A perfectly adequate game. Leans very heavily into retro-aesthetic Earthbound-style charm, and only mostly succeeds. Combat is inventive in premise, but becomes samey and tedious pretty quickly. Timing attacks and defense is extremely swingy, with failure punishing more than success rewards. The story of the main character's relationship with her sister is intriguing, but some of the other themes are a bit heavy-handed. I am marginally curious to see new areas and uncover the story, but the gameplay just isn't gripping enough to be worth it.

I bounced off this game several times before finally getting properly into it, but boy am I glad I finally stuck with it (shoutouts to @unforeseenboy for picking it for my backlog “spring cleaning”). What starts off as a kind of slow, small RPG about a wizard school that doesn’t suck gradually expands into a pretty compelling story about coping with loss and messy teen relationships, bolstered by a robust and pretty unique grid/lane-based battle system.

The battle system is really what made this game shine for me. Basically every element was tailor-made for someone like me, who really enjoys small-number RPGs with timed button presses like your Mario RPGs (of both the Paper and & Luigi variety) as well as grid-based systems like Live A Live or Trails in the Sky.

The action commands for attacking and dodging are tuned basically perfectly - quick enough to keep the pacing of the battle nice and tight, and just tricky enough to stay engaging without being too taxing over a long period. My only complaint is that the first hour or two felt like a bit of a slog because your action vocabulary is very, very limited at first.

As for the story, I thought it was very fun to center it around the sister of the sort of Harry Potter stand-in character. It allowed for some interesting exploration of how the average YA protagonist engages in some pretty shitty behavior, but also gave some of the secondary characters the chance to experience some real growth. And of course, we love to see the sheer amount of diversity on display - not a straight white male in sight for the entire game.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the killer soundtrack. There’s lots of fun little chiptunes, some beautiful piano pieces, and several tracks with vocals, which i wasn’t expecting. My standout tracks were Showtime (Gilda’s Theme), and the first battle theme, Rhythm of the Wild.

Anyway, if you’re itching for a game that scratches a similar itch as the early Mario & Luigi games, or one with a canon they/them AND a cannon ze/zir AND at least 3 canon gay relationships that get happy endings, I’ve got just the game for you.

Wonderful battle systems, story, aesthetics, and music.

The game plays a bit like a more expansive Mario and Luigi superstar saga with a shot of SRPG for some positioning tactics. All of the powers are varied and interesting to use, even if some are a little bit easier to master than others, and some characters are more interesting. Some bosses are extremely tough due to their multiple phases but usually you can tough em out pretty well.

The art is mostly great, I didn’t love the human character designs totally(mainly the heads) but I’d say about 95% of the art is exquisitely done GBA friendly pixel art, with the right amount of little game people energy.

The story and writing were overall well executed and interesting, although it felt a little padded with going back and forth between places to get the next macguffin to unlock such and such door, though usually their justifications were interesting enough.

I think the dialogue also mostly shines, except it felt like some lines were a little forced to enhance the representation. I’m cool with that, a better reason to force some dialogue than others, but did happen often. Luckily a majority of the time it felt totally natural, just occasionally had a bit of artificiality to the way so and so’s sexuality was mentioned etc. the way it establishes and grows all of the characters throughout is satisfying.

Altogether it was mostly well done and unfortunately it seems to me this game has been rather slept on. It might not be so, but a lot of the circles I follow typically would be all over this and I’ve never seen any buzz around it.

Muy buen juego de combate por turnos con una historia bastante buena. En general todo en el mismo está bien, pero quería destacar unas tonterías que si no te molestan demasiado, entra de lleno. Por lo pronto gráficamente está genial, pero me hubiese gustado que los personajes tuviesen más pixeles, porque a pesar de las buenas animaciones (destacando a Gilda), muchas veces no se aprecian bien los gestos, sobre todo en un personaje (Petronella) que parece que siempre tiene la mirada ensombrecida. Lo otro que no me ha acabado de cuadrar es que los enemigos funcionan bien, aunque quizás son un pelín simples y se repiten alguno que otro recoloreado.

(SPOILERS)

Man what a disappointment this game was. Starts out interesting, but slow burns into mediocracy and ultimately left me frustrated and wanting the experience to be over.

Pros - Visuals, Music and Design

The visuals of this game are gorgeous, with beautiful, vibrant pixel art and super smooth animations. The world is interesting and environments are varied. The music is also really good (except for any tracks that had vocals, those were god-awful). Character designs are also unique and nice to look at, and it makes me very happy that the cast is diverse, with lots of LGBTQ+ representation.

Middle - Gameplay

I'm putting gameplay here because there's things I like and dislike about it. I thought that the turn-based tile system with a timing aspect was unique and fun. The timing on the attacks can be a bit wonky sometimes, with miniscule differences between getting it perfect or not, and not getting it perfect SIGNIFICANTLY slows down the fights, with even the most basic encounters taking way too long, even if you are always perfect, because of the enemy AI and there being too many tiles in an encounter. The UI doesn't help with the timing, either, you kind of just have to guess based on the icon above your character's head, but after doing it a good amount your muscle memory will take care of it. The game also has a pretty bad power creep problem. As more party members get introduced, the abilities they have are just straight up better than the starting party members, giving you no reason to use them once the new members show up. I really did like the combat at first, but as time goes on, it gets extremely repetitive, and becomes a slog.

Cons - Characters and Story

With all of that said, the characters in this game are NOT GOOD. They are either extremely one-dimensional or flat-out unlikeable. They try to give all of the party members some material to work with, but some is better than others. Even the main character I was starting to not like as the game progressed, and the ending actually made me mad. Basically, a love triangle forms between the main character and two of the other party members. But for some fucking reason, they end the game with the main character being with one of them, roll the credits, do a TIMESKIP, and the main character is with the other one. WHAT??? Any development those three characters had is completely out of the window so everyone can have it both ways. It's baffling. It doesn't really feel like any of the characters develop in any meaningful way, with a lot of the tension being the result of drama shown in flashbacks, save for Pertisia. It's pretty clear most of the love and care went into her, and the rest of the cast gets shelved.

The story is extremely contrived as well. A good chunk of it is told in flashbacks, which makes some sense given the context, but it also highlights how nonsensical a lot of the story is. Lots of things could have been avoided if the characters just told the main character the info they knew instead of withholding it. Take for example, the final boss, which is supposed to be a bit of a twist. There's a character that, for a majority of the game, is treated as a joke, with the joke being that he's "the most powerful student" at the school, but every time he tries to do something it's extremely weak. Well, the reason he's so powerful is that if he gets too emotional, he goes berserk and turns into a monster. Which EVERYONE KNOWS except the main character, but they still let him watch his boyfriend get hurt doing something extremely dangerous without even restraining him and become the monster. It's so stupid. There's a lot of moments like this in the story. It's trying to be mysterious, but just ends up being vapid and not thought out once you start thinking about it. If the characters just acted like normal people and shared the knowledge that they had with each other, there'd be almost no story.

Conclusion:

The game has a pretty exterior, that does a great job of drawing the player in, and the gameplay is good enough to keep you engaged for a bit. But, experiencing the story and characters for what they were absolutely spoils the game, and just left me angry by the end.

Simply one of the best strategy RPGs made in the last decade.

It offers a Paper Mario-style quick-time event system for buffing actions in combat that you can opt out of if you want due to its amazing accessibility options.

I have a lot to say about Ikenfell, but it requires more consideration than I can give it right now.