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high rated
NES nostalgia or JRPG fans: buy it.
Everyone else: YMMV, but worth checking out on sale.

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[Story]
☐ Shakespeare
☑ Lovely
☐ Average
☐ Some lore
☐ No story

If this game was released back in the 1980s, this would be the best JRPG in that era. No convoluted story, but a decent amount of character development and progression that I really enjoyed. It starts off generic, but ramps up halfway through to something unique. I'm indifferent with your NPC ally and how they fit in the setting and near fourth wall breaking, but I can see its appeal to a general audience including kids.

[Gameplay]
☑ Excellent
☑ Good
☐ Average
☐ Meh
☐ Boring

Fully turn-based JRPG like FF1-3 with a DQ1 battle UI. You control three members: warrior, thief, and mage. Elemental mechanics plays a big part in damage based on colours for attacks and the target's type. Red > Green > Blue like in Pokemon. Status effects stay useful from start to end. Everything feels well-balanced.

What I didn't like was how some islands look like you can land on them when you first get the airship. But they can't be accessed until later in the game where you get access to the second airship. I've wasted a lot of time trying to land on islands.

[Difficulty / Grind]
☐ Dark Souls
☑ Difficult
☑ Average
☐ Easy
☐ Snooze

Difficulty depends strongly on how aggressive you are with your items as they heal HP or MP % and your levels. Ethers and remedies are buyable later, but their effectiveness is offset by how expensive they are and how difficult it is to make money. If you're conservative with your item usage, then you'll have to do some grinding. Beating some bosses without items requires you to be at a certain level. A couple of bosses were also challenging.

[Graphics]
☐ Reality-like
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad

This one is hard to judge. The 8-bit sprites and environments look beautiful. However, some assets aren't fully 8-bit so the environments feel inconsistent and distracting. Some monster sprites also lack polish like the green dragon, the swamp tree, and your NPC ally. Pretty hit-or-miss. For everyone else, it's easy to ignore.

[Audio]
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad

Indifferent. Weren't any tracks that were memorable, but I felt they did fit their settings well.

[PC Requirements]
☑ Cardboard
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi

Anything can play this game.

[Bugs]
☐ None
☑ Minor
☐ Can get annoying
☐ CP2077
☐ Big Rigs

I had issues with playing in fullscreen. Sometimes my game starts windowed or fullscreen. And when I load or reload my save files, my resolution would change. Nothing an [Alt] + [Enter] shortcut would fix. But it is kind of annoying. And when you press [F1] to open up external settings for video and key bindings, the mouse cursor disappears inside the window. So you have to guess and hover over textboxes unless you know your menu navigation keyboard controls. But no bugs with the actual game itself except for a couple typos.

[Game Time]
☐ End of time
☐ Long
☐ Average
☑ Short
☐ Coffee break

Compared to NES JRPGs, this is quite short. For an average player, I'd say ~9 hours for main story. And ~12 hours to complete everything. I took 15 hours leaving no stone unturned.

[Novelty]
☐ da Vinci Creative
☑ Creative
☐ Fairly unique
☐ Better clone
☐ Dime a dozen

Great take on 8-bit JRPGs. This is my baseline for all NES-style JRPGs in the future.

[Price]
☐ Free!
☑ Worth it
☑ On sale
☐ Deep discount
☐ Don't consider

NES nostalgia or JRPG fans: buy it.
Everyone else: YMMV, but worth checking out on sale.
Post edited August 15, 2021 by MeowCanuck
Hi MeowCanuck,

Developer here. As I said in the other topic, my sincere apologies for missing your post a few weeks ago. But thank you so, so much for writing such a wonderful and in-depth review! I know how much time it takes to play through a game and organise your thoughts like this, but I can't tell you how much I appreciate it =)

I also love your scoring system - the parameters are novel, but also very informative!

Sorry about the trouble with the Airship islands; I know we discussed it in the other topic, but I can understand how much of a pain that would be (as well as that fullscreen issue).

But ultimately, I don't think I could ask for much more than "This is my baseline for all NES-style JRPGs in the future" - that's quite an endorsement!

Anyway, thank you very much for taking the time to write this review; I'm sure it'll help others who might be curious about the game. I really can't wait to get your thoughts on the sequel, too! =D