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chuckroVedley made a stupid mistake in his youth and his parents were killed by a monster because of it. When a mysterious stranger tells him that he can use the power of the Letoile automatons to control time and restore the past, he jumps at the chance without even asking for details. This was not the best plan.
This is yet another KEMCO jrpg, but playing it via Amazon Underground has an amazing side effect: The IAP points can be purchased for $0.00. So anything you want from the IAP store, you can just get. Nice! There’s nothing game-breaking there, but you can unlock some bonus content and skill slots right off the bat, increase your XP gains, and grab a few stat-boosting accessories. You could also load up on stat-boosting consumables if you had the desire and the patience to do so.
The interface is a little clunkier, a little slower, and feels a little more “choppy” than some of the other games, though there’s nothing abjectly wrong with it.
The magic system is based on skill gems that also provide stat boosts (basically Materia); in battle there’s a chronos gauge that you boost by using skills in certain slots, and allows you to get extra turns or use special attacks. Given that there are also bonus and penalty slots that apply to acting on certain turns, this reminds me most of the Xenosaga boost system.
Dungeon were nothing special; mostly space-filing paths to disguise the fact they were just straight lines with short treasure branches. The final dungeon adds a lot of one-way paths that dump you back at the start, to be annoying. The world map deserves special mention, as this area is apparently an island archipelago connected by bridges; and your characters will only cross the bridges they're currently allowed to by the plot. You visit areas exactly once, in order. It's the most boring, straight-line world map I've ever seen.
There are rare random "Lantern" enemies that drop IAP points. There are two extra dungeons you can buy with IAP points, one mid-game and one just before the final dungeon. Both are moderately tougher than the main game but in turn give you a leg up on the areas right after them. (And both literally feel pasted into the plot.) The bonus dungeons are the only sidequests.
The dialogue in unnecessarily wordy; there are a number of totally pointless scenes where the characters debate about where to go and make a plan, and then are immediately interrupted by an NPC who tells them where to go next. Jethrien asked me at one point if I was actually reading the dialogue because she saw me speeding through text—I was, but it was all so trite and entirely expected that I was blazing through it.
Also, there’s a major character named Blart, which should give you a solid idea of the translation quality.
The game tries to grind into you the idea that Vedley is a good person and always tries to help those in need, and further cements it by giving you morally acceptable opportunities to kill the other Letoiles—the genuinely nice one sacrifices herself for you, a neutral one is killed by one of the others, and the three you have to kill are definitely nasty killers who are also trying to kill you. (Heck, one is actually an active serial killer who has multiple towns shaking in fear.) You’re going to be the hero and the game will go out of its way to make you be heroic.
The thing is, the concept wasn’t a bad one: Six people are told that if they win the robot-battling tournament they can control time and fix their greatest mistake. Only they soon discover that these robots are actually sentient beings with hopes and dreams, and all six of them eventually need to die to make your wish come true. Of course, you find out at the end that the mad scientist who set all this up was only doing it to further his own ends—a Letoile had to get strong enough to actually handle the full power of all six time-controlling Sertze cores, and this was the best way to arrange for that—but when presented with the option of saving the last Letoile or sacrificing her to change the past, a better writer would have made that more of a dilemma, or a pair of alternate endings. Between this game’s clunky writing and the lame “power of friendship / obvious answer” ending, it fell flat.
Overall: Decent concept, mediocre execution; middling as KEMCO games go. Can’t argue with the price, though.
This is yet another KEMCO jrpg, but playing it via Amazon Underground has an amazing side effect: The IAP points can be purchased for $0.00. So anything you want from the IAP store, you can just get. Nice! There’s nothing game-breaking there, but you can unlock some bonus content and skill slots right off the bat, increase your XP gains, and grab a few stat-boosting accessories. You could also load up on stat-boosting consumables if you had the desire and the patience to do so.
The interface is a little clunkier, a little slower, and feels a little more “choppy” than some of the other games, though there’s nothing abjectly wrong with it.
The magic system is based on skill gems that also provide stat boosts (basically Materia); in battle there’s a chronos gauge that you boost by using skills in certain slots, and allows you to get extra turns or use special attacks. Given that there are also bonus and penalty slots that apply to acting on certain turns, this reminds me most of the Xenosaga boost system.
Dungeon were nothing special; mostly space-filing paths to disguise the fact they were just straight lines with short treasure branches. The final dungeon adds a lot of one-way paths that dump you back at the start, to be annoying. The world map deserves special mention, as this area is apparently an island archipelago connected by bridges; and your characters will only cross the bridges they're currently allowed to by the plot. You visit areas exactly once, in order. It's the most boring, straight-line world map I've ever seen.
There are rare random "Lantern" enemies that drop IAP points. There are two extra dungeons you can buy with IAP points, one mid-game and one just before the final dungeon. Both are moderately tougher than the main game but in turn give you a leg up on the areas right after them. (And both literally feel pasted into the plot.) The bonus dungeons are the only sidequests.
The dialogue in unnecessarily wordy; there are a number of totally pointless scenes where the characters debate about where to go and make a plan, and then are immediately interrupted by an NPC who tells them where to go next. Jethrien asked me at one point if I was actually reading the dialogue because she saw me speeding through text—I was, but it was all so trite and entirely expected that I was blazing through it.
Also, there’s a major character named Blart, which should give you a solid idea of the translation quality.
The game tries to grind into you the idea that Vedley is a good person and always tries to help those in need, and further cements it by giving you morally acceptable opportunities to kill the other Letoiles—the genuinely nice one sacrifices herself for you, a neutral one is killed by one of the others, and the three you have to kill are definitely nasty killers who are also trying to kill you. (Heck, one is actually an active serial killer who has multiple towns shaking in fear.) You’re going to be the hero and the game will go out of its way to make you be heroic.
The thing is, the concept wasn’t a bad one: Six people are told that if they win the robot-battling tournament they can control time and fix their greatest mistake. Only they soon discover that these robots are actually sentient beings with hopes and dreams, and all six of them eventually need to die to make your wish come true. Of course, you find out at the end that the mad scientist who set all this up was only doing it to further his own ends—a Letoile had to get strong enough to actually handle the full power of all six time-controlling Sertze cores, and this was the best way to arrange for that—but when presented with the option of saving the last Letoile or sacrificing her to change the past, a better writer would have made that more of a dilemma, or a pair of alternate endings. Between this game’s clunky writing and the lame “power of friendship / obvious answer” ending, it fell flat.
Overall: Decent concept, mediocre execution; middling as KEMCO games go. Can’t argue with the price, though.
