I Am Setsuna

released on Feb 18, 2016

I Am Setsuna introduces the authentic JRPG style of yesteryear to PlayStation4 and Steam! Journey with Setsuna as she prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice and save the people of her land. A powerfully nostalgic experience, blending a classic style of story-telling, battle system and gameplay.


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Really enjoyed the game. Didn't fully grasp the mechanics but at some point you get an AoE attack that handles most enemies. Felt like a nice classic SNES JRPG.

A beautiful little throwback JRPG that maintains the spirit of the games that inspired it. It can be very challenging and unforgiving if you aren't paying attention to your party's abilities and composition, but the difficulty never really reaches an unfair level.
I didn't do all the side content and grinding necessary for the platinum, just because the game is leaving PS+ in a few days and I don't really want to be grinding until it leaves, but I do feel like I've seen what the game had to offer me and I was content with it. It was a pleasant experience, and the story was surprisingly touching, especially the ending.

I abandoned I Am Setsuna. Why? Well, because it was just too simple. Did I think it was a bad game? No. But I did think it was not worth my time. I played it for like 3 hours. The story was going too basic. Characters were very two dimensional. No depth at all.

Combat was very simplistic. It did not have any interesting or exciting feature. I just couldn't force myself to continue. There are good things here though, like the art direction and the music but that's all.

Do I recommend you to play I Am Setsuna? Not really. I'm sure you can find much better JRPG's to play than this. I think it would be a waste of your time.

I Am Setsuna had me hooked at the start but slowly lost my interest and was downright a bad experience by the mid-late game - surprisingly though it does turn it around by the very end.
It's honestly a bit baffling how well Tokyo RPG Maker live up to their own motto of making games that feel like they're from the golden era of JRPGs. Unfortunately I find that to be a bit of a fool's errand.
It's charming graphically, and the soundtrack is without a doubt a highlight, both of them combine to really give that 00s vibe. The lack of map or any waypoint indicators also require you to really pull out the JRPG classic of going around and talking to everyone if you don't know what to do next(you probably won't need to though, they spell it out pretty clearly every time). Unfortunately, with the good comes the bad from that era of game design. Each area is very short and linear(rarely a complaint from me) and enemy variety consists of maybe a dozen total non-boss enemies with palette swaps or minor changes. The battle system is a mixed bag, but the waiting around with literally nothing but bars filling up on screen is pretty bad. The balance is all over the place too, everything does too much damage and it feels very weird to be taking half your health from an enemy that you can also pretty much 2-shot if you hit him first. This is doubly bad with boss fights because you sure can't 2-shot them, while they very much can instakill a party member leading to many frustrating moments. As an aside, I'm very glad the kamikaze attack some of the bosses had never made me game over, because that sure would've sucked, and is a pretty baffling thing to include what amounts to a health check after defeating a boss for no reason.
The story, which I'm told is highly derivative from FFX but I can't know because I've only played a few hours two decade ago, has some good beats and sticks to it's themes well, but the pacing and presentation is very lacking(This is almost 1:1 with my feelings about Oninaki's story, so maybe it's an intentional stylistic decision). The ending is genuinely great and that does so much to offset the bad that came before it. Not enough for me to say I truly liked I Am Setsuna, but I came out feeling like at least it was worth the 20 or so hours I put into it. The fact I only put the 20 hours in and did none of the optional content betrays what I was feeling like before the credits rolled.

This is nothing new and I should've listened to you all, but... I Am Setsuna is a painfully average experience!

It took me around 25 hours to beat this game and, sure, while it successfully manages to convey the feeling of a retro JRPG from the PS1 era, the nostalgia just didn't pay off in the end. It felt good at first, but the feeling fled halfway through the game.

I Am Setsuna is beautiful, though. The artstyle is pretty, the character and bosses are well designed and the soundtrack does its own thing, becoming a driving melodic force throughout story and gameplay.

The solid battle system, optional content, easy grinding and challenging bosses make for a compelling reason to get you to the end. Setsuna's conumdrum about her sacrifice also caught me intrigued. Her story may not be very well written, but the ending happened to be quite nice.

But it just wasn't enough. Nothing surprised me and things kinda fell off.

For starters, environments, world map and dungeons are extremely repetitive and dull. The main cast is insipid and their motivations and reasons to join Setsuna on her quest are mostly unconvincing. The choices you make are useless (especially the final one) and plot development happens too fast and too dry, turning a good idea into something half-baked.

I'd also like to point out that not being able to sell equipment or skip cutscenes you have already watched were big issues for me.

And that's kind of it for I Am Setsuna. A good nostalgic idea executed in a very uninspiring way.

I don't regret playing it, but I also feel like I kinda wasted my time. I don't …

The game was mostly enjoyable up until the final boss. Most of the characters are alright to play; easy to find your favorites. It's fun to discover combos and gain skills through items rather than leveling. Incredibly strange to unlock one of the team members literally right before the final encounter. I only used them when necessary because at that point I already had a favorite setup.

The bosses are frustrating with cheap trips and one-shot moves so be prepared. Thankfully there are saves before those battles. I do wish there was a skip option to save myself time mashing X to quickly skip dialogue. It would also be nice to swap party members during battle. I know they're standing right there watching you; there's no story or in game reason why they cannot hop in.

The real drag was the usual RPG grindy mess in the late game before the final showdown. Powering up levels, collecting gear, and triggering fluxes will consume hours of your time. Jumping into a fight, battle, collect rewards then rinse and repeat. Over and over and over. It is not relaxing to me. I hate grinding for something like leveling. It's boring and leaves a bad experience. Overall I do think the majority was fun but I am ready to move on. It overstayed its welcome.