RealityMinds

[h1]Story[/h1] The underlying story is pretty good, since it shows the pros and cons of being motivated or dismotivated. It also hits close to home with the concept of falling into a spiral of pessimism. The translation is readable and does a decent job of getting everyone's characterization across, but it still has some errors and is rough compared to a lot of other translated games. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The combat features no item usage and instead relies entirely on skills to maintain HP, MP, and TP. It seems tricky at first, but not having to worry about stockpiling items does significantly remove a lot of anxiety that comes with exploring long dungeons. When characters use specific skills in a round of combat, they can activate a follow up "chain skill" with a nice looking face cut-in. These chain skills include offensive, healing, and buffing skills, so it's important to plan each turn around them. Fortunately, the game allows the player to view a list of available chain skills during battle in case they need to look it up. As for the balance, hard mode is beatable, but the post-epilogue enemies can easily outspeed Astrake unless he's equipped with 2 or 3 haste accessories.…

Quick low-energy summary: A good linear RPG story with pretty character artwork and custom background art. A positive story with potential to be really dark (kinda). Throws you in some interesting but simply executed situations. Characters are entertaining with a tiny cast of named characters. Probably my favorite aspect of the game though! As for combat (on normal); while mostly avoidable, unfortunately suffers from basically doing the same thing nearly the entire game. Maybe I should have tried hard...? Music was pleasant, though a song or two seemed like low bitrate... Overall a soft recommend for a good little story. And it has some extra bells and whistles for replay value/post-adventure. 10-20 hours for all content? So not too shabby value.

peak fiction