![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe 'Chronus Fragments' are needed to prepare for the 'Time Rewinding', which only takes place once every 10 years. On their way to the Chronus Shrine to get the Fragments, Loka and Teth are surrounded by a mysterious man named Geppel and his gang. They demand the Fragments. Teth and Geppel vanish and Loka, the main character, decides to set out on a journey to find them. He is quickly joined by his childhood best friend and a hammer-wielding pop starlet.
As noted previously, these games were each $1, which tends to be a very good price for the KEMCO rpgs, and means I don’t feel too bad when I don’t like one. This game had some very good ideas and some really lousy execution.
The good: Genuine Lufia 2-style puzzle dungeons! You’ve got a magic ring (a la Tales of Phantasia that you can use on the map screen to do all sorts of puzzle-solving effects. There are blocks to push and pots to lift; there are multiple levels of dungeons with branching paths and lots of non-linear twists and turns.
Enemies are visible in dungeons (and avoidable). There’s a fast-exit available in dungeons and fast-travel on the world map. The magic system lets you apply your choice of metamagic effects via accessories, including double-effect and hit-all.
The bad: The game is really grind-heavy. The dungeons are full of spawn points for crafting items, and need to collect lots of vendortrash to upgrade your weapons and armor. You also need to kill lots of enemies for the “suppression” sidequests, and you’ll need the XP if you want to survive the next dungeon up the chain. So while the puzzles are cool and the dungeon design is very nice, needing to revisit the dungeons and re-do the puzzles to get enough vendortrash to upgrade equipment? That gets old fast.
Apparently you can also class change at level 30 to learn new skills. I never made it far enough to test that system, but clearly it’s an excuse for even more grinding.
You can get points for the IAP store just by fighting battles (10 battles = 1 point), but the store is mostly full of items that you’ll need late in the game, like the key to the bonus dungeon and high-end crafting materials.
Overall: Decent story concept, very nice dungeon design, but waaaay too much grinding. I seriously would have considered paying for IAP points if there was something that let me put the game into “no-grind” easy mode. Ah, well, can’t win ‘em all.
As noted previously, these games were each $1, which tends to be a very good price for the KEMCO rpgs, and means I don’t feel too bad when I don’t like one. This game had some very good ideas and some really lousy execution.
The good: Genuine Lufia 2-style puzzle dungeons! You’ve got a magic ring (a la Tales of Phantasia that you can use on the map screen to do all sorts of puzzle-solving effects. There are blocks to push and pots to lift; there are multiple levels of dungeons with branching paths and lots of non-linear twists and turns.
Enemies are visible in dungeons (and avoidable). There’s a fast-exit available in dungeons and fast-travel on the world map. The magic system lets you apply your choice of metamagic effects via accessories, including double-effect and hit-all.
The bad: The game is really grind-heavy. The dungeons are full of spawn points for crafting items, and need to collect lots of vendortrash to upgrade your weapons and armor. You also need to kill lots of enemies for the “suppression” sidequests, and you’ll need the XP if you want to survive the next dungeon up the chain. So while the puzzles are cool and the dungeon design is very nice, needing to revisit the dungeons and re-do the puzzles to get enough vendortrash to upgrade equipment? That gets old fast.
Apparently you can also class change at level 30 to learn new skills. I never made it far enough to test that system, but clearly it’s an excuse for even more grinding.
You can get points for the IAP store just by fighting battles (10 battles = 1 point), but the store is mostly full of items that you’ll need late in the game, like the key to the bonus dungeon and high-end crafting materials.
Overall: Decent story concept, very nice dungeon design, but waaaay too much grinding. I seriously would have considered paying for IAP points if there was something that let me put the game into “no-grind” easy mode. Ah, well, can’t win ‘em all.
