Pulling the combat of Chrono Trigger and the plot of Final Fantasy X, this game should be fantastic. However, it only pulls from these games in a very half-hearted manner. The combination techniques do make an appearance but they are based on which moves you have slotted into your characters. So depending on the way you've built your team, you might not have any, going against the premise of mimicking Chrono Trigger's combat. The story has so many shades of Final Fantasy X that it could be considered its Heartless, as there are a lot of similarities but due to the short runtime, the bonds feel underdeveloped and lack any soul. Its biggest sin though is that it doesn't properly explain what its fundamental mechanics are or how to use them, requiring research online. On the artistic side. characters have no feet, just stubs on the bottom of their legs. While it shouldn't bother me, I found myself negatively fixated on them, especially during cutscenes.

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.)

I am Setsuna may not be the most original game in existence, going so far as to wear its inspirations on its sleeve, but it excels at what it does do. The Chrono Trigger-inspired battle system has room for flexibility and creativity in how you build your characters and approach battles, and the story itself keeps up a consistently great pace. It's short for a JRPG, and while to many that could be its best attribute, to me it left me wanting more in both a positive and negative way.

My biggest criticism for the game is that it leaves few opportunities to truly explore the depths of the battle system they made, as there's really no need to dive too deep into it. Not that the game doesn't pose a fair difficulty for a casual playthrough, but there's a lot of untapped potential here.

As a whole, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected coming into it.

While I enjoyed parts of the game like the Chrono Trigger inspired battle system, I ultimately found it to be filled with a lot of flaws.
Environmental variety is non-existent.
The soundtrack is fine, but it consists of only one instrument - the piano.
Dialogue choices are pretty much meaningless.
The story also took a major plot point from FF10, rather than trying something more original.

I think this is very much a love it or hate it game. If you enjoy turn based battles and piano music, then chances are this will be right up your street!

There are definitely some balance issues and some odd design choices (like the lack of world map, and the random nature of fluxation), but if you can look past these faults there's a lot of charm, an intriguing story and good fun to be had with the combo system.

I really enjoyed this game, but can definitely see why some people wouldn't. You can get it on PS Plus Extra, so I'd recommend giving it a try if you like turn based RPGs.

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.

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.

Overall an okay experience. The soundtrack is great; the moody piano pieces combined with the amazing art direction set the atmosphere very well. The story is decent for what it is, but could use a lot of work. The main problem is that the story is far too short for what it sets out to do; the narrative beats in each section do not hit as hard as they should because you spend such a short amount of time in each area. I get that its part of the game length but it would benefit from each section having an extra 30 mins spending time on the characters. The character writing also varies with each characer; some characters (Nidr, Setsuna) get much more development and focus than others. Some characters, like Kir, have their arcs basically finished directly after you meet them, which is a shame because their backstories and personalities are all quite good. The gameplay is solid, but lacks a few QOL features and is quite unbalanced in the favor of the player. For some reason they decided to make a position based combat system and then made it very difficult to change the position of both your enemies and ESPECIAlLY your allies. Why would I be given 10+ abilities that affect allies in range and then make it impossible to move them outside of like 3 skills????