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chuckroSania is the mysterious Savior, gifted with magical powers that can defeat demons. She attracts a group of demon and half-demon bodyguards to help guide her to Raglis, the organization in the far west that might help her use her powers to save the world.
I bought 7 more KEMCO rpgs in their holiday sale each for $1. I’ll definitely get a buck’s worth of entertainment out of each.
I played this game for a full two hours before I realized that it was a fancy version of the Journey to the West. Sania is Xuanzang, Shin is Son Wukong (with his nickname “ape-man,” fiery temper, blunt speaking style, clever thinking and especially the sequence where he gets a magic crown locked on his head), Hagg is the childish and food-obsessed Zhu Bajie, Gyok is the pious and loyal Sha Wujing-equivalent. The goal is to travel all the way across the world, but when you do finally get there, you learn that things aren’t as they seem.
Oh, and I hope you like the “fantastic racism” trope, because it hits that one hard.
One of the game’s gimmicks is that you can move around during battle: The actual formation doesn’t seem to matter and there doesn’t seem to be a difference between front and back rows, but the act of moving reduces both your damage/accuracy and the damage/accuracy of physical attacks against you. (So, effectively, moving is the same as being in the back row.) There are also moves that can put bombs or blocks on the battlefield that you want to move away from, and items that add buff-providing statues to your side.
The lack of healing magic gets old really fast, and the attack magic variety is shockingly limited—among other things, there’s a maximum of only four spells equipped on any character at one time, and you get access to them very slowly. (Especially given that the SECOND dungeon has an enemy only vulnerable to spells, at a point in the game when you have exactly one attack spell and no opportunity to get more.) I was almost four hours in, having gotten through half a dozen dungeons, when a healing spell showed up buried in the list of status ailment orbs in the item shop.
I can't recall the last time that, when given a choice of accessories, the HP-boosting ones seemed like the best bet. Granted, the lack of other stat-boosting accessories to fill the slots (which are often my go-to) plays a role, but the fact that the base HP on most character is insufficient to save you from nastier hits as you get further into the game is more of it. That, plus the aforementioned limited healing magic and the fact that the character-specific special abilities mostly consume HP rather than MP when used.
You have a party-wide pool of “soul points” that you can use to upgrade each character’s weapons on different axis, including physical attack, magical attack, critical hit rate, and accuracy. This is clearly an attempt to make up for there being no "leaked" experience--when a character isn't in the active party, they gain nothing at all. I switched a level 10 Shin back into my active party to grind him when the main three were in the high 20s, and that proved very useful when Sania was removed for the last third of the game. (I don’t recall the last time the clear main character left the party for that long.)
A bunch of the playability considerations of other games aren’t here: No useful indicators of sidequests--not only are the NPCs that grant them not marked or indicated, the "Journal" feature doesn't record them. No minimap at all, though the dungeon design is decent and doesn't generally need one. You can fast-exit any dungeon, though, and fast-travel via the world map is unlocked fairly early.
They do try to break up setting battles to “auto,” also, with the aforementioned enemies only vulnerable to magic, and also enemies that you need to “soften up” with the defense-reducing earth spell before physical attacks are useful against them. I found that in later dungeons I was mostly using Hagg’s World Ruin attack, which hits all enemies for a ton of damage, to burn through random battles quickly.
The IAP choices are interesting—you can buy fun accessories and Soul Points for real money, of course, but there’s also a timer that grants you a bonus battle every half-hour, in which you can win some of those purchasable items. I ended up with an accessory that added +100 SP when my average SP was still around 20; and a +500 HP accessory when my average HP was in the 200s. You can also spend one Atoma Slip (IAP currency; and you get around 50 of them for free as you progress through the game) to revive your party to full when you fall in battle and continue without the enemies recovering at all.
Which contributed to my ability and willingness to complete the game. Without any of the IAP stuff, you’re in for some heavy grinding, especially for the last few bosses—I burned through six Atoma Slips and most of my items on the final boss, and then opted to skip the post-game content. (But I loved the normal ending, anyway and didn’t need to see any more: Sania becomes the new leader of Raglis, but when forced to choose between Sania and the Demon Queen, Shin instead opts to go with Hagg—who’s confessed being in love with him several times—and go open an orphanage together.)
Overall: While the difficult was a bit higher than I usually prefer, this was still a decent dozen-hour classic jrpg. They have a bunch of gameplay innovations which work out okay, and a fairly standard plot with a couple of cute bits.
I bought 7 more KEMCO rpgs in their holiday sale each for $1. I’ll definitely get a buck’s worth of entertainment out of each.
I played this game for a full two hours before I realized that it was a fancy version of the Journey to the West. Sania is Xuanzang, Shin is Son Wukong (with his nickname “ape-man,” fiery temper, blunt speaking style, clever thinking and especially the sequence where he gets a magic crown locked on his head), Hagg is the childish and food-obsessed Zhu Bajie, Gyok is the pious and loyal Sha Wujing-equivalent. The goal is to travel all the way across the world, but when you do finally get there, you learn that things aren’t as they seem.
Oh, and I hope you like the “fantastic racism” trope, because it hits that one hard.
One of the game’s gimmicks is that you can move around during battle: The actual formation doesn’t seem to matter and there doesn’t seem to be a difference between front and back rows, but the act of moving reduces both your damage/accuracy and the damage/accuracy of physical attacks against you. (So, effectively, moving is the same as being in the back row.) There are also moves that can put bombs or blocks on the battlefield that you want to move away from, and items that add buff-providing statues to your side.
The lack of healing magic gets old really fast, and the attack magic variety is shockingly limited—among other things, there’s a maximum of only four spells equipped on any character at one time, and you get access to them very slowly. (Especially given that the SECOND dungeon has an enemy only vulnerable to spells, at a point in the game when you have exactly one attack spell and no opportunity to get more.) I was almost four hours in, having gotten through half a dozen dungeons, when a healing spell showed up buried in the list of status ailment orbs in the item shop.
I can't recall the last time that, when given a choice of accessories, the HP-boosting ones seemed like the best bet. Granted, the lack of other stat-boosting accessories to fill the slots (which are often my go-to) plays a role, but the fact that the base HP on most character is insufficient to save you from nastier hits as you get further into the game is more of it. That, plus the aforementioned limited healing magic and the fact that the character-specific special abilities mostly consume HP rather than MP when used.
You have a party-wide pool of “soul points” that you can use to upgrade each character’s weapons on different axis, including physical attack, magical attack, critical hit rate, and accuracy. This is clearly an attempt to make up for there being no "leaked" experience--when a character isn't in the active party, they gain nothing at all. I switched a level 10 Shin back into my active party to grind him when the main three were in the high 20s, and that proved very useful when Sania was removed for the last third of the game. (I don’t recall the last time the clear main character left the party for that long.)
A bunch of the playability considerations of other games aren’t here: No useful indicators of sidequests--not only are the NPCs that grant them not marked or indicated, the "Journal" feature doesn't record them. No minimap at all, though the dungeon design is decent and doesn't generally need one. You can fast-exit any dungeon, though, and fast-travel via the world map is unlocked fairly early.
They do try to break up setting battles to “auto,” also, with the aforementioned enemies only vulnerable to magic, and also enemies that you need to “soften up” with the defense-reducing earth spell before physical attacks are useful against them. I found that in later dungeons I was mostly using Hagg’s World Ruin attack, which hits all enemies for a ton of damage, to burn through random battles quickly.
The IAP choices are interesting—you can buy fun accessories and Soul Points for real money, of course, but there’s also a timer that grants you a bonus battle every half-hour, in which you can win some of those purchasable items. I ended up with an accessory that added +100 SP when my average SP was still around 20; and a +500 HP accessory when my average HP was in the 200s. You can also spend one Atoma Slip (IAP currency; and you get around 50 of them for free as you progress through the game) to revive your party to full when you fall in battle and continue without the enemies recovering at all.
Which contributed to my ability and willingness to complete the game. Without any of the IAP stuff, you’re in for some heavy grinding, especially for the last few bosses—I burned through six Atoma Slips and most of my items on the final boss, and then opted to skip the post-game content. (But I loved the normal ending, anyway and didn’t need to see any more: Sania becomes the new leader of Raglis, but when forced to choose between Sania and the Demon Queen, Shin instead opts to go with Hagg—who’s confessed being in love with him several times—and go open an orphanage together.)
Overall: While the difficult was a bit higher than I usually prefer, this was still a decent dozen-hour classic jrpg. They have a bunch of gameplay innovations which work out okay, and a fairly standard plot with a couple of cute bits.
