Alvastia Chronicles (Android)
Jul. 7th, 2024 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIn ages past, people lived on the surface world. However, the demon king attacked and poisoned the seas, so the gods raised the continents into the air. Ten years ago, one of the four crystals sealing the demon king broke and monsters escaped into the world, destroying the hometown of our main characters, a brother-sister pair. Their parents were killed and the brother was made mute in the attack. Now, when patrolling a nearby forest the run into the monster general who killed their parents, so they decide to go on a journey of both revenge and hopefully world salvation.
This uses a more roughly pixelated art style like the Dragon series of EXE-Create games, but the add-on systems are mostly what we’re used to. (And that art style can make it hard to tell what’s a background item versus a thing you can interact with, though honestly that’s a common problem in KEMCO games.) You can meld weapons to strengthen them and there’s a lottery for new ones, that sort of thing. Instead of a real-time garden, you collect “old” treasure chests that only open with time, with bronze ones taking seconds and gold ones taking several real-time hours. (This basically forces you to play the game in limited bursts, because any such chests you collect when your grid is full of already-aging ones are discarded.)
The battle/party system is closer to Dragon Sinker--each main character gets a set of backup characters who bring their own equipment and matter more for which class they hold. Honestly, the 100 companion characters feel less like you’re playing Suikoden and more like a fancy class system. You assign three to each main character, which determines their special ability list and, depending on the combination, an unlockable innate ability. You can set a dozen other characters as your “strategy” team, which means they gain levels and add a percentage-based bonus to your abilities. Most of the characters just join when you talk to them, though a few require subquests such as giving them 15 stat-raising "drink" items or recruiting other characters first.
The game itself feels more like the first Lufia title than anything, especially since the four vaguely-elemental generals of the demon king are running around with their inscrutable plans but keep declining to actually kill you when you lose against them. (Though there’s clearly a heavy Final Fantasy 4 influence, too.) The main character’s muteness means you nod or write notes when you actually participate in the plot, and the actual discussion is carried by his sister (officially the priestess of the fallen pillar) and your two other real companions, the wise-but-tough ogre woman and the lecherous elf man. (Why is “lech” a heroic archetype, anyway? He’s an annoying creep.) There’s also a weird running gag where people insinuate that there’s a romantic interest between the leads, and Elmia exclaiming that they’re siblings; and I’m really not sure why that needed to be a thing.
I only played through the Normal Ending; it looks like a bunch of the content (including getting all 100 companions) is locked into the postgame. Also, you need to engage with the IAP features to get all the companions—for example, there’s one that requires you to play “Pillar Killers” (the weapon lottery) 60 times. You can do that for free with the tickets you randomly get after battle, but it integrates the IAP systems into the game itself in an annoying way.
SPOILERS:
The human priestess who was assumed to have been killed when the crystal guarded by humans was destroyed was actually the one who broke the crystal and freed the archfiend—she was driven crazy by isolation. She’s the mysterious hooded figure who appears a bunch of times, and she helps the archfiend’s minions destroy the other crystals, but then has a last-minute change of heart when it’s revealed that her brother (the human king) was actually trying to be near her all the time. So she uses her life force to create one last crystal to prevent the archfiend’s full resurrection and prevent the continents from falling. Then the party trudges to the lower world (just a dungeon, not an actual second world map) and defeats the archfiend. In the Normal Ending, all four priestesses and all four trainee priestesses work together to keep the crystal shining and the world safe, which means they get days off to see their loved ones. I suspect the better ending will reveal secrets about the ancient gods that raised the continents and/or reunite the upper and lower worlds, but I don’t actually care enough.
Overall: Not bad but not great; the plot is predictable, the 100-companion mechanism isn’t terribly well-implemented, and everything just feels very routine.
This uses a more roughly pixelated art style like the Dragon series of EXE-Create games, but the add-on systems are mostly what we’re used to. (And that art style can make it hard to tell what’s a background item versus a thing you can interact with, though honestly that’s a common problem in KEMCO games.) You can meld weapons to strengthen them and there’s a lottery for new ones, that sort of thing. Instead of a real-time garden, you collect “old” treasure chests that only open with time, with bronze ones taking seconds and gold ones taking several real-time hours. (This basically forces you to play the game in limited bursts, because any such chests you collect when your grid is full of already-aging ones are discarded.)
The battle/party system is closer to Dragon Sinker--each main character gets a set of backup characters who bring their own equipment and matter more for which class they hold. Honestly, the 100 companion characters feel less like you’re playing Suikoden and more like a fancy class system. You assign three to each main character, which determines their special ability list and, depending on the combination, an unlockable innate ability. You can set a dozen other characters as your “strategy” team, which means they gain levels and add a percentage-based bonus to your abilities. Most of the characters just join when you talk to them, though a few require subquests such as giving them 15 stat-raising "drink" items or recruiting other characters first.
The game itself feels more like the first Lufia title than anything, especially since the four vaguely-elemental generals of the demon king are running around with their inscrutable plans but keep declining to actually kill you when you lose against them. (Though there’s clearly a heavy Final Fantasy 4 influence, too.) The main character’s muteness means you nod or write notes when you actually participate in the plot, and the actual discussion is carried by his sister (officially the priestess of the fallen pillar) and your two other real companions, the wise-but-tough ogre woman and the lecherous elf man. (Why is “lech” a heroic archetype, anyway? He’s an annoying creep.) There’s also a weird running gag where people insinuate that there’s a romantic interest between the leads, and Elmia exclaiming that they’re siblings; and I’m really not sure why that needed to be a thing.
I only played through the Normal Ending; it looks like a bunch of the content (including getting all 100 companions) is locked into the postgame. Also, you need to engage with the IAP features to get all the companions—for example, there’s one that requires you to play “Pillar Killers” (the weapon lottery) 60 times. You can do that for free with the tickets you randomly get after battle, but it integrates the IAP systems into the game itself in an annoying way.
SPOILERS:
The human priestess who was assumed to have been killed when the crystal guarded by humans was destroyed was actually the one who broke the crystal and freed the archfiend—she was driven crazy by isolation. She’s the mysterious hooded figure who appears a bunch of times, and she helps the archfiend’s minions destroy the other crystals, but then has a last-minute change of heart when it’s revealed that her brother (the human king) was actually trying to be near her all the time. So she uses her life force to create one last crystal to prevent the archfiend’s full resurrection and prevent the continents from falling. Then the party trudges to the lower world (just a dungeon, not an actual second world map) and defeats the archfiend. In the Normal Ending, all four priestesses and all four trainee priestesses work together to keep the crystal shining and the world safe, which means they get days off to see their loved ones. I suspect the better ending will reveal secrets about the ancient gods that raised the continents and/or reunite the upper and lower worlds, but I don’t actually care enough.
Overall: Not bad but not great; the plot is predictable, the 100-companion mechanism isn’t terribly well-implemented, and everything just feels very routine.
