Such an opportunity to make a great statement and falls real short. PCs design and music was stand out. Battle system, while flawed and not explained well, kept me going until it the game finishes (thankful for the short run time). The story is pretty weak. Not a bunch going on then we get expo dumps with a huge one at the end. Underwhelming. Tries to be trigger without the heart or engaging, easily understood combat. So many reused assets and the snow setting has everything looking the same already.

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 …

For the cold and occasionally snowy month of February, I chose to play I Am Setsuna, and I’m so glad I did. This is a spoiler free review.
I Am Setsuna is the first game by Square Enix’s Tokyo RPG Factory, a studio made of just ten core employees whose goal was to recreate the magic of the SNES era roleplaying games. The influence of the “old masters” of the JRPG is not simply something felt throughout- it is the air the game breathes. This can be considered both the greatest strength and the most crushing weakness of I Am Setsuna. The game with the greatest influence on Setsuna is Chrono Trigger- something insurmountable to live up to. Maybe it’s because I haven’t gotten around to playing Chrono Trigger yet, and I don’t feel compelled to compare the two, that I found Setsuna so striking.
Every location in this game has two constants; it is covered in an unmelting blanket of snow, and it’s scored by a lone piano. These two choices are extremely controversial among players and critics, but I truly can’t imagine this game being nearly as successful artistically without this unwavering commitment to this direction. It was absolutely the correct choice.
The combat system is interesting, and one I disliked quite a bit at first. One of the reasons I like JRPGs as a genre so much is the focus on strategy rather than quick execution in gameplay. The common turn-based combat of JRPGs clicks with me, but Setsuna has a sort of hybrid- the ATB, or active time battle system. It did grow on me, eventually. I found longer battles to be very rhythmic, and if I needed some time to think, I could always dive into a safe menu to find my bearings.
The basis of Setsuna’s systems are fantastic on paper. Defeating common enemies rewards you with unique materials. You can sell these materials for money, and selling enough of a specific material also grants you the ability to use it to create skills called Spritnite that can be equipped. This creates a cycle; use your skills to kill enemies for drops, use those drops to create stronger skills, rinse and repeat. It’s a bit more complex than my simple explanation makes it seem, but the foundation is rock solid. The implementation is where this system can become a bit shaky.
The game also has combo attacks achieved by equipping two characters with compatible Spritnite. I made sure to equip Endir and Nidr with the Shock and Provoke skills respectively to create the Blowbeat combo. This is where I discovered the true way to play I Am Setsuna: find one OP combo and, using Setsuna’s support on the side for HP and MP management, coast through the rest of the game. Flattening every combat encounter was something I appreciated more than not. It made things easy, but finding and using a build that worked so smoothly was satisfying. This didn’t trivialize the entire rest of the game though- the bosses could still be quite tough, as they’re all massive damage sponges. All of this comes together to create a combat system that really clicked with me, and I even found it addictive at times.
You travel the eternal winter with six people, all of different backgrounds, with different stories to tell. These characters all have their own simple narrative, each with a fun twist, that ties thematically back to the main ideas of the game. Though they’re not complex, they don’t need to be. It strikes a lovely balance. The story is truly what makes this game so special. Like the rest of the experience it’s simple, a bit underdeveloped, and merely echoes the great masters before it, but these are all things I love about it. Its brevity is a strength, its ability to exist in the shadows of great stories without being a mere copy is a wonderful thing, and its confidence to keep the story simple is refreshing, especially within the context of its genre. It does exactly what it needs to, in a quiet and elegant manner. This winter journey’s tale ties together the identity of the game to create a serene, melancholic journey.
I Am Setsuna is a game that has received much criticism. It is not a JRPG darling like the classics it exists to emulate. It is certainly flawed, in many ways, but that doesn’t keep Setsuna from being a very special game. I think so many people are so focused on where Setsuna draws its inspirations, that they are unable to experience it for the game it is. It’s true that every step of the development was inspired by games of the past. But that doesn’t mean Setsuna should exist within the confines of those expectations. This game is truly something special when removed from the preconceptions placed on it, and I hope more people will be able to approach it with a perspective similar to mine. I think those people will have a very meaningful experience.

___ this was adapted from a full review written for my blog

This one is more of a "shame on me" moment, I was so blinded by the idea of a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger that I decided to go into this 100% blind. This was a mistake.

A spiritual successor only in that the two games have a similar combat system. Otherwise they are not even remotely similar. The dull story, bland characters, and one note soundtrack truly make mockery of the phrase "spiritual successor." Nothing about this game marks it as any sort of follow-up to Chrono Trigger. A game is more than just its combat system, and mentioning Chrono Trigger in the same breath as this game is laughable at best, insulting at worst.

The game may be Setsuna, but I most certainly am not.
(This joke doesn't really make sense in this context.)

You know what? I liked this quite a lot. Sure, it feels low budget a lot of the time but the people who made the game did well in not trying to over stretch themselves. Instead they created something that works for the relatively short (by modern JRPG standards) 20 hour story. They have a good stab at making every area have its own little story; they don't quite get there but it's close enough. Actually, I think that covers most of the game. I enjoyed the battle system too - though I was able to trivialise standard encounters pretty easily the boss fights were well balanced and exciting to the end. Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes from Tokyo RPG Factory next.

This is a game I picked up on a whim, a lot of people said it was really good. It gets compared a lot to Chrono Trigger and I gotta say, I do see that, but it does it in good and bad ways. This game is an RPG in the same vein as Chrono Trigger, enemies are visible when exploring, you find treasures, fight enemies and bosses, go through the story as a silent protagonist who's only dialogue is what you choose.

First off, I didn't like the game's animation at first, everything looked very toy-ish in a way. I was expecting something like a pixelated look, but as the game kept going, I got into it, and when I say that I didn't like the look, I meant moreso for the character designs, almost every character model looked really weird. Now the design of the monsters and the levels along with the environment was very well done as well as the particle effects, basically just the characters design I have issue with.

This also goes for the music, it had really good fitting tracks, but very little I could remember outside the combat theme and one of the towns, it seems the music was at it's best when playing the game, but little stood out. This also goes with the voice acting since the only lines were the very few in combat, which we're annoying at all, just kinda wondered why they couldn't use English VA as an option for the extremely little they had.

Where the game carries most from Chrono Trigger is the combat, it has the same stylings. Enemies can move around on the battlefield, your characters move around when certain attacks are done by them or by enemies, characters have skills and techs that combine with other party members for different effects, stuff like that.

Where the game differs from CT is in some rather unique spots. Armor is gone, you only have weapons and a single talisman, techs are no longer earned by levels instead they are bought through a rather cool system of selling items you get from defeated enemies something like Monster Hunter, as well as you are rewarded by waiting and planning your attacks in sync with your ATB (Active Time Bar) as it refills and gives you stronger effects/attacks. Combat is probably this game's strongest point.

Now for the story...this one is kinda difficult. I'll say the story is actually really good, BUT it takes quite a while to get interesting, I'm not sure if it's because not enough is explained to you throughout the game, or because the dialogue choices make you feel like you know the right answer and the other is dumb and leads you to an extra line of words before going back to the status quo. By the end I could say I enjoyed it, but the start I wasn't too invested, but JUST enough.

I know it seems like I've been harping on the game, but I couldn't help but feel this game was okay, it pays homage to Chrono Trigger quite well and wears that fact on it's sleeve to the point the PlayStation Store says it on it's the description, but if you never played Chrono Trigger this might feel kinda revolutionary to you in a way at least with the combat, but I don't feel this game did anything special and stands as a decent RPG, sadly I believe without the Chrono Trigger influence being out there, I don't think too many would have played the game on it's merits alone.

I am Setsuna might be the most mid game I have ever played. Like it is just so mediocre in every single way. So forgettable.

It plays fine. It looks fine. The story is very uninspired. It's so mediocre. So predictable. I did not care about anything going on tbh. There is also this illusion of choice. They give you choices that don't matter.

Combat is fine. It's really basic. It's just a slightly more complex Chrono Trigger but less fun.

The music is probably the only thing that stands out. It's pretty good. But that is the best compliment I can give it.

When I say the game looks fine, it's actually decently pretty. The problem is that the environments are not varied at all. Mostly white due to all the snow. It just ends up being bland after awhile.

This isn't a bad game. It's a game of all time. The most game of all time. The most mid.