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chuckroThe evil Schwarzschild Empire is pushing the world towards war. When that war spills into a podunk town (in the form of a beautiful princess pursued by mooks), our intrepid unlikely heroes—a boy and his adopted sister and brother—race her to safety in the arms of the resistance.
This feels “primitive” in a bunch of ways. The graphics are more “big and blocky” than most of the other games. There’s obviously supposed to be a lot of grinding, as enemies give far too little gold to buy weapons and armor as they become available—but all that grinding raises your levels enough that the enemies aren’t a big worry, regardless. The final purchasable equipment comes strangely early, and there’s a LOT of dungeon with only one more upgrade (the ultimate weapons) after that.
The minimap is only for the world map, and there is no dungeon escape or teleport magic, which means getting lost in the (often fairly large but repetitive) dungeons is a realistic concern. The towers often give a place you can jump down and out, if you remember where that is by the end of it.
The magic system is dependent on element levels, which function as a class system: Gaining levels in an element unlocks skills and stat boosts related to it. Each character has a set element, and then you can equip rings that give them access to a second. The active abilities of each element require the rings, but the passive bonuses and access to the special “combo” abilities remain if you swap rings.
I wish they hadn’t been so intent on squeezing the word “energi” into the name of every item in the game. I couldn’t remember what any of the items were and kept having to look and check which were healing, which recovered MP, and which were the items that upgrade rings.
The autobattle is good (it is just normal attacks and puts the battle on fast-forward), which is important because 95% of the battles in this game can be won on autobattle. (And you heal on level-up, so even stopping to recover isn’t really a thing.) Even many of the bosses, once you have your buffs and debuffs cast, are just an attack-fest. I actually ignored the elemental magic I was constantly learning (except for buffs, debuffs and very occasional healing) because it wasn’t worth the time to figure out elemental weaknesses when I could just smash everything.
The elemental shrines strangely lack encounters; they’re just each a small dungeon with a boss. This seems an odd oversight for an important later-game fetch quest. Also, as the dungeons in this game start big and get progressively bigger and more maze-like, even without encounters you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around. A popular motif is towers with multiple stairs and plenty of pit traps, which delay you further.
I was irritated by a certain unnecessary linearity: The elemental shrines must be done in a specific order; as must the quests for the ultimate weapons. There is no logical reason for this and the difficulty curve would have still worked fine even if you can choose your own order.
The only particularly challenging dungeons are the optional ones that hold the legendary weapons (the only non-store weapon upgrades); and if you do them, the final dungeon is a breeze. There’s an insanely powerful optional bonus boss, which is nice, given that at least two forms (of three) of the final boss can also be won on autobattle.
Random thought: “Ash” is a blue-haired boy revealed to be a long-lost artificial human. The resemblance to Rudy Roughknight from Wild ARMS is significant.
I give them a lot of credit that the game doesn’t end happily: Shion is absorbed by Maxim, and her spirit is freed to go to the afterlife when Maxim is sealed away, but Ash can’t actually save her. After in the epilogue, energi is disappearing from the world, so Ash is wasting away and the other constructs (including Enah) are soon to follow.
Overall: The battles are easy but there are lots of them; the dungeons are big and might require mapping (or a walkthrough); the plot is derivative but not bad. At 12+ hours of gameplay, it paid for the bundle by itself.
This feels “primitive” in a bunch of ways. The graphics are more “big and blocky” than most of the other games. There’s obviously supposed to be a lot of grinding, as enemies give far too little gold to buy weapons and armor as they become available—but all that grinding raises your levels enough that the enemies aren’t a big worry, regardless. The final purchasable equipment comes strangely early, and there’s a LOT of dungeon with only one more upgrade (the ultimate weapons) after that.
The minimap is only for the world map, and there is no dungeon escape or teleport magic, which means getting lost in the (often fairly large but repetitive) dungeons is a realistic concern. The towers often give a place you can jump down and out, if you remember where that is by the end of it.
The magic system is dependent on element levels, which function as a class system: Gaining levels in an element unlocks skills and stat boosts related to it. Each character has a set element, and then you can equip rings that give them access to a second. The active abilities of each element require the rings, but the passive bonuses and access to the special “combo” abilities remain if you swap rings.
I wish they hadn’t been so intent on squeezing the word “energi” into the name of every item in the game. I couldn’t remember what any of the items were and kept having to look and check which were healing, which recovered MP, and which were the items that upgrade rings.
The autobattle is good (it is just normal attacks and puts the battle on fast-forward), which is important because 95% of the battles in this game can be won on autobattle. (And you heal on level-up, so even stopping to recover isn’t really a thing.) Even many of the bosses, once you have your buffs and debuffs cast, are just an attack-fest. I actually ignored the elemental magic I was constantly learning (except for buffs, debuffs and very occasional healing) because it wasn’t worth the time to figure out elemental weaknesses when I could just smash everything.
The elemental shrines strangely lack encounters; they’re just each a small dungeon with a boss. This seems an odd oversight for an important later-game fetch quest. Also, as the dungeons in this game start big and get progressively bigger and more maze-like, even without encounters you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around. A popular motif is towers with multiple stairs and plenty of pit traps, which delay you further.
I was irritated by a certain unnecessary linearity: The elemental shrines must be done in a specific order; as must the quests for the ultimate weapons. There is no logical reason for this and the difficulty curve would have still worked fine even if you can choose your own order.
The only particularly challenging dungeons are the optional ones that hold the legendary weapons (the only non-store weapon upgrades); and if you do them, the final dungeon is a breeze. There’s an insanely powerful optional bonus boss, which is nice, given that at least two forms (of three) of the final boss can also be won on autobattle.
Random thought: “Ash” is a blue-haired boy revealed to be a long-lost artificial human. The resemblance to Rudy Roughknight from Wild ARMS is significant.
I give them a lot of credit that the game doesn’t end happily: Shion is absorbed by Maxim, and her spirit is freed to go to the afterlife when Maxim is sealed away, but Ash can’t actually save her. After in the epilogue, energi is disappearing from the world, so Ash is wasting away and the other constructs (including Enah) are soon to follow.
Overall: The battles are easy but there are lots of them; the dungeons are big and might require mapping (or a walkthrough); the plot is derivative but not bad. At 12+ hours of gameplay, it paid for the bundle by itself.
