This is the most “classic” Japanese RPG I have played during the fest. You get to choose one of three characters: a stern and passionate for her combat training spear-lady Pyra, a bit shy and timid archer Atlas, and a prideful and arrogant elemental master Sage. The battle system is the standard turn-based one and the characters are exactly what it says on the thin: Pyra is a pyr-o melee tank, Atlas’ forte is agility and evasion rate and Sage’s spell set is pretty versatile.
Albeit different in details, all their stories come to the same progression: prepair for the final combat exam, investigate the situation with dangerous monsters near the town, go on a special mission with their mentor, and then things go wrong. A single story takes roughly 2 hours.
This game is made by two persons, Mottzy and Drass_Ray, and I see this is a labor of love. The art style is gorgeous and reminds of Octopath Traveler, combining pixel art character sprites with 3D assets with pixel-art textures. Despite the simplicity of the main story, the writing is solid and there are first drafts of actual lore available. There are no puzzles yet, but some extra mechanics, like shooting mechanisms with a bow, add some variety to the usual map traversal routine. Overall, the game is pretty solid and it’s nice to see what small teams of developers are capable of (recall Chained Echoes, which has almost entirely been made by a single person!)
Still, there are things to be addressed. The UI design lacks character, it’s just “choose an option from blue-coloured menus like it’s FF6”. And the game is pretty buggy, sometimes triggering wrong dialogues and mixing up your save slots. Deleting save files before staring a new campaign is advised. I hope these issues are patched soon, and the game becomes even more likable.
Links:
- Steam page (demo still available)
- Website
- Trailer
- Another review by Davidvinc RPGs
Yay, embedding images work! I have several more games to write short reviews for, but I’ve decided to take things slow as the demos don’t seem to be taken down after the fest and writing in English is pretty hard for a non-native like me. I hope I’ll be able to finish at least 3 or 4 of them by the end of the week.
You’ve convinced me to go back and give this one a try! Keep in mind some demos do get taken down, or at least they did in past Next Fests. It seems to be up to the developer.
I hope you’ve tried or at least will try Sea of Stars; the game has me absolutely entranced and I literally added its release date to my calendar. First game to successfully hit the Chrono Trigger nostalgia button on me, and boy did it hit the button hard.
some demos do taken down
Yeah, I am being really late with all this review thing and hope at least some demos I was about to write on would be kept.
Sea of Stars
Yeah, I’ve tried this and the demo is fascinating!
Non native as well. I think you have written good on your review. This game looks nice. Since there is a progress bar on top, is the turn ordner of the characters fixed or dependent on any kind of speed value?
It depends on speed, but it only affects turn order in a rotation between your and enemy turns, so it’s not like you can have more turns just by increasing the speed characteristic, as in Trails.
