Earthlock

released on Mar 08, 2018

An expanded game of Earthlock: Festival of Magic

Earthlock is an indie developed, adventure RPG inspired by the classic 3D RPGs of the late 90's, with a fresh take on turn based combat and character progression.


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I had more fun with Earthlock than I expected based on the negative reviews. I really enjoyed the visual design, and the combat was more engaging than most menu-driven JRPGs. Character customization was also quite good. There is a grid based system you could allocate stats, passive talents, and active abilities in, along with a 'bond' system that gives characters rather meaningful passive bonuses based on who they partner with in combat. The music was well done, if not as memorable as other games in the genre. There was a lot of charm to the game, overall.

Unfortunately the writing was almost non-existant. A character could die and there'd only be a line or two of dialogue to acknowledge it. Of course, this means the characterizations and overall plot were sorely lacking. That's a rather huge flaw for a JRPG, but given the short runtime (~20 hours), the visual charm and combat carried my interest to the end of the game.

Not a game I'm likely to replay, but it was a nice JRPG fix that I got passively through a humble bundle.

This is the PERFECT game if you miss "old style PRG"s, it has some new takes on it, amazing music, and story.

Joguei, não gostei, joguei de novo e não gostei de novo.
O jogo é devagar e os graficos não ajudam.
Todavia os personagens são carismáticos e a estória é boa.
Mas não jogaria de novo o game.

I wanted to like this game, I REALLY did. The positives: the characters and interactions are extremely charming. You could really tell the small dev team loved making this game and it was a passion project. The battle system is kind of interesting where you could go against more enemies at once for higher XP return. Additionally, character "abilities" and bond system are fine and actually help.

The negatives: Start is really shaky - gameplay isn't engaging and story is all over the place trying to throw you into a new world. This does get alleviated after the intro and you get more gameplay introduced and the world opens up. The middle point is fun and interesting and bosses can be workaround'd with their gimmicks even when lower level.
But damn, the last third of the game STRETCHES and DRAGS like no other game I played before. it devolves into insane grinding where if you don't have maxed out character levels/talents, there's no point even trying to play the late game. All enemies go up in stats and elemental weaknesses reduce (checked bestiary) to force the player to grind to pad game time. Due to the smaller audience of the game, guides are hard to come by except for the final boss which is pretty much impossible without close to maxed out everything. I've never been frustrated this much from a game.

If this game stayed as charming and unique as it was in the midpoint, it would easily be an 8/10.

I really wanted to like this game, I interviewed the director when it first came and he’s a lovely person, but Earthlock just felt dull to me. The 90s inspired turn-based combat doesn’t offer anything new and the Apple Arcade style graphics just aren’t to my taste. Ultimately, I just didn’t enjoy my time with the game.

Been playing this for a while, but I think I gotta admit to myself that I'm just not having fun :(