Story
You play as Killian, a knight-in-training who at the beginning of the game is graduating from Green Hill Academy as salutatorian. Thus begins a series of near-misses and general hijinks that lands our hero square in the middle of a quest to find all of the Wicked Stones, cursed artifacts that someone blah blah blah. Basically you play fetch through various dungeons with forced sidequests until something good happens I guess? The plot really wore thin when I ran out of party members to meet, so maybe the ending is awesome, but I'll never know.
Gameplay
The game is a traditional turn-based RPG. You have a menu from which to select general physical attacks, special skills (like magic), items, etc. You earn XP and SP, the latter of which you spend to unlock skills on a Skill Tree. Each character has their own specific skills, but some of the skills are a combination move which requires all related party members to have the skill. But not only do you have to unlock the skill, you also have to then learn the skill: yes that's right, you basically have to dump SP into one skill twice, without even knowing if you'll like the skill or not. Cue me skipping over a bunch of crap skills to get to the good stuff.
Graphics/Sound
One thing this game excels at. The sprites are all gorgeous, the menus are well-designed and clear to understand, and all of the locations have their own personality. In the beginning the major scenes are all voice-acted, but after a while the voice-acted scenes appeared less and less, to the point that I eventually started playing the game on mute.
Overall
A big batch of mediocrity with a bow on top. I would only recommend this for someone who really loves grinding, and someone who really loves grinding. Also someone who really loves grinding. The SP requirements and the skill trees are godawful timesinks, and when you have to commit that much time to Press X to Win combat, why the fuck bother.
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Posts
I suppose grinding is a "traditional" RPG trope, and some people still like it...for some reason. I actually have a friend I can think of offhand who enjoys it for some reason. I like leveling up, and small bits of grinding are ok, but but it's annoying when that seems to be the main point of the game.
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