Seven Knights Re:BIRTH preview - Hands-on with Netmarble's turn-based collectible RPG

• Stunning combat with plenty of strategic depth
• Idle mechanics with accessible mobile optimisations
• A decade-old legacy with a fresh narrative twist

Epic battles between good and evil aren't complete without MacGuffins, ancient gods, and old friends turning on each other to keep the emotions on point - and Seven Knights Re:BIRTH has all that with a touch of betrayal and a lot of heart.

As you might expect from sprawling JRPGs, you'll first set off on your quest as a small-town boy living in a not-so-lonely world, and with Unreal Engine 5 powering this gorgeous visual feast under the hood, it's a quest you'll no doubt be all too willing to take.

Setting sail on the Evan Expedition

Netmarble's collectible RPG not only builds upon the legacy of the popular Seven Knights franchise for the past 11 years, but it also offers a fresh start, even for a newbie to its vibrant fantasy world. 

While the jaw-dropping prologue might make it seem like you're being thrust into the thick of things unprepared, your adventure starts innocently enough - as Evan, you'll embark on a wide-eyed journey to unravel the mysteries of your odd little pendant, all to fulfil your grandpa's dying wish. The premise doesn't intimidate you with the franchise's 100 million cumulative downloads - all you really have to concern yourself with is your humble little quest.

It's a breath of fresh air and an ingenious way to welcome both veterans and newcomers to Seven Knights' lore, and with more than 120 heroes to encounter along the way, you'll easily find your favourites both in their backstories and in their character designs.

This means that while the campaign itself will slowly introduce you to the key faces in the franchise, the individual narratives interwoven throughout add deeper layers to your roster. It's not just a matter of collecting as many as you can via the card summons - it's also more personal, given how you can get to know these characters more closely via the Codex and interactions in the lobby.

And it's definitely worth checking each hero's stats and skills when you're strategising in combat - which is where the gameplay truly shines.

Twists, team-ups, and turn-based tactics

What's interesting here is that your party levels up as you fight battles, just like they would with an old-school RPG. The growth materials you're rewarded with, then, can be used to focus on enhancing your equipment instead, as well as ranking up your heroes, fusing them, or boosting their stats as you go along.

The Enhance feature is particularly exhilarating - with the right resources, you can not only boost your hero's stats but also switch up their character designs to make combat look even cooler than it already is. This means you can marvel at the stunning skill animations with your newly decked-out roster - think of it as a bit of a "Player Two" alternative with their variant colours and extra aesthetics.

That said, it's their skills you really need to strategise with, especially since you can't just breeze through battles hoping to take down your foes by sheer firepower alone. There are no elemental affinities here - all you really have is your set of skills, which is a compelling strategic feature that challenges you to switch up your kit based on the task at hand.

For instance, the Raid bosses and Power Up Dungeons have their own specific boss abilities and traits, so changing your party lineup based on the skills they have is crucial to winning. Cleo's AoE Petrify skill may work against regular grunts, but when you're up against lizardmen who can one-shot your heroes and apply Bleed with a single skill, Li's Iron Physique Taunt might just be your best bet.

Now, the battles may be automated, but you can always choose to manually execute your skills - even better is that you can set your Skills Queue to instruct your team to prioritise. It's worth having Evan apply his Barrier skill to the entire party first as a buff or letting Rei apply her Bleed and Poison effects at the very beginning of the battle, for example, before triggering Yui's Continuous Healing to give your entire lineup a head start in a boss fight.

All these make for thrilling combat combinations, not only in PvE but also in the Arena's PvP.

Idle optimisations for the busiest bees

With this much strategic depth, you'd think you'd need to grind away with laser focus just to stay on top of everything that's happening - but the beauty of this idle adventure is that you can simply leave your battles on repeat or have them progress onto the next stage on their own. There's a plethora of automised functions you can toggle too, whether that's stopping when a character hits max level or setting a certain number of durations or keys used.

And because mobile means picking up and playing while you're on the go, you can even set multiple content to run simultaneously, letting you multitask as you go about your busy day.

Finally, what's perhaps most interesting here is that as you farm resources and currencies, you'll eventually be able to craft the actual heroes you want (and the pets, too!). There's no pesky shard-collecting from the gacha here - all you need are certain starred heroes to craft your character of choice. Rei, for instance, only requires four three-star fodder from the summons pool to add her to your lineup - and she's a true poison-tipped force to be reckoned with.

With Seven Knights Re:BIRTH now in global pre-registration, suffice it to say you're in for a treat once it officially launches across the world this quarter. Why not join the bandwagon and have a look at the official website today?