The Guided Fate Paradox follows a high school student named Renya, as he gets caught up in the affairs of angels and demons. It’s all because he was lucky (or unlucky?) enough to win a fateful lottery. The winner of the lottery becomes god. That’s right, that god. More on that later, though.

The Guided Fate Paradox looks like a typical classic JRPG. Full character portraits come up during cutscenes, and they have a few animations that will occasionally play to show a certain emotion or reaction. These animations are cute, with a lot of secondary clothing and hair movement to make it something you want to see a second time.

The characters are varied, though there’s way too much maid cosplay and high school students for my tastes. Seriously, there’s only so much you can do with certain archetypes. Things get a little more creative when you go over to the devil’s side, at least.

The music is pretty typical for the genre too, but it’s decent. There’s a few orchestrated tracks, some typical bouncy village themes, and because of the religious slant of this game: lots of organ music. The voice acting is decent, though the main character’s sidekick, Liliel, has a pretty grating cutesy voice. Seriously, where does that fake laugh of hers even come from, Santa Claus? You can switch over to Japanese audio, if you prefer. On the Japanese side of things, the acting is good as well, with some pretty strong emotion carrying through.

In The Guided Fate Paradox, you become god. What, really, just like that? What are the implications of a mortal becoming god? How can one wrestle with the moral implications of such power? What secrets would one learn about the human condition, about life, about time, about the universe?

Don’t get too excited. I’ve seen this bait thrown out by other games and anime in the past, and I’ll let you know up front: The Guided Fate Paradox does nothing to step out of the confines of its predecessors. Instead, it’s filled with predictable tropes and character types. Renya, the main character, is a very ordinary, very familiar Japanese high school student. He has very predictable (sometimes naughty) desires for a boy in an anime, very predictable misgivings and fears, and is surrounded by a very predictable group of angels in cute maid cosplay uniforms. The writers were at least clever enough to insert some self-awareness into the dialogue. Renya often comments about the ridiculous idea that heaven is populated by anime stereotypes like maids and butlers with traditional Japanese names. But again, this game’s story treads very carefully in a narrow and predictable path set for it by anime that has come before. Don’t expect any moments of revelation. Don’t expect anything deep because it borrows some elements from religion. Certainly don’t expect anything too heavy to happen because you play the game as "god."

Also, all god ever does is explore dungeons and fight generic RPG monsters. Yep, guiding fates of believers is shoehorned into the classic RPG setup, somehow. God also apparently wears anything on he finds on the ground, including the kitchen sink as armor. Ok, maybe not the kitchen sink, but do expect to walk around with tank treads for legs, a pink bow for headgear, and a dual-wield shotgun and spear for weapons. I guess god can do what he wants.

The game does have a lengthy dialogue problem at times. There’s a point when you have introduced something interesting or cute about a character, or you’ve dangled a foreshadowing plot point in front of the audience, and you should move on to the next scene. Instead, this game drags and drags like a poorly edited fanfic. You forget what the point of the scene was supposed to be and it turns into a button-mashing scene to skip through to pointless chatter. It tends to get better after you get through the third level, but still, it’s quite tedious at times.

That being said, some of the writing is very funny. There are pop culture references, and the writing is very self-aware at times. And you might miss some funny bits if you keep the Japanese audio on, although the voice acting is hit or miss depending on the character. And overall there is something interesting about the story. Renya is being manipulated by the angels, and the demons might not be as evil as they seem. As things unfold, Renya slowly uncovers the truth. The angels reveal a bit of depth to their characters and the devil also reveals himself to be a bit more complicated than you’d assume.

As fair warning, the game is going to be straight up blasphemous if you’re coming from a religious background (or potentially hilarious, depending on your feelings about the subject). Renya is god, and he is addressed as "lord" and "god" all the time. He rolls into scenes saying, "Sup, I’m god." He also transforms into a second form that has three halos - an obvious nod to the Trinity. Those are just a few examples, but the game is obviously light-hearted enough that none of this is meant to be taken seriously. You definitely get the feeling all these references come from reading a book about religious themes (which they then used to name some things and build a general fantasy world), not from the creators trying to make a commentary on religion. It does get to be kind of funny, as your personal angel puts "lord" in front of everything she says to you. Unintentionally or not, she ends up sounding like a stereotypical southern belle at times, which is pretty hilarious.

The Guided Fate Paradox is just not meant to be played straight through without stopping. You’ll need to do a bit of grinding here and there. You’ll do a lot of inventory management. You’ll gain extra characters later on, and you’ll have to do it all over again for each one you want to use.

You can get quite clever with certain items and strategies. Also, some special powers have areas of affect that are a lot like chess moves. If you plan ahead according to the movements of your enemies, you can set up various strategies. But really, after all is said and done, any challenge is beatable after a bit of grinding.

This is one of those JRPGs that wants to take every element of a traditional RPG and call it something else. There are some relatively fresh things here, but most of them are simply things you can can call by another name in other games.

So leveling is done a bit differently than other games, but in the end, it has about the same result. Every time you enter a dungeon, your level reverts to one. But as you level in that dungeon, you earn bonuses to your base stats. Therefore, when you enter again as level one, you’re really a "more powerful" level one. Uh, well most folks just call that leveling, but alright game, we’ll say this is different. It also makes you jump through some hoops like making you lose all your equipment when you die and giving you a huge grid to plot out (extra) bonuses to your base stats.

The game is grind-friendly, but not grueling. You can get lucky by picking up some useful items on your way through a dungeon and saving them until the end boss fight. You’re given tools to make dying a little less painful as you go on, such as a bank to stash cash in (you lose half your money when you die), and a place to put valuable equipment (you also lose all your items and equipment when you die). Until you get these tools, it’s often worth it to simply save at each level (although that gets tedious since it spits you out to the title screen each time).

In addition to some creative changes to the typical leveling scheme, this game also does some interesting things on the grid system in which you play. You start off simply running around on flat gridded maps, but later things change in some creative ways. One level has you flipping around a giant 3D cube. One level pushes you on constantly, moving away from a deadly fog. It really ends up forcing you to change your battle strategy in interesting ways. I was interested in finding out what happens to Renya, and what exactly the angels and devils really had planned for him. As recycled and hokey as some of the story was, it was still interesting and kept me going. I could do away with some of the complications of inventory management and multiple sets of gear, but it wasn’t too bad to deal with overall. The Guided Fate Paradox is a good game for those of us who might have been hardcore RPG’ers in the past like me, but just want to have a fun time now.