing to gamers who are looking for a strategy-RPG. Flames of Judgment may be the first real Japanese-style strategy-RPG for XBLA and PSN. The game promises a wealth of customization and strategy options — and even multiple endings. Those who are eager for a new strategy RPG to tide them over until the next big console release will want to keep an eye out for Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment when it hits XBLA and PSN later this year.