A fairly traditional RPG from Sting (who did Riveria), I'm quite enjoying it so far.
It's USP is that you can choose from two characters whose story you get to play out. Unlike most games with this gimmick, you do genuinely do two separate quests with different sets of characters, only very briefly meeting up with the other sets at a few points (these interactions are quite funny).
I picked Levant's quest. It's a fairly generic setup, royal knight, a kind emperor who suddenly turns evil but after a bland couple of hours, once the scenerio is established, the characters themselves start to shine. After the immensely dislikeable FFXIII cast(aside from Sazh), it's refreshing to have a fairly charming set of characters and nice light hearted conversations. I get the impression the other path has even stronger character interactions.
The battle system is fairly standard turn based. There's an attempt to give it some depth with a force charge system where certain spells become stronger depending on if what elements you've used. To be honest it's too hard to understand to take advantage of and I've gone 15 hours so far without paying any attention to it.
Like other Sting games, there's no shops or money. You get items and (limited use) weapons purely through crafting. To be honest, the weapons are largely useless, you're far better off using your main weapons (ragnafacts) which don't wear out. Instead the crafting is best used for equipment and healing items.
The character's main weapons, the Ragnafacts, can be upgraded by spending force points. You can upgrade the power, add (pre determined) spells or lower the amount of MP needed for spells. It's a nice bit of customisation that helps keep the game interesting.
Bad points:
-Bland featureless mazes as dungeons. Expect to get very lost when you save the game, go back to it and forget which way you were going. The mazes are fairly well designed, channelling you subtly in the right direction despite their complexity but if you lose track of which way you came from, you're in trouble.
-limited range of enemies. Expect to see the same dozen or so enemies throughout (but with palette swaps)
-small selection of playable characters. I briefly got a new member but she only stayed with the party for about an hour. Other than that, it's just been the same 3. Also haven't received any other ragnafacts (I didn't even know you could swap and change them between characters until a short time ago).
-slightly too easy, the battles would be challenging (the enemies hit hard, do lots of status attacks and healing is tricky) if they were longer. Sadly most boss battles are over in about a minute. Doubling their health would add real challenge to the game.
Overall not earth shattering but it's a fun, charming RPG that will sadly probably get ignored
It's USP is that you can choose from two characters whose story you get to play out. Unlike most games with this gimmick, you do genuinely do two separate quests with different sets of characters, only very briefly meeting up with the other sets at a few points (these interactions are quite funny).
I picked Levant's quest. It's a fairly generic setup, royal knight, a kind emperor who suddenly turns evil but after a bland couple of hours, once the scenerio is established, the characters themselves start to shine. After the immensely dislikeable FFXIII cast(aside from Sazh), it's refreshing to have a fairly charming set of characters and nice light hearted conversations. I get the impression the other path has even stronger character interactions.
The battle system is fairly standard turn based. There's an attempt to give it some depth with a force charge system where certain spells become stronger depending on if what elements you've used. To be honest it's too hard to understand to take advantage of and I've gone 15 hours so far without paying any attention to it.
Like other Sting games, there's no shops or money. You get items and (limited use) weapons purely through crafting. To be honest, the weapons are largely useless, you're far better off using your main weapons (ragnafacts) which don't wear out. Instead the crafting is best used for equipment and healing items.
The character's main weapons, the Ragnafacts, can be upgraded by spending force points. You can upgrade the power, add (pre determined) spells or lower the amount of MP needed for spells. It's a nice bit of customisation that helps keep the game interesting.
Bad points:
-Bland featureless mazes as dungeons. Expect to get very lost when you save the game, go back to it and forget which way you were going. The mazes are fairly well designed, channelling you subtly in the right direction despite their complexity but if you lose track of which way you came from, you're in trouble.
-limited range of enemies. Expect to see the same dozen or so enemies throughout (but with palette swaps)
-small selection of playable characters. I briefly got a new member but she only stayed with the party for about an hour. Other than that, it's just been the same 3. Also haven't received any other ragnafacts (I didn't even know you could swap and change them between characters until a short time ago).
-slightly too easy, the battles would be challenging (the enemies hit hard, do lots of status attacks and healing is tricky) if they were longer. Sadly most boss battles are over in about a minute. Doubling their health would add real challenge to the game.
Overall not earth shattering but it's a fun, charming RPG that will sadly probably get ignored
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