![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Peacekeeper leads a band of heroes against Azatoth, lord of chaos…and gets his ass kicked. The Keeper of Time drags him out, and only the two of them and the Goddess survive the destruction of the world. The Goddess grants the Peacekeeper the ability to consume souls to prolong his life, so he can live until the world regenerates. The story then picks up millennia later, with Ein (the prince of Altria and probably the reincarnation of the Peacekeeper), Elena (his tutor and the immortal keeper of time), and Lynn (their magic-using cute ogre friend). In this, the 3rd Age, history repeats.
Clearly made by the same developer as Fortuna Magus, it has the same interface, similar graphics, the same tiny dungeons (at least initially), and same minimap. The combat system is a bit more tactical, as you can change your party makeup (there are eventually enough characters that you can swap them out) and there are three rows you can place characters in. That, and the action order in battle is actually useful, since you can easily buff or debuff speed (which is very useful in boss battles) and you can use SP attacks (limit breaks) as interrupt actions.
The magic system is Materia Lite: Equipping magical gems alters your stats and gives access to new spells as those gems level up. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that equipping more than one of a type of gem stacks their levels, so you can max any give element at 30. Dual-element gems that have no associated stat decreases are available at Gold Town, but you won’t be able to afford them until late in the game.
The in-app purchase “SNP” shop isn’t quite as accessible in the Humble Bundle version of this game, in that you don’t seem able to easily acquire any SNP points. You only get them for getting an S-Rank in a battle, and to do that you basically need to get lucky and score a lot of critical hits. (Hitting enemy weaknesses also apparently improves your rank, but I couldn’t manage better than an A-Rank doing just that.) It costs 20 SNP for most of the good accessories and 30 SNP for the bonus grinding areas. I had 24 when I finished the game.
It’s very heavy on the unwinnable battles early on—and in the mid-game, too. Which meant that my first Game Over from a tough boss caught me off guard, as I just expected it was another unwinnable battle when the boss opened with an attack that killed half my party. Nope, I just needed to grind some more. Thankfully, most bosses required only a change in strategy (careful buffing, better healing) to get past.
The dungeons get better as the game goes on: The desert is enormous when compared against anything in FM. The Winding Forest introduces teleporters (though there are only a few branching paths) and a “step on all the squares” puzzle. The Ancient Temple has some switches and a block-pushing puzzle. Later caves include mine-cart mazes. The Cave of Darkness has a spot-the-impostor trivia bit and a lilypad-hopping maze. The volcano dungeon seems oddly incomplete, in that you’re warned you’ll need Ice Crystals to navigate it (and you do), but then you find them in chests all over the volcano itself. (That sounds like a sidequest they forgot to include.) None of these are great, but they get a lot of credit for trying.
The game is much longer (12+ hours) and more involved than FM with a larger cast of characters and a deeper plot. Each character gets an arc, and it feels like there’s sufficient buildup to the point where you fight a world-destroying entity, given that at that point you have a motley crew of immortals and heroes that has come into their powers and gotten over their traumas.
After the “disc 1 final dungeon,” your main party disappears and you end up gathering a new party of mostly-former-villains. That latter half of the game also has several obvious-padding dungeons where the goddess just appears randomly and goes, “Oh, before you continue the plot, go to this random place and kill these monsters.” It’s pretty clear that they were running short of plot twists but needed the game to stretch from that point. The dungeons are often re-hashes of previous themes and the bosses are palette-swaps.
If you feel the need to grind before the endgame: There’s the Brook Mine where blue rabbits spawn; they give massive money rewards and can generally be taken down with one hit-all skill. (The hit-all skills make random battles trivial in the latter half of the game, so long as you’ve got enough Wind gems on the character so they go first.)
After you beat the final boss, the clear game file allows you to purchase gems that go up to level 30 (including the all-color Gem of Truth) and strengthen your final weapons with Orhalcum, which is in preparation for the EXTRA DUNGEON, where the random battles are three times as strong as in the final dungeon, and the bosses are nastier than the embodiment of chaos itself.
Overall: This was remarkably solid, much better than I think I expected it had any right to be. The battle system is solid with enough variety and customizability to be interesting; the plot is only moderately formulaic and holds together nicely. Worth the couple of bucks for any old-school jrpg fan.
Clearly made by the same developer as Fortuna Magus, it has the same interface, similar graphics, the same tiny dungeons (at least initially), and same minimap. The combat system is a bit more tactical, as you can change your party makeup (there are eventually enough characters that you can swap them out) and there are three rows you can place characters in. That, and the action order in battle is actually useful, since you can easily buff or debuff speed (which is very useful in boss battles) and you can use SP attacks (limit breaks) as interrupt actions.
The magic system is Materia Lite: Equipping magical gems alters your stats and gives access to new spells as those gems level up. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that equipping more than one of a type of gem stacks their levels, so you can max any give element at 30. Dual-element gems that have no associated stat decreases are available at Gold Town, but you won’t be able to afford them until late in the game.
The in-app purchase “SNP” shop isn’t quite as accessible in the Humble Bundle version of this game, in that you don’t seem able to easily acquire any SNP points. You only get them for getting an S-Rank in a battle, and to do that you basically need to get lucky and score a lot of critical hits. (Hitting enemy weaknesses also apparently improves your rank, but I couldn’t manage better than an A-Rank doing just that.) It costs 20 SNP for most of the good accessories and 30 SNP for the bonus grinding areas. I had 24 when I finished the game.
It’s very heavy on the unwinnable battles early on—and in the mid-game, too. Which meant that my first Game Over from a tough boss caught me off guard, as I just expected it was another unwinnable battle when the boss opened with an attack that killed half my party. Nope, I just needed to grind some more. Thankfully, most bosses required only a change in strategy (careful buffing, better healing) to get past.
The dungeons get better as the game goes on: The desert is enormous when compared against anything in FM. The Winding Forest introduces teleporters (though there are only a few branching paths) and a “step on all the squares” puzzle. The Ancient Temple has some switches and a block-pushing puzzle. Later caves include mine-cart mazes. The Cave of Darkness has a spot-the-impostor trivia bit and a lilypad-hopping maze. The volcano dungeon seems oddly incomplete, in that you’re warned you’ll need Ice Crystals to navigate it (and you do), but then you find them in chests all over the volcano itself. (That sounds like a sidequest they forgot to include.) None of these are great, but they get a lot of credit for trying.
The game is much longer (12+ hours) and more involved than FM with a larger cast of characters and a deeper plot. Each character gets an arc, and it feels like there’s sufficient buildup to the point where you fight a world-destroying entity, given that at that point you have a motley crew of immortals and heroes that has come into their powers and gotten over their traumas.
After the “disc 1 final dungeon,” your main party disappears and you end up gathering a new party of mostly-former-villains. That latter half of the game also has several obvious-padding dungeons where the goddess just appears randomly and goes, “Oh, before you continue the plot, go to this random place and kill these monsters.” It’s pretty clear that they were running short of plot twists but needed the game to stretch from that point. The dungeons are often re-hashes of previous themes and the bosses are palette-swaps.
If you feel the need to grind before the endgame: There’s the Brook Mine where blue rabbits spawn; they give massive money rewards and can generally be taken down with one hit-all skill. (The hit-all skills make random battles trivial in the latter half of the game, so long as you’ve got enough Wind gems on the character so they go first.)
After you beat the final boss, the clear game file allows you to purchase gems that go up to level 30 (including the all-color Gem of Truth) and strengthen your final weapons with Orhalcum, which is in preparation for the EXTRA DUNGEON, where the random battles are three times as strong as in the final dungeon, and the bosses are nastier than the embodiment of chaos itself.
Overall: This was remarkably solid, much better than I think I expected it had any right to be. The battle system is solid with enough variety and customizability to be interesting; the plot is only moderately formulaic and holds together nicely. Worth the couple of bucks for any old-school jrpg fan.
