This is quite a pleasant little game. It's rare nowadays for me to get hooked on a turn-based RPG. In general, they tend to lose my interest. They're just not consistently interactive enough. Perhaps this is why I found myself drawn to the various Mario RPGs when I was younger. This game does a lot of things right.

I love how the battle system encourages you to constantly be engaged. You "don't have to" time your attacks and blocks, so says the game, but it felt necessary to keep yourself in a healthy position in fights. I died about 2 or 3 times but it was never overwhelming. I feel like it was balanced perfectly. I frequently felt as though I was in danger, but always managed to get through fights. I like how carefully crafted the enemy placement, XP gain, and progression felt. It's a nice change of pace to what is usually necessary grinding. Learning new attacks or getting new party members and figuring out how to time their actions was always rewarding.

Your team member died? Well, you just need to hang in there for a couple turns until they come back. Perfect.
Your attacks and magic all have specific properties that allow you to break enemies' concentration and prevent them from using their more powerful attacks? Perfect.
You can switch out party members on the fly at no penalty to your turn order? Perfect.
You can use regular attacks as a way to power up your own future attacks or the attacks of your teammates, plus that's also tied to your elemental output in regards to breaking enemy concentration? Perfect.

I love the Moonerang attack. So fun - every time. It never got old. Also, using Serai's kick that would delay an enemies turn? So satisfying when you are able to perfectly execute an enemy by making use of it at the right time.


The writing was corny at times, but I generally cared about the characters and the overall story. I also liked how short and sweet the dialogue felt. I didn't feel overwhelmed by fluff. Usually there's just too much exposition in RPGs of this nature, but they really held back in that department and it kept the pace of the game moving quickly.

It is absolutely beautiful. One of the best looking games in this "style". The colours were always popping and the animations were very fluid. I loved how the Ultimate attacks looked as well, although after a couple times using them I did wish I could skip the animation.

The music is top tier. From upbeat, foot-tapping battle themes to peaceful town themes, it has a wide range of songs that I had stuck in my head for days.

I will say, despite it being fairly linear I did have to look up where I was supposed to be going next a couple times. In a lot of circumstances, if I didn't quite catch the next destination or the "goal" someone just described to me, speaking to them again would not repeat the message. In that regard, the game was a little vague.

I loved the way you could explore areas you were in - playing with the perspective every so slightly to let you move in and out of what appeared to be the foreground was cool. The sense of depth was a joy to move around in. I especially LOVED how you had a climb button and could climb up somewhat tall ledges + be able to fall a significant distance to get back to places quickly. The verticality is something that is not only rare but usually completely absent from games that use this perspective. I REALLY appreciated how they took advantage of this constantly. It's probably my favourite aspect of the game.

However, as I was alluding to before - the more grand sense of the "exploration" was pretty lackluster. I didn't like the traveling system, and it felt like a lengthy/difficult task to go somewhere outside of the linear progression of the game. In more than one instance I had a desire to revisit an old area (with good reason) but decided not to when I realized how inconvenient it was to return. This is where the (mostly great) linear progression of the game clashes with the lackluster overall travelling system.

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It was a surprising hit for me that stayed engaging throughout despite being the kind of game that usually puts me off for being too slow/boring. Its snappy combat and dialogue + the fun of exploring areas kept me having fun. I forgot to mention it, but heck, even the puzzles were pretty snappy! Good job on that one, too.