Recently finished this game and have to say this is probably my favorite NA JRPG game by far. The story takes place in a fantasy world. You control Valere and Zale who are Solstice Warriors. Every few years Solstice Warriors are born to take on the evils in the world. I won’t spoil too much into it, but the story follows the journey of these two and the obstacles they face along the journey. It’s a very simple story, but when you play through it you start to care more and more about the characters.
The combat is very reminiscent of your typical old school Final Fantasy game. It’s turn based, but there’s little things in the game that makes it unique. For starters, you have to plan out your attack to interrupt your enemies. Using the right combos and attacks will make your life much easier while facing some of the bosses. The difficulty of the game is how hard you want to make it. You receive relics throughout the game that can be turn on or off depending on your preference. Some of the relics make the game into a game journalist friendly mode, while other relics increase the difficulty by a ton. Regardless of what you choose, you can tune the game to your liking. I think it’s a great addition as some players don’t want to be wiping multiple times on bosses and just want a fun story experience.
You can tell they took inspiration from Super Mario RPG in this. The combat has some aspects of Super Mario RPG. Some of the attacks and spells have a timing gimmick to them. If you want to do more damage you have to time the button press at the right time. Just like Mario RPG the group levels together so you don’t have to worry about your team being under leveled. They also have a swap system so you can switch characters in and out. This becomes handy later on when you need to use certain combinations to interrupt the enemy.
The pixel art in the game is wonderful. They took their time with this, and it paid off. Some of the scenes just look gorgeous. I’m usually not a fan of the really basic pixel art games as they tend to look very generic and lazily made, but this one is different. Reminds me of Owlboy.
And of course they do include puzzles in a lot of the maps. I’m pretty terrible at puzzle games, but these are very straight forward. They’re not the hardest puzzles I’ve ever encountered, but the later ones will tickle your brain a bit 🧩.
The game isn’t without faults though. The combat can be repetitive, but that’s to be expected in a JRPG game. This kind of gameplay is mostly for people that just want to sit on their couch and play something not too intense. Not every game has to be action packed like Elden Ring. There’s a time and place for those kinds of games just like this one. The character development seemed kind of rushed for the others. Most of the story seems to be focused on Valere and Zale as expected.
Regardless of the issues I had with the game, I definitely enjoyed it. I recall not experiencing any weird bugs or crashes while playing. Nowadays, I feel game companies tend to just ignore that. It was a smooth experience. The story was wonderful and brought JRPG to the forefront again. I grew up playing these kinds of games when I was a child, so it was refreshing to see the genre come back. Definitely worth a play through in my opinion.
