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Android Games Reviews: KEMCO Humble Bundle #5 - Fortuna Magus
The story opens with three children and their father, the hunter Kalius, who disappears one day. Ten years later, Amane and Tia still live together, but Lill left to search for Kalius. When bandits attack, a wandering swordsman named Rett comes to their rescue—and he turns out to be a “magus”, hunted by the authorities. What happened to Kalius, and what are the magi, really?
Another fairly standard KEMCO classic jrpg, with another different bunch of quirks. This game has three difficulty levels (Whoo! Easy mode!), random encounters, eventually a five-character party and relatively MP-expensive skills and spells. The battle screen is much more interested in showing you the turn order than in giving information about your characters, which is odd, as you don’t get many abilities that can actually alter that turn order.
The magic/skill system is frustratingly opaque, as it’s similar to the SaGa series system where you randomly “spark” new abilities. Apparently, once you reach a certain level, using a skill or spell in battle can trigger learning a new one. Nothing indicates when this should be possible or what you’ll learn. Also, there are “elemental levels” you can raise with limited items that apparently play a role in sparking new spells. How? Who knows! Basically, whenever I unloaded all of my skills in a boss battle, I’d gain a bunch of new ones.
After battles, you receive “FMP” in addition to the usual XP and gold, and they can be used in a special menu store to buy overpowered equipment. (It’s particularly amusing how the Humble Bundle versions of these games got around the original’s in-app purchases.) If you really want to break the game, buy a Time Compass and an Area Badge from the FMP store, and put them both on a dual-wielding Amane. That’ll destroy pretty much any random battle.
The dungeons are often “nothing” areas—three small screens with a few chests on each, then a healing spot and a boss.
Amusingly, the game has two endings, but there’s an extra dungeon in the “bad” ending. It seems like you’re expected to find that first, and then go get the “true” ending via a clear game save. After beating that, there’s an arena you can fight bonus battles in. (Which, in practice, seem to be just whittling down giant mounds of hit points.) Even with a few sidequests (some of which are irritatingly hard to find, despite the small game world) and both endings, the game only clocks in around five hours, which is short even for a KEMCO game.
All of that said, the plot was okay. The final (real) boss is revealed to be both the cause of the magi’s appearance and the reason for Kalius’ disappearance, which ties it up nicely. Everybody gets a motivation and at least some development, and nothing escalates into absurdity. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Fridge logic notes that they hit the sibling incest button twice: Amane and Tia are adopted siblings and clearly end up together. Mitoshiro and Oliviet also screamed “totally lesbians” to me, but they’re revealed to secretly have been sisters. I don’t think this would impact anyone’s marginal enjoymet of the game, but it’s something I noticed.
Overall: This isn’t bad, and the plot and translation are actually halfway decent, but the dungeons are tiny and short and the skill system is obtuse. I’d call it middle of the pack for KEMCO games.
Another fairly standard KEMCO classic jrpg, with another different bunch of quirks. This game has three difficulty levels (Whoo! Easy mode!), random encounters, eventually a five-character party and relatively MP-expensive skills and spells. The battle screen is much more interested in showing you the turn order than in giving information about your characters, which is odd, as you don’t get many abilities that can actually alter that turn order.
The magic/skill system is frustratingly opaque, as it’s similar to the SaGa series system where you randomly “spark” new abilities. Apparently, once you reach a certain level, using a skill or spell in battle can trigger learning a new one. Nothing indicates when this should be possible or what you’ll learn. Also, there are “elemental levels” you can raise with limited items that apparently play a role in sparking new spells. How? Who knows! Basically, whenever I unloaded all of my skills in a boss battle, I’d gain a bunch of new ones.
After battles, you receive “FMP” in addition to the usual XP and gold, and they can be used in a special menu store to buy overpowered equipment. (It’s particularly amusing how the Humble Bundle versions of these games got around the original’s in-app purchases.) If you really want to break the game, buy a Time Compass and an Area Badge from the FMP store, and put them both on a dual-wielding Amane. That’ll destroy pretty much any random battle.
The dungeons are often “nothing” areas—three small screens with a few chests on each, then a healing spot and a boss.
Amusingly, the game has two endings, but there’s an extra dungeon in the “bad” ending. It seems like you’re expected to find that first, and then go get the “true” ending via a clear game save. After beating that, there’s an arena you can fight bonus battles in. (Which, in practice, seem to be just whittling down giant mounds of hit points.) Even with a few sidequests (some of which are irritatingly hard to find, despite the small game world) and both endings, the game only clocks in around five hours, which is short even for a KEMCO game.
All of that said, the plot was okay. The final (real) boss is revealed to be both the cause of the magi’s appearance and the reason for Kalius’ disappearance, which ties it up nicely. Everybody gets a motivation and at least some development, and nothing escalates into absurdity. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Fridge logic notes that they hit the sibling incest button twice: Amane and Tia are adopted siblings and clearly end up together. Mitoshiro and Oliviet also screamed “totally lesbians” to me, but they’re revealed to secretly have been sisters. I don’t think this would impact anyone’s marginal enjoymet of the game, but it’s something I noticed.
Overall: This isn’t bad, and the plot and translation are actually halfway decent, but the dungeons are tiny and short and the skill system is obtuse. I’d call it middle of the pack for KEMCO games.