Luminous Skies: A Short Adventure

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Another "free-to-play" turn-based RPG that lures you with an easy completion. and later slams you with a DLC with more achievements so that you need to buy it in order to complete it.

Sure, I'll be the one to give this a negative review. Luminous Skies: A Short Adventure is a short, turn-based jrpg. Played it (technically 'beat' it) in an hour, then kept playing for a full 4.4 until putting it down. Used a game controller. Difficulty is Medium. I jogged through it without the dlc. First off, there is an entirely playable jrpg here. You can get around, level up, and beat the two bosses to fulfill the short plot-quest given to you. I enjoyed it. Everything works fine, the music is good, the monsters pose a decent challenge, and you can upgrade your equipment. So why is it getting a Thumbs Down? It Lacks... You start off with fully equipped characters in a full world of places to go and all the spells you'll ever need. You're told to go to X place to get X item back. There's 0 build up, no reason for adventuring outside of this. You don't know these characters. If you go anywhere else, any other land, any other optional dungeon, you will get the toast beaten out of you unless you spend time grinding levels. And once you beat those two bosses, the game goes 'You're free! Explore!" So you explore. You level up. You get the one upgrade to your…

Played this free demo on my Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (i5-8350U, 32GB RAM, Win11, the game is installed on a Micro SD card). It ran perfectly fine. As a free demo, it delivers exactly what it promises: a short, self-contained glimpse into the Luminous Skies world. You get a taste of the core loop: Classic Turn-Based Combat: Battles felt straightforward but had a nice tactical edge. Exploration, Quests and Mini-Games Things to Note: Truly Short No Achievements: A noticeable omission! Hopefully added later. DLC Focus: The description heavily pushes the paid DLCs (standalone prequel, big expansion, sci-fi game). While I didn't try them, they sound substantial and potentially where the real meat is. The free demo feels like an appetizer for those. Verdict: For a free experience, it's well-executed and serves its purpose perfectly. It runs great on modest hardware (like my ThinkPad) and gives you a clear idea of the core gameplay and whether the charming, nostalgic vibe clicks with you. If you like classic JRPG-inspired turn-based combat and exploration, it's absolutely worth the download to test the waters before considering the paid DLCs. Just manage expectations – it's a demo, not…

RPG Maker strikes again! Luminous Skies: A Short Adventure is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction. This isn't even an RPG Maker asset flip game.. it's just an advertisement for one. RPG Maker asset flips need advertising like lung cancer needs advertising. It's something nobody wants at all. The worst part is, yes, the asset flipper behind this garbage is seriously trying to get YOUR money for Kadokawa RPG Maker assets. This is never okay. That's right... the "developer" behind this high school anime club dropout fan-fiction RPG Maker asset flip advertisement wants you to pay an eye watering TWENTY SEVEN UNITED STATES DOLLARS for a bunch of crap RPG Maker assets and his cringey fanfiction. Jesus wept. As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD suppor…

This is a tough one to recommend. It's free, which is really the only reason I'd still recommend it. There's a lot in this game that... feels unpolished. For example, treasure chests respawn. Which might seem helpful, but they don't give you much. You start the game with pretty strong equipment - there's only one tier above that and it's highly expensive. I did some grinding for that (which was about an hour of my gameplay), then went and fought the second boss, and it was the end of the "main story". Thankfully, your characters have a free to use skill for healing, so I didn't have to use any items. Just the occasional pop into the (also free) inn for a rest when my mana ran low. It's an okay way to spend 2 hours for free. I dunno if I'd recommend any of the paid DLC content, assuming it's of similar quality...