183 hrs 16m
This game is really really easy. One thing I like is that there are many types of "statuses" however, I dislike how a few of them pretty much do the same thing. Being frozen, enthralled, paralyzed, confused, and put to sleep all have the exact same effect of removing a character from doing any action for 1 turn. They also have a fairly low chance to trigger. This resolves itself throughout the epilogue/post-game/act 3. By that point, combat is a bit more challenging and now somewhat engaging, at least to the point that you can't just win every encounter by putting on auto-attack. However, it begs the question of why combat is only somewhat engaging at certain points in the last 30 hours of a ~200h rpg.
Ideally, Acts 2 & 3 should've been combined and led to a shorter game. There are two optional trials that shake up combat encounters by adding restrictions that don't typically exist outside of them.
Act 3/Post-game has some challenging fights, it's also less linear and has more optional content for the players.
Fortunately crafting is actually pretty cool in this game since it has a fun minigame and allows you to purchase crafting parts directly from the menu if they can be bought. So you don't waste any extra time farming.
Late into Act 2, you end up with far more money than you could ever need. Early on in Act 3, there will be new weapons that can be purchased that are better than what you have but most of the good gear after that point is either crafted or companion specific through the storyline. This however has the added effect that since all the best gear is crafted, they all require very rare components that have to be farmed from rare enemies. There is so much farming within the post-game to maintain the best gear in comparison to the previous act, though it is possible to beat the game without the absolute best gear. Calasmos isn't a particularly difficult boss, but the optional bosses like Timewyrm, end of Time, and master pang will need it. Certain regular enemies are also tough if one isn't a high-level or has rare equipment.
Another odd mechanical thing I'm not fond of is the lack of information given to the player at times. Typically the agility, charm, and deftness stat are the wildcard stats because of how random they seem to be. The former determines turn order probability in combat, the latter is the luck stat that determines things like crit chance, and the middle is specific to only two companions because they have abilities that are scaled based on charm.
When combat begins it seems there is some background calculation to determine who has the biggest agility between the characters in the entire fight and that character has a higher chance to go first in a round. It is still only a chance which means it's more than possible that in round 1, character a is the 3rd person to get a turn but in round 3 character a is the 5th person to get a turn.
However, the game throws consistency in a loop by giving bosses and "strong" enemies advantages in the form of having multiple actions per turn. Bosses typically have two or three actions per turn, while members of your party will always only have one action per turn.
Fortunately, changing equipment doesn't count as an action so the player can do so as much as they want mid-combat. The player can also change the lineup of members mid-combat with the consequence of the swapped character missing their next turn. All characters not in the current lineup count as the "backup" party and they'll be immediately swapped into combat if the original lineup dies in combat. This means that swapping characters as necessary in the middle of a fight is a sound strategy.
It would go a long way if this game had an expanded inventory for each party member. As it is, each party member has their own separate limited inventory, and there's an equipment bag with unlimited inventory space. This is generally fine until you get into combat where you can't "use" items that are either in another party member's inventory or in the equipment bag.
The first 25 - 35 hours can feel aggressively linear. The game wants you to follow the main story in a specific order to the point that you can't interact with certain objects till you've progressed to a certain point with the quest then you now have to go back to that same area. It doesn't really open up till the hunt for the 6 orbs.
Also, lol, this game likes to give you dialogue choices of "yes" or "no", every time I choose no, they restart the dialogue to make me choose yes.
There are a few things in this game that rub me the wrong way. For one, it is far too long for its own good and the game requires the player to pretty much explore the entire world multiple times. Far too many side quests are fetch quests or kill x enemies quests.
When you start the game it has this flow of the player going to the different kingdoms and areas, then it further opens by giving the player a ship that can sail to the different islands. However, when you lose to Mordegon, the game "resets" the world and removes all your fast travel locations and ship. You now have to go through the entire world through every location again for the main quests while side quests lead back to all the islands you've previously visited, and you must acquire all your old companions again, etc. The primary benefit is to see the world in its apocalyptic state after Mordegon conquered it and spread evil. The thing is, once you defeat Mordegon and see the credits, you do all of this again with the involvement of time travel. The protagonist returns in time to the end of Act 1, our companions are lower-level, they're equipped with old gear, and all the skills we purchased since then are refunded and once again we have to explore the entire world and retread our steps.
Due to this, the game itself ends up feeling incredibly repetitive.
The other thing is the protagonist and his role in the story. The luminary is a very boring protagonist and much of it is due to being a mute protagonist with no dialogue choices that rarely reacts to anything. It becomes egregious in the post-game where the luminary is the only one that time travels to the past. He is aware of much of what will happen in the future and he doesn't say anything whenever his companions or allies inquire about their situation or the alternate timeline/future. He knows that the king of Heliodor is possessed by Mordegon, we see the flashback, and the king confronts the luminary and he doesn't say anything at all which leaves him vulnerable and allows Mordegon to almost steal his sword of light....again. When his companions see visions of the future, again, the luminary says nothing about it to confirm or deny what they're seeing.
Worst of all is that the luminary isn't even a blank state protagonist. He has a set gender, face, family, and origin. He's lacking a personality, and written/voiced dialogue which makes many scenes involving him feel very hollow. That's bad with a game that is so story and cutscene heavy as this. There are also far too many things such as: walking to this side of the town, watch a cutscene, walk back to the center of town, watch a cutscene, then walk back to that side of town and watch another cutscene. This happens frequently in Act 1. The one I remember very clearly is in Phnom Nonh.
Overall though, this is a very charming and beautiful game. I can't stress how so many environments are so varied with vibrant colors and art styles that are very pleasing to my eyes. It's based on Akira Toriyama's art style and has some slight cell shading around characters but still manages to fit in more grounded-looking environments without clashing with the rest of the character designs. Even though there's a large amount of combat in this game, the enemy designs are incredibly varied and each of them has memorable idle & combat animations that keep them from being annoying to see even when farming or in repeated fights.
It's an incredibly light-hearted game that has quite a generic "chosen one" story but it's a very nice change in terms of recent games I played. While there are lots of implied sexual jokes and costumes there isn't any overt sexual content. Violence is PG, with no blood or gore, extreme violence, corpses, etc. When villains and monsters are defeated, they disappear, when people are stabbed you won't see the wound.
This game is really really easy. One thing I like is that there are many types of "statuses" however, I dislike how a few of them pretty much do the same thing. Being frozen, enthralled, paralyzed, confused, and put to sleep all have the exact same effect of removing a character from doing any action for 1 turn. They also have a fairly low chance to trigger. This resolves itself throughout the epilogue/post-game/act 3. By that point, combat is a bit more challenging and now somewhat engaging, at least to the point that you can't just win every encounter by putting on auto-attack. However, it begs the question of why combat is only somewhat engaging at certain points in the last 30 hours of a ~200h rpg.
Ideally, Acts 2 & 3 should've been combined and led to a shorter game. There are two optional trials that shake up combat encounters by adding restrictions that don't typically exist outside of them.
Act 3/Post-game has some challenging fights, it's also less linear and has more optional content for the players.
Fortunately crafting is actually pretty cool in this game since it has a fun minigame and allows you to purchase crafting parts directly from the menu if they can be bought. So you don't waste any extra time farming.
Late into Act 2, you end up with far more money than you could ever need. Early on in Act 3, there will be new weapons that can be purchased that are better than what you have but most of the good gear after that point is either crafted or companion specific through the storyline. This however has the added effect that since all the best gear is crafted, they all require very rare components that have to be farmed from rare enemies. There is so much farming within the post-game to maintain the best gear in comparison to the previous act, though it is possible to beat the game without the absolute best gear. Calasmos isn't a particularly difficult boss, but the optional bosses like Timewyrm, end of Time, and master pang will need it. Certain regular enemies are also tough if one isn't a high-level or has rare equipment.
Another odd mechanical thing I'm not fond of is the lack of information given to the player at times. Typically the agility, charm, and deftness stat are the wildcard stats because of how random they seem to be. The former determines turn order probability in combat, the latter is the luck stat that determines things like crit chance, and the middle is specific to only two companions because they have abilities that are scaled based on charm.
When combat begins it seems there is some background calculation to determine who has the biggest agility between the characters in the entire fight and that character has a higher chance to go first in a round. It is still only a chance which means it's more than possible that in round 1, character a is the 3rd person to get a turn but in round 3 character a is the 5th person to get a turn.
However, the game throws consistency in a loop by giving bosses and "strong" enemies advantages in the form of having multiple actions per turn. Bosses typically have two or three actions per turn, while members of your party will always only have one action per turn.
Fortunately, changing equipment doesn't count as an action so the player can do so as much as they want mid-combat. The player can also change the lineup of members mid-combat with the consequence of the swapped character missing their next turn. All characters not in the current lineup count as the "backup" party and they'll be immediately swapped into combat if the original lineup dies in combat. This means that swapping characters as necessary in the middle of a fight is a sound strategy.
It would go a long way if this game had an expanded inventory for each party member. As it is, each party member has their own separate limited inventory, and there's an equipment bag with unlimited inventory space. This is generally fine until you get into combat where you can't "use" items that are either in another party member's inventory or in the equipment bag.
The first 25 - 35 hours can feel aggressively linear. The game wants you to follow the main story in a specific order to the point that you can't interact with certain objects till you've progressed to a certain point with the quest then you now have to go back to that same area. It doesn't really open up till the hunt for the 6 orbs.
Also, lol, this game likes to give you dialogue choices of "yes" or "no", every time I choose no, they restart the dialogue to make me choose yes.
There are a few things in this game that rub me the wrong way. For one, it is far too long for its own good and the game requires the player to pretty much explore the entire world multiple times. Far too many side quests are fetch quests or kill x enemies quests.
When you start the game it has this flow of the player going to the different kingdoms and areas, then it further opens by giving the player a ship that can sail to the different islands. However, when you lose to Mordegon, the game "resets" the world and removes all your fast travel locations and ship. You now have to go through the entire world through every location again for the main quests while side quests lead back to all the islands you've previously visited, and you must acquire all your old companions again, etc. The primary benefit is to see the world in its apocalyptic state after Mordegon conquered it and spread evil. The thing is, once you defeat Mordegon and see the credits, you do all of this again with the involvement of time travel. The protagonist returns in time to the end of Act 1, our companions are lower-level, they're equipped with old gear, and all the skills we purchased since then are refunded and once again we have to explore the entire world and retread our steps.
Due to this, the game itself ends up feeling incredibly repetitive.
The other thing is the protagonist and his role in the story. The luminary is a very boring protagonist and much of it is due to being a mute protagonist with no dialogue choices that rarely reacts to anything. It becomes egregious in the post-game where the luminary is the only one that time travels to the past. He is aware of much of what will happen in the future and he doesn't say anything whenever his companions or allies inquire about their situation or the alternate timeline/future. He knows that the king of Heliodor is possessed by Mordegon, we see the flashback, and the king confronts the luminary and he doesn't say anything at all which leaves him vulnerable and allows Mordegon to almost steal his sword of light....again. When his companions see visions of the future, again, the luminary says nothing about it to confirm or deny what they're seeing.
Worst of all is that the luminary isn't even a blank state protagonist. He has a set gender, face, family, and origin. He's lacking a personality, and written/voiced dialogue which makes many scenes involving him feel very hollow. That's bad with a game that is so story and cutscene heavy as this. There are also far too many things such as: walking to this side of the town, watch a cutscene, walk back to the center of town, watch a cutscene, then walk back to that side of town and watch another cutscene. This happens frequently in Act 1. The one I remember very clearly is in Phnom Nonh.
Overall though, this is a very charming and beautiful game. I can't stress how so many environments are so varied with vibrant colors and art styles that are very pleasing to my eyes. It's based on Akira Toriyama's art style and has some slight cell shading around characters but still manages to fit in more grounded-looking environments without clashing with the rest of the character designs. Even though there's a large amount of combat in this game, the enemy designs are incredibly varied and each of them has memorable idle & combat animations that keep them from being annoying to see even when farming or in repeated fights.
It's an incredibly light-hearted game that has quite a generic "chosen one" story but it's a very nice change in terms of recent games I played. While there are lots of implied sexual jokes and costumes there isn't any overt sexual content. Violence is PG, with no blood or gore, extreme violence, corpses, etc. When villains and monsters are defeated, they disappear, when people are stabbed you won't see the wound.