This game is a delightful return to a wonderful series of cats and dogs. Fuga: Melodies of Steel is the 4th game in the Little Tail Bronx series, a series developed by Cyberconnect2, a company you might know for their work on the .hack// series and Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series. The Little Tail Bronx series however is something special; it is very much a lovingly crafted series made for the love of the art above all else (the games never sold all that well), kept alive by love from its kemono-fan developers and a small but devoted fandom. This love shows in all of the LTB games, and Fuga is no exception.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel takes place before the prior Little Tail Bronx games, and it involves 12 children that discover an advanced tank that they then use to try and find and reclaim their parents from the fascist Berman army (a clever pun on Dobermans, who happen to be a German dog). The game utilizes this to instill fear and tragedy for these children, as their desperation (and game difficulty) may force the player to use the tank's most powerful weapon: the Soul Cannon. Not disimillar to the anime Bokurano, the weapon comes with a catch: the one who uses the weapon perishes. While this has massive character tragedy implications, it also holds many significant gameplay effects.

Fuga is a game of management. During the game's intermissions, which occur a couple times per chapter, you are given a set amount of action points, or AP. You need to utilize this AP to most effectively prepare for the coming battles, which becomes increasingly harder as more and more children join the tank and more options become available to you on the tank itself. You can spend AP to talk to the kids and increase their rapport with each other, farm food, cook, sleep, fish resources, go on expeditions in ruins, upgrade the tank, and do laundry. The game unlocks more as you progress, so at the time of this review, there may be even more to do later on. As you get these extra options how you spend your time becomes harder and harder, and what you choose to do affects the stats of the tank, the children's mood, their skills, their ability in combat, their exp, etc. This level of management even extends to the battles themselves; turn-based, you place a pair of children on three sections of the tank. Each child uses different types of weapons and has different skills available to them, and different weapons are strong against different types of enemies. Hitting an enemy's weakness delays the time in which their turn will come to fight, giving you more opportunity to hit them and avoid taking hits. You can swap out children during battles, but you're locked into the formation you choose when you do so for three turns, so its important to make decisions on who's on what gun when before you do so. However, if during a particularly hard boss fight you may find yourself in need, you can utilize the Soul Cannon, which will win you the battle at a great cost. The Soul Cannon doesn't just kill the one who uses it; it makes the other children in the fight sad, affecting their ability in battle. It also takes away an option in combat permanently, so utilizing it a lot can put a strain on what you can do in battle.

With all this in mind, Fuga easily has the best gameplay in the Little Tail Bronx series, and even my favorite of all of CC2's games. But the quality of Fuga doesn't just stop there. Its filled with lovely HD artwork, with the end of each chapter even having art done by different kemono artists, some of which kemono and furry fans may recognize. Its delightful to see CC2 reach out to the fandom's artists. The OST is also outstanding, with some of my favorite tracks being "March in the Storm" and "Flower on the Trails". Chikayo ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and LieN did a remarkable job, and I was especially impressed that even the music was dubbed in French for the French audio.

Speaking of which, about the audio: I highly recommend you play this in French. The prior entry in the series, Solatorobo, had soundbytes where the characters would be Japanese speakers speaking French. While charming, the characters in universe officially speak French, and as such I highly recommend it both for consistency's sake and for certain other reasons that I can't say. The writing is also quite lovely, and its wonderful seeing the characters talk to each other during Link Events.

In any case, I highly recommend this game to anyone who's a fan of management games, tower defense games, furries, kemono fans, and people who love JRPGs in general. Fantastic game.