Hello, I have finished playing your game recently, and felt like it was amazing and I wanted to write some things about it. I saw that you had a huge community on Steam, but no posts here, so I would like to leave my own remarks about this absolutely beautiful game.
To start things off, I really liked the way you had put a challenge saying "You will cry a lot" as a cons to the game :D
Since I play a lot of JRPG and consider myself pretty good at it, I had to play this game just because of that, since I'm very confident on my skills. Very good marketing idea XD
I'll try to be brief and write things as they come up, because there was so much to talk about that I would probably spend an entire day writing about it, so lets get to it:
STORY
The story starts in an alternate timeline in the future, where the world is engulfed in a apocalyptic scenario and wars are all over the place. The story then cuts to the main timeline in the past, where the protagonist Xero tells the story of the nations and how they developed new technologies to increase their firepower and wage war, but they lived peacefully very far away from it together with his family and his friend Enda. Then his life gets turned upside down when the soldiers from a terrorist faction decided to bomb his city and kill everyone in it. After surviving the attack, Xero and Enda go forward into a journey to stop the evil madman from destroying other cities and to bring the peace that they so love, back into the world.
The story follows a non-linear gameplay that transitions into a linear storytelling, going from one place to another trying to get stronger completing quests and trying to stop the villain from attacking other cities. It has a very solid plot with TONS of plot twists and things that will definitely catch you off-guard, and some are very dark.
In my opinion, the story is by far the greatest aspect of the game. It makes you feel like you are playing a full pledged SNES JRPG from an AAA developer. This game seems like a hidden gem that could have definitely blown up and became one of the most loved and acclaimed RPG games there is, and I’m not even exaggerating. Every aspect of the story makes you feel like you are on the edge of your seats wondering what is going to happen next, and what you can discover from the many hidden sub-plots going on at the same time from the characters pasts. The cutscenes are outstanding and every bit of detail is extremely polished. From the animation to the original soundtrack, to the characters unique expressions and reactions; the game completely envelops you and makes the immersive gameplay a very strong point in this adventure. This game is the definition of what 13 years of effort, passion and love could create.
I absolutely loved how the dark themed story took form with many tragedies, transitioning from: parts where the characters even question if it’s worth to keep going or not, or what they can even do against the unstoppable force of evil; into heartwarming moments of rising up and overcoming the difficulties.
And then the romance buildup was just perfect. I have seen many romance subplots rise and crash, and I know for a fact that it is VERY hard to make it right, but you managed to do it flawlessly. The romance was the cherry on the top of this marvelous story. It was very natural, well constructed and mature, also the timings were perfect. I could spend an hour talking about each aspect of the many plots and subplots.
The characters pasts were also SO FUCKIN GOOD that I was shocked. Slash’s story in particular was amazing by how tragic it was, and how in those times of war the weak minded will always fall first. So you had to become stone cold in order to be strong and follow through, even though you have to deal with the ghosts of your past every single day. His boss fight was also so symbolic and creepy, even the boss attacks trying to “suffocate” you. Damm that was fuckin epic. I still get chills just by remembering how good it was. For some personal preference, I decided to fight this boss with this song as the theme:
Definitely made it even more epic for me :DThe other stories were also great, principally Burns story, very tragic and dark: the lone wolf misunderstood by an entire city and forced to stay quiet and not say a single word, in order to keep his family and loved ones alive. Daamm that was sick too. And his fight on the terrace in the rain, after all that time and how strong he becomes to just solo their entire mafia, that was epic.
The ending was also fantastic. It was one of the best endings to a game I have ever seen in my life. ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. Every. Single. Part. Of it.
Characters
Each character has its unique set of feats and do not follow stereotypes. Every character has an amazing background and their personalities and abilities complement eachother to make this game truly a masterpiece. My favorite characters were Enda, Xero and Sandra. I loved the running gag that the game has with Xero not being able to cast fire, only at the end for him to cast his "Skyfire brilliance" and it was the most important thing. Enda always trolling him, but being a sweetheart whenever he truly needs it. Sandra with her spectacular presentations and positive humour. Slash being somewhat of a bigger brother figure and always being stone cold military disciplined towards the objective. Burns being mysterious and quiet. Throg being an attention seeking ghost with comedy gold lines. Asera with his genius and goofy personality, always trying to sound smart and getting into fights with Xero.
The only characters I wished you explored a little bit more were Eidol and Heindrovia, because they kinda feel left behind in the grand scheme of things, principally Heindrovia. She was the only character were I felt like we needed to see a lot more, and thrown together with Barclyss past, leading up to him becoming an nihilistic evil villain. By the way, Barclyss cutscenes and animations were also sick; he made up for a great villain. Overall the characters were amazing and there were a lot of hidden gems in the dialogues, principally Xero lines. For example when he called the beach girls “too old to be good-looking” and how he felt remorse for Morsan getting dumpstered in the cave, even after what he had done. Once again there is so much stuff I want to talk about but if I wrote it all down here, then it would have been an 10k essay of words. Fast forwarding to the end, amazing job here too.
Combat, mechanics and Bosses
The combat system uses a classic ATB bar measured by speed, inspired by FF games, the battles feel very fast paced and fluid, the animations are amazing and the special link abilities are gorgeous. My favorite abilities are definitely Sandra’s “Gatling Gun” and Enda’s “Tatsumaki”. The summons are really cool too, but since they cost so much I rarely even used them, the cost reward did not seem efficient to me, but it looks very cool for a finishing blow. The game also uses a material system with Shards, kinda like the FF games, and I love how you can build your character whatever way you want. This gives a lot of freedom and power to the player. Loved this.
There were also many great aspects in mechanics, how you could interact with the scenario, and the Field Spells adding extra hidden content inside each dungeon. Each time some event happens, the citizen’s change their lines and some new subplots happen, like that creep that eventually got the girl he was spying on; places opening and reforming; many many more hidden gems in mechanics that makes this game so lively. The Wallstock Mountains hypothermia mechanic, Serrison timer mechanic. When you eventurally got your airship and found new areas on the world. The bestiary with every single monster. Even the ambush mechanic and how you could interact with enemies, a lot of great stuff here.
Bosses will always be my favorite topic of discussion, since I know very good boss fights and how you could build up to it. You did an amazing job demonstrating how powerful the enemies truly are, and how each boss had a different set of cirscunstances and abilities to make the battles challenging and entertaining, and always keep them fresh. The rewards to the bosses are also amazing and it makes you feel great after accomplishing the challenges. Not gonna lie, in the beginning 2 or 3 dungeons of the game the bosses seem a bit weird, but later on the scaling and difficulty spikes make them absolutely trilling to fight, principally the unkown bosses in the sidequests, the bosses in arena, and the bosses with different mechanics like the Sea monster boss, and the boss on the Zipline cutting down your cabbles and stuff. Also the last superboss Tenjin was an amazing fight and I got killed 5 or 6 times before finally taking him down at level 62 with Sandra. The last boss was surprisingly not easy too! He was very challening and I almost died to him, even after completing all the quests and being super strong. This shows your talent on scaling and making fights challenging, but fair at the same time. I'm on Newgame+ and looking foward to facing Final Tenjin as the last challenge, hopefully he will be as good as the first one or even better. My favorite bosses will always be the Past sidequest bosses tho, because they are so symbolic and well made that I makes me want to see so much more of this game.
The only problem I have with the mechanics, is that at the end of the game it feels like you are way too powerful and can't die, because everybody will have an Enda shard and can revive and heal the party to full. Enda can use guardian to bypass a lot of instakilling abilities and cast Divinity afterwards to revive the entire party with full hp, then maul at the boss when hes recovering. The party can also spam Brio All with Burns shard to make it impossible to die, because everybody will have 9999 hp, and that is a very cheesy strategy to win every fight, even Tenjin. It still requires some thinking, but definitely seems like you have too many resources to deal with the bosses, even though they deal high damage.
Soundtracks and Puzzles
The game features excellent ORIGINAL soundtracks that are really well crafted and add unique old-school SNES vibes to it, making it seem like a full pledged game. The OSTs are so good, that I'm thinking about buying them when I have the chance, after this COVID situation ceases over here. Wonderful sound to a wonderful game, nothing much to talk about here.
The puzzles are also charming and clever, making you use the field spells to solve them, and adding unique utility to all the characters involved, so no one gets left behind. I personally loved the Sneak puzzles in the Fort with Enda and Throg, and also the Affliction Dome puzzles that you put in, just to add the last bit of entertainment before facing the final boss.
FINAL SCORE
9.7/10
Total time playing:
51:53:06
Definitely did not "Cry a lot" when playing (just a bit XD), but loved the challenges and would love to see a sequel :D
This game will be at my top 3 all time JRPG games from RPGMaker, together with Last Scenario, and Yggdrasil: a tale of Cyndrivia.
It will also go in my top 10 list of JRPG games of all time.