The town guilds are where you will receive missions. The various quests grant you rewards for completing them. Some quests can only be done once and others can be completed multiple times. Be sure to check the rewards for each quest carefully because some quests will allow you to trade more common material for more rare materials. For example, you can trade 10 silver ores for 1 silver ingot. This will allow you to more quickly forge better weapons and armor in some cases. If the story isn’t progressing, just keep doing the quests you have available to you and it will trigger the next story event. As the story progresses, there will be new quests at each guild as well.
One of the other points of interest in the towns is the tool shop, where you can buy consumable items and trinkets. Trinkets are basically accessories, and grant the wearer various stat bonuses and immunities. Each character can equip up to two of them. There is usually a house to visit where you can talk to NPC’s. Sometimes this is necessary to progress the story. You can also hit up the inn if you need to recover your HP and SP.
When entering a dungeon, you will notice that it is displayed from a top down perspective. This is just like the classic Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles of the past. Battles are random, and you will not see the enemies on the screen most of the time. The monsters that do appear on the screen are special bosses and you will need to prepare accordingly for these battles. Most of the time, you will notice a glowing sphere nearby when these monster are present, and you can use a warrior’s rest at these or save the game. If there is not one of them near, no need to worry because you can save the game at anytime from the camp menu. Just be sure your party is standing still when you pull up the camp menu as the save option will not be available if the walking animation is still going. You can exit the dungeon map at any time by pulling up the camp menu and pressing square. This cuts your time walking in and out down a ton.
Combat is turn based and about as old school as they come. You have your basic commands such as Fight, Skills, and Items. Your party will consist of three human members and three guardian beasts. You have access to cooperative attacks as well. This is where up to three party members can attack together for massive damage or can cast some great support magic. The bonds between your characters will grow if they are left in a party together for a while, which will make these attacks more effective when they are performed. You can also trade out characters during battle. During the later battles in the game, this will be essential. Some of the later boss battles are pretty epic, and you will need to use every resource you have to beat these beasts. No need to worry, though. Even if a character or beast doesn’t participate in battle, they will still get the same amount of XP as the others.
Each character in the game can equip a Guardian Beast that will absorb some of the damage the character takes. You obtain these Beasts as your new characters join the party. These Beasts have HP just like the human characters and if they are killed in battle, they will be out for the rest of that battle, unless you have an item to fix that. As they level up, they will obtain better stats and new skills to use. Any Beast can be equipped on any character. Guardian Beasts are treated just like normal party members, but you do not control the Guardian Beasts in combat and they will use their skills as they deem fit. While some Beasts will be setup mostly for attack, others have mostly healing or support spells. There is a ton of flexibly when making a party because of this. The Beast will bond with the character after being used by them for a time, and you can check to see what level this occurs at by checking the status screen in the camp menu. A better bond will mean their skills and attacks yield better results.
Guardian Beasts can be equipped with up to three items – weapons, armor or trinkets. This will grant the beast new skills, stat bonuses and other effects. You will see what effects are given to the beast on the equipment screen. Note that if you have something equipped to a Guardian Beast, it will not show up in your item list until you unequip it. You will want to try out each different item on them to see what will work the best for that Beast.
My only real complaint with the combat system is that when you equip an item, for example, something that decreases fire damage, it doesn’t really seem to help all that much. This makes some battles more needlessly difficult than they should be. Another small problem I found with this title is that it is very grind heavy. I personally can overlook this since this is a retro title, but others may not be too keen on that much grinding. My last complaint is that some of the guild quests that require you to hunt monsters can be very time consuming. This is due to the areas not providing you with enough of the type of monster you need. You may encounter countless other enemies that are not what you are looking for before you find the type of monsters you actually need.
Overall I had fun with this game. I did experience one horrible glitch about 9 hours in, however. The glitch made my X button seem as if it were stuck down during an auto-save and it killed my save data and I had to start over. Being that this is about a 20 hour title, I had to redo about half of the game. That doesn’t take away from the fact that overall this is a solid title. The wonderful story and great looking 16-bit sprites will make any fan of retro JRPG’s very pleased. Once you complete the main quest, there is even some post-game content for you to enjoy. The grind heavy nature of the game may turn off some gamers, but if you are looking for a classic styled JRPG, you will find a lot to love here.
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Game was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
