Kind of interesting no one has compared it to Ogre Battle when everyone around me who isn’t into FE compares this game to Ogre Battle. Am I being trolled??
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Having completed the game for a few days now, I’ll share some of my spoiler-free thoughts.
Gameplay
Addicting like crack. There’s so much room for experimentation and pretty much every class has something that makes it fun to use. The game is very forgiving and plays more like a sandbox… honestly, it’s way too easy, even on expert.
Also, despite the stamina system, juggernauting is probably the optimal way to play this game. The game gives you 10 unit slots but honestly you’re better off not fielding that many unless you truly want to double your playtime.
Story
Not good. The story is extremely basic here, with maybe FE1 levels of depth at best lmao (not even FE3). I may be in the minority here, but I’d rather have a trainwreck of a story than something that plays it this safe. At the very least, the game has the decency of having very short cutscenes when compared to most games of its kind.
Fortunately, the characters are pretty likable and down-to-earth for the most part, which in turn made the support conversations more enjoyable for me. A lot of them are surprisingly mature and devoid of stupid anime tropes.
Presentation
At first, I thought the graphics looked dated, but I quickly came to like them. They’re very charming and the animations have a lot of cool details. I’m not a fan of HD-2D games, but thankfully this one shows a lot of restraint when it comes to the lighting effects and the result isn’t bad.
I like the character designs, even if there were some ridiculously skimpy ones, but nothing too bad by JRPG standards. There’s a suspicious number of outfits with exposed armpits (???), however, none of them ruined my immersion by looking too advanced for the suggested time period like modern FE does.
The music was forgettable for the most part, with a couple of great tracks here and there.
Localization
The elephant in the room… In my opinion, a lot of the complains are completely valid. Having worked as a professional translator in the past, I agree that direct translations aren’t often the best choice, but a lot of the changes made here were simply unnecessary and often misrepresent the characters for no good reason.
I’ve been learning Japanese for a while, and I couldn’t help but notice how different both scripts were by listening to the JP voices while reading the English text. While far from the worst localization, it does make me want to get the Japanese versions of JRPGs from now on.
I went in with no expectations and ended up being pleasantly surprised by this game. Anyone who likes SRPGs should at least try the demo. Unless you only play games for the story, there is a good chance this game will hook you as well.
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