Had this on pre-order for bloody ages, but given the physical edition has been done in partnership with First Press Games (who are having some issues of late), Steam keys started going out by means of apology fpr the delay. So, not new by any stretch, but as it happens, really bloody good.
Described as being "a 16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where dragons are as common as piloted mechanical suits", and with "music inspired by PSX RPGs". It looks better and moves more fluidly than a 16-bit game for sure, and the character art and UI are very nice, but I get why saying that works better as shorthand rather than just "it has pixels".
There's a few things that are keeping this fresh to me. Rather than slogging through random encounters and carefully managing your resources with economical use of skills and spells, enemies are visible and able to be skipped past, and you go into each battle with full HP/MP. Your active party is four strong, but you each one can have a partner who they can swap with for no cost and still act in the same turn, making for 8 lots of skills and specialties being available at quick notice. There's an "ultra bar" which is best described as a party-wide limit break, but the "overdrive" bar is the more interesting one, where most actions move a marker further along a meter that goes from "you do more damage and receive less" to "you take more damage and do less" if you push it too far - with constantly-rotating skill classes being one of the few things that can help bring it back down. All of this combines for a snappy, thoughtful, but all-out battle style that is balanced but that makes even basic encounters quite fun.
... and just when you've got the hang of that, it also throws in mechs, who instead have an overdrive bar with two danger zones at either side, and gears to shift between that change your stats up/down while also costing more TP and pushing the bar one way or the other. You are far, far more powerful in these than out, but the game does a good job of keeping you from being able to use them against 'on foot' enemies too often. I am reminded here of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which did not handle this transition anywhere near as gracefully. Oh, and there's no levelling, in or out of your mech - each character has a selection of actions, passive skills and stat boosts that you get to pick from after key story beats, as well as skill points you can invest to strengthen them. I also really like the side quest / reward system.
Plot-wise it's... a little complicated, and starts off by introducing a few pairings of characters that are in different places doing different things. Eventually people and events start to converge, but it's also not afraid of dropping in cut scenes jumping off to entirely different places and characters, constant layering new things on top of one another.
All in all, I've lost about 30 hours to this already and am incredibly impressed - doubly so on account of it being mostly the creation of one guy. It absolutely feeds off 90s JRPG nostalgia, but in a way that's playful more than derivative, and absolutely knows when to stop doing it and to be its own thing.
Described as being "a 16-bit SNES style RPG set in a fantasy world where dragons are as common as piloted mechanical suits", and with "music inspired by PSX RPGs". It looks better and moves more fluidly than a 16-bit game for sure, and the character art and UI are very nice, but I get why saying that works better as shorthand rather than just "it has pixels".
There's a few things that are keeping this fresh to me. Rather than slogging through random encounters and carefully managing your resources with economical use of skills and spells, enemies are visible and able to be skipped past, and you go into each battle with full HP/MP. Your active party is four strong, but you each one can have a partner who they can swap with for no cost and still act in the same turn, making for 8 lots of skills and specialties being available at quick notice. There's an "ultra bar" which is best described as a party-wide limit break, but the "overdrive" bar is the more interesting one, where most actions move a marker further along a meter that goes from "you do more damage and receive less" to "you take more damage and do less" if you push it too far - with constantly-rotating skill classes being one of the few things that can help bring it back down. All of this combines for a snappy, thoughtful, but all-out battle style that is balanced but that makes even basic encounters quite fun.
... and just when you've got the hang of that, it also throws in mechs, who instead have an overdrive bar with two danger zones at either side, and gears to shift between that change your stats up/down while also costing more TP and pushing the bar one way or the other. You are far, far more powerful in these than out, but the game does a good job of keeping you from being able to use them against 'on foot' enemies too often. I am reminded here of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which did not handle this transition anywhere near as gracefully. Oh, and there's no levelling, in or out of your mech - each character has a selection of actions, passive skills and stat boosts that you get to pick from after key story beats, as well as skill points you can invest to strengthen them. I also really like the side quest / reward system.
Plot-wise it's... a little complicated, and starts off by introducing a few pairings of characters that are in different places doing different things. Eventually people and events start to converge, but it's also not afraid of dropping in cut scenes jumping off to entirely different places and characters, constant layering new things on top of one another.
All in all, I've lost about 30 hours to this already and am incredibly impressed - doubly so on account of it being mostly the creation of one guy. It absolutely feeds off 90s JRPG nostalgia, but in a way that's playful more than derivative, and absolutely knows when to stop doing it and to be its own thing.
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