Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga (I will call it just Symphony from now) is the latest title by Dancing Dragon Games, best known for Skyborn and Echoes of Atheria; and yes, it's another great old-school style RPG, a SRPG this time to be exact.

Now here are the reasons why I think Symphony is a great game and highly enjoyable, even though I have only played some 5hrs at the point of writing this review.

The STORY starts of pretty straightforward and picks up soon with some nice, albeit at times expected twists and turns. Charcters motivations and actions are always clear, understandable, relateable and the player can easily follow story progression. Cutscenese always spot on and never drag with uneccesary chit-chat; there is no filler content.
Furthermore there are optional diaoluges to witness inbetween battles. These are presented in a Visual Novel style format and will have impact on relationships among the cast of characters.

Core GAMEPLAY focuses on two parts with tactical turn based battles being the major part. During battles the player directs their squads to fight enemy squads and seize objects. Here terrain can provide additional bonuses, e.g. elevated tiles for archers. The 2nd GAMEPLAY aspect is about managing your army. You will be organizing squads, recruiting squad members, equipping artefacts which can be found/bought and unlocking a tech-tree to increase base effects. Addiontal Squads can be formed with new recruits that can be hired, including both regular recruits and special recruits, usually fit for becoming squad leaders. Squads are formed by choosing a leader and then arranging all members on a grid based field; e.g. strong defenders go front, ranged attackers in back etc. Squads can be disbanded too and its former members become available for rassigned to other squads or forming new squads. Recruits include different classes i.e. healer, mage, archer later crossbow, cavalry etc.

Symphony leaves a lot of room for experiments, however the most important aspect imho is the fact that the Devs managed to not overwhelm the player. The player is eased into the game by tutorials that are spot on and easy to understand. These tutorial can be disabled too. Don't get me wrong please, there is no hand holding involved. Bad tactical decisions will lead to loss of units on the battlefield and defeat. I am merely referring to the way the games systems are introduced to the player.

VERDICT so far, I will update once I have finished my playthrough.
Truth be told, I had my doubts when Dancing Dragon Games announced that their next project after Echoes of Aetheria was going to be a SRPG. As much as I enjoy experimenting in RPGs, I am both not a master tactician and I am easily overwhelmed by complex systems. But I am glad that I gave Symphony a try. Accessibilty to the games systems is what makes it great imho. Failure in a SRPG should come from the players bad decision making and planing and not from missunderstanding a games system. With Symphony this is the case. When a battle goes south it's because I made some bad decisions. Hence I feel the urge to retry and make better decision next time. At the same time story progression keeps me engaged and I want to see what happens next.
This is how a good SRPG is supposed to be and Symphony is just that.