Neverspring Chronicles

I'm only 2.5 hours in, but I'm going to leave a review because I'm not 100% sure when I will come back to this game. I do want to return, but as I have a job and kids now it's much harder to find time, and my backlog is growing all the time. This review is probably more of a critique for the dev since I came across his youtube channel and ended up watching 3 of his videos back to back for some reason. Overall I'm pretty impressed by the dev's efforts, Neverspring Chronicles is a breath of fresh air in many ways. I'll try to distill my thoughts down as succinctly as I can. [h2]The Great[/h2] [list] [*]IMO the best thing about NC is its pacing, both for story and gameplay. Nothing ever overstays its welcome and there is a LOT of variety in gameplay considering its a solo dev. Finding scrap, pressing buttons, opening bridges, little mini-games (even tho some of the controls aren't clear), it's nothing crazy but it's enough to keep things interesting. I just don't get bored walking around which is great. [*]The dialogue is especially well-done. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece or anything but it's just compelling enough to be a positive force and has impact without taking …

I guess? I’m sorry I can’t give a more definitive answer but this game is… alright? The Bad: It’s clearly the work of a small team if not an individual but it seriously lacks the polish of other games of similar scope and it falls behind other games in the genre. It appears the game has gone through heavy revisions which explains the state the game is in. Character portraits change to older versions, some of them inexplicably are more detailed than others. There are at least 3 glaring instances of characters being out of scene that make NO sense in the story as though the authors forgot what scene was going on. The balance and scaling are all over the place. There’s a lot of emphasis on characters that you never actually interact with. There seems to be multiple areas in the game you can’t actually go to as though there’s an unfinished final act(s) of the game. The best grinding spot in the game is literally the first dungeon after the tutorial. I never figured out what most of the items did. There’s a lot of status removing items for effects that as far as I can tell are never inflicted on the player. The chain combo system gives you a terrible TERRIBLE window to hi…

Truly inspirational. You have my deepest respect. I'll play it. All of it. I like turn based games. And you best believe I'm going to like this one.

I'm not generally a fan of JRPG style games, but this caught my interest and I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. I'll preface my review by saying that while JRPGs aren't usually my thing, I loved Final Fantasy VII mostly because of its engaging plot. The plot of Neverspring Chronicles hits a similar button for me. It doesn't have the same level of detail, but it still gets a respectable amount done in the 20 hours I spent with it. The atmosphere, music, character motivations etc. all work well to immerse the player and create a world that feels lived in. It was a world I enjoyed exploring and by itself it would have been enough for me to keep playing. I think it could afford to be expanded in places, of course, and hope that a little more is added in the future. As for gameplay, the reason I don't tend to play JRPGs is because of the level grinding, which I find tedious. But for me Neverspring Chronicles didn't feel like a grind at any point because your characters seem to level up enough to cope with the bosses while organically exploring an area. Only once did I linger in one place for a few minutes to do some levelling, and only then it was out of habit near the start …

For an $8.00 game, you really can't go wrong here. Neverspring Chronicles: Phoenix Down is a classic turn-based RPG with a minor active-battle system (you can get off extra damage through quick time events), with a story encompassing conflicts between gods, countries, and men; focusing on developing the individuals driving said conflict. While the story is fairly generic, it's well written, the characters are engaging and distinct, the setting is a fun near-apocalyptic magic-punk, which clearly has room for many more installments to come. My only gripe with the game is that it is extremely buggy; it crashes often, especially towards the end, and it's easy to soft lock in places (especially towns) because townsfolk will occaisonally randomly decide to stop moving in unfortunate spots while you're interacting with objects. There are also bugs with the level up system; sometimes you don't gain stats when levelling up, sometimes you lose stats when levelling up. Also, your gear randomly unequips often, during combat even---not an enemy mechanic, just something that happens. Some of the achievements also appear bugged. Still fun, but if they could clean that up it'd be a very good game.

A pretty solid one! Not sure how to put it into words, but you can really tell it's a passion project: there's a lot of love that shows into a lot of aspects of the game. Several aspects caught me off guard by being surprisingly better to what I expected going in (having played the old-school Final Fantasy games beforehand). For example, unlike old-school RPGs, I never felt like I had far too many resources: you really need to upgrade your equipment to catch up with the game's level, but you don't have unlimited resources of cash to do so, which leads to interesting choices. Also, the game is fairly stingy with mana replenishment, which makes an awful lot of sense within the worlbuilding. Also, the story is surprisingly nuanced, especially when compared with, say, Final Fantasy IV and the such. You can really see the motives of several parties and "understand where they¡re coming from", with the "irredemably evil" archetype used only sparingly and to great effect (both because it aids the story and because "Disney evil" every once in a while can be a lot of fun). On the flipside, I must comment that the experience was a bit buggy here and there: I almost softlocked myself a coup…