Status Chovus Apr 16, 2026
Beat completely blind without even reading the manual. The ages of the 2 starting characters were difficult to tell based on the graphics, but I guessed fairly accurately based on height, demeanor, and how others treated them; 14 and 8. Way too young to be out fighting monsters and saving the world. Would have been better if the game took …
Beat completely blind without even reading the manual. The ages of the 2 starting characters were difficult to tell based on the graphics, but I guessed fairly accurately based on height, demeanor, and how others treated them; 14 and 8. Way too young to be out fighting monsters and saving the world. Would have been better if the game took place over several years. They were way too upbeat and happy go lucky for me but that is who would more likely save the world in a traditional jrpg. The beginning was a slow burn with 0 combat happening until a few hrs in. Despite this I enjoyed the characters and story, and my enjoyment only increased when combat was introduced. This game had one of the best tutorials I have ever seen by way of optional hints you could select at save points. Each new save point had a new hint that was going to be relevant soon so there was plenty of time to learn each mechanic. The only thing in the game I had to look up was IP, as some items affected it including the weird trust feather items. IP was time until next turn, and that trust item allowed a character to spend their turn to boost another to act sooner. The combat system was quite deep and one of the best I have seen. It was kind of like Final Fantasy active time battle (paused during selection) only every character and enemy moved along the same line. The speed was determined by the wit stat, and you could fairly accurately judge in what order things would happen. At about the 80% point of the line characters could be given commands, which would then be carried out at 100%. Combo was the normal attack, which did 2 hits that automatically switched targets if the 1st died. The rabbit character had 3 hits and one of the best accessories gave 1 extra hit. An annoying thing about this though was that characters could waste hits by attacking the same target if it died mid swing, and I still had to input commands when the battle was just about to be over. It also sucked having to give orders to the next character before seeing how the enemy reacted to damage, since many enemies were immune to physical or certain elements, and elemental weapons were 100% that element rather than mixed with physical. Attacks had limited reach and each entity had limited movement so there were elements of tactical rpg combat here. You could not directly move the characters though. They moved automatically and it was not always intelligent. They could fail attacks if the pathing could not figure out how to move around allies or enemies so I most often told them to attack the nearest target. Sometimes even the other characters or enemies moving around after inputting the attack could mess it up. Ranged weapons and magic did not have this issue. Entities could also get counters by attacking something just before it attacked, and enemies glowed when they were charging up special moves. Powerful attacks and spells could cancel these, and enemies could cancel character turns. These special moves could be devastating if left unchecked so much of the combat was about burning down or interrupting charging enemies. Near the half way point of the game I got game over to a random ambush against 4 enemies that all cast the area wind nuke before any of my team could even act. To deal with interrupts was the critical command, which did only 1 hit with a high chance of cancelling, or at least delaying the enemy turn. Critical did less damage than a combo so it was a trade off between offense and defense. Then was one of the best defend commands I have ever seen. You could freely see what every enemy intended to do, who they were doing it on, and when everyone would act, so you could time a key defend to eat a big hit. This was important for some bosses, including the final boss. Defend also had the evade command which made the character move to a selected position which was useful to kite attacks or spread out against area threats. Then were the typical item, magic and special moves. The combat was very engaging, especially against the bosses who almost always had multiple parts doing different actions. The only things about the combat I did not like were how many battles in specific areas had the exact same enemy composition and the overall lack of difficulty. Yes ambushes and bosses were challenging but I wished there was a higher difficulty with more brutal combat. This was one of those enemies on screen rpgs instead of random battles, and they did not respawn until you went to a completely new area. It was trivial to run back to a save point for easy rest, pretty much making endurance dungeon crawling not a thing. Recovering at a save point should have respawned enemies like a Dark Souls fire. Two other major flaws were the limited inventories for each character (something I loathe in every game) and basic navigation. The stash helped a bit with inventory management but there were plenty of times I had to destroy loot because I had no room. Navigation was very confusing because the camera could be fully rotated and there was no map. Most areas had little vantage points you could go up to for a slightly zoomed out view but I found these to be mostly useless. The way I got around was always having the camera pointing north (or occasionally south) so I would not get lost and having a mental map. The areas were not that bad when the camera direction was fixed but often walls blocked the camera, which led to ambushes and missing paths or loot so I occasionally had to stop and look around. I loved the creativity of the dungeons with secrets and puzzles, but the game really needed a map or a more zoomed out birds eye view. I say remove the stupid vantage points and either play the whole game from that view or let the player trigger it on command.
Another best ever mechanic was the progression. Besides the usual xp, weapons, elements and individual spells and specials gained levels from use. Weapons and elements went all the way to 99 though this did not affect power or chance of success. Instead they gave raw stat boosts per level and certain levels were required to unlock specific spells and specials. This made every battle worth far more than just the killing xp and loot, with a very long road to maxing everything. The star levels for spells and moves did improve power but with only 5 or 6 levels I did not bother paying attention to it. I never went out of my way to grind other than to manually heal before recovering at a save point for the water xp. As usual I cheaped out by not buying much from shops, only occasionally buying some big upgrades. Justin was the warrior who switched between the 3 weapon types depending on which was strongest. Sword was the best at the end but before that he more often used blunt or axe. I gave him water and wind early on for healing and backup nuke but he did best with attacks. Much later he got earth and fire but was never as good with nukes as the others. I liked how the elements combined into new spells: water + wind = ice, fire + wind = lightning, fire + earth = explosive, water + earth = forest. Would have been cool if the opposites combined too, like water + fire = light, wind + earth = dark. As the warrior he got all the str and agility seeds, since his weapon types did not boost agility. He mostly used his special attacks on bosses, or occasionally to burn a normal enemy. Some did cancel as well as big damage, like the awesome midair cut. Unfortunately his magic never went high enough to unlock his elemental strikes and axe skill did not go high enough to unlock his most powerful move. I was not missing out on much though as midair cut did massive damage, and he got the energy charm that reduced special cost by half. Sue was the cleric and was the first to get water and earth. Her special cheerleader move was a great heal all even though the sound effect was ear bleedingly cringe. I had her use an accessory that restored SP on attacks so she could heal more using that. Later she got fire and wind to help out with nukes. She was much better with a bow but needed the survival stats from blunt so I switched between them using the strongest at the time. She seemed notably worse at combat than the other characters, moving slow and getting dazed when attacked. I may have given her some hp and vit seeds. Feena started off with fire and wind, and both of her weapons only boosted hp and agility. With lagging str it was clear she was more of a caster, and she ended up with quite high magic. Her wind was not enough to learn lightning stuff though, and I did not get enough mp to use her world end ultimate nuke. She got some hp and vit seeds as well as all of the wit and mp ones. Rather than worry about her str I gave her the satis gem which boosted critical, which made critical do 2 attacks. Later she upgraded to the chain gem for 3 combo hits, and I eventually got 3 of those gems. She also used the eye accessory for faster spells during boss fights.
The deck swabbing mini game on the ship was obnoxious and I was not able to beat it. I hate the very concept of pressing a button as fast as possible. At least there was nothing worthwhile for winning and this game as a whole lacked these stupid mini games when compared to other jrpgs. My first game over was the boxing guy while rescuing Feena from her forced wedding. This was when the game taught how to use look and defend, as you absolutely needed to defend his special moves. The next time though he didn't use any specials and was a push over. Then I lost to the nerdy green haired soldier bitch because she was one of those cheap status effect bosses spamming sleep and poison. Next try I used a couple sleep resist accessories and focused her minions since she did little actual damage. I then spent almost the entire game preparing for the trio fight against those bitches that I knew for sure was coming. I was thinking it would be the same moves with her spamming sleep and the other 2 doing heavy damage. I bought armor and accessories to protect against sleep and confusion, then when the battle finally came there was no sleep used at all. I still burned her down asap thinking she would. I enjoyed how the game often set up things to happen then made them not play out as I expected, and how most of the villains were not bad and ended up allied by the end. I also liked the sense of scale of the world as you never see the entire thing. It was implied that the starting city was just a small part of a nation. Instead of visiting civilization, the game goes into the frontier and then beyond the known world, though it becomes obvious that the villains were already established out there. I guess it was all classified from civilians. The next party member was Gadwin the swordsman. He only used swords fire and earth, ran like a buffoon, was way higher leveled, and was a beast man. Seemed like the civilization was only humans while the frontier had a few different kinds of animal people. I did not mind the long eared beast people but hated the ones that showed up later. Stupid bull, giraffe, frog, rabbit etc people. Damn furries. The bull people were especially dumb because only the adult men looked like that, and their portraits were just simple flat circles. The art for every other character was good, but the artist dropped the ball hard for those bulls. Made it even more difficult to take seriously. I knew something was up with Gad being so high level. There was no way he stays in the party. Him and Sue left just before they set off for the final chapter. I was not expecting Sue to go. It was sad though not at the level of Aeris. It made perfect sense that a child had no place in a jrpg party and I have to give the game credit for acknowledging that. It probably should have happened not long after the first battles but better late than never.
The next party member was Rapp the annoying punk ninja. He had a pretty good weapon selection with sword, dagger and throw but could not use bows. He was not as good at physical combat as Justin but ended up being better with nukes. He needed a lot more sword use to unlock his best moves but I had him focus on daggers and his doppelganger move. At the end I was not sure which weapon he should use. I settled on the god knife because I figured the action bonus was better than slightly higher attack. The force knife and best shuriken had higher attack and reach. Then there were 2 more temporary party members. I loved how their equipment was automatically put into the stash, and the free weapon and magic skill items that helped offset any grinding done on such temporary characters. Milda the barbarian used the same weapons as Justin but could not learn magic. She was even higher level than Gad and hit very hard, but was very slow with poor defense. I gave her the chain gem for massive damage and had her switch to mace while giving Justin her axe. Not long after I found 2 optional dungeons. The tomb was a long dungeon with a lot of secret passages. Many enemies here were immune to fire and Feena only had a fire whip so she was struggling. She used a lot of ice nukes until I found that sweet god knife for her. The boss here was tough, a super version of the boxing guy. There was no save point before him. I should have back tracked to the beginning to recover and save but still won despite having to use 2 or 3 resurrection potions. Unlike the story line boxing guy, this optional boss had pathetic special attacks and lethal normal attacks. It took those deaths before I figured that out, plus he healed so the fight dragged on. The reward was that half sp cost accessory, which allowed Justin to deal incredible extra damage from midair cut. The other optional dungeon was much smaller and easier. I made use of the holy mace from long ago so Milda could 1 shot the undead. The reward was the lightning sword, the most powerful sword in the game after the Justin only spirit sword. It was largely why he never got much fire xp, and it had to be swapped out against fire or wind enemies. Milda did not stay in the party long, and I was glad to be rid of her because some of her battle lines were so cringe. She was replaced by rabbit guy who was a rogue with no magic, and he stayed in the party for less that she did. He had some interesting specials, innate 3 hits for combo, and same weapons as Rapp except bows instead of throwing. I figured he would not be the end party member. That honor went to someone that I never expected as I thought she was an AI with no physical form. She probably was something like that, living alone on a ruined space station in orbit for 100s of not 1000s of years. She only used maces, had poor physical stats and started high level in all elements with a lot of powerful spells. I liked her serene voice. Her and Leen were the most attractive female characters, Feena third due to her more exuberant voice and green hair. Though I liked Liete I think it would have been better if she trapped the party in time stasis or cryo sleep. After all Justin directly caused the revival of the big bad by giving up the spirit stone. If the stone was stuck in orbit the story could not progress. That would give Sue enough time to grow up and follow their path to come to the rescue. I'd say make it a whole new chapter of her traveling through the same areas and recruiting the 3 temp characters with Liete being a boss fight. Despite how much cooler that would be, I did like Liete. I had her melee a lot to boost her poor mace skill, while throwing out powerful nukes as needed. Gave her an attack up accessory since I did not have a 4th chain, switching to casting speed for bosses. Her level 1 spells included magic art, which was the most powerful single target spell at that level and costing 12x as much as basic burn, lightning also cost that much for nearly as much damage spread out over most enemies. Boom was more middle of the road, costing 7 mp to burn's 1. Her level 2 spells included the reliable cheap burnflame, a more middle of the road ice hit all, expensive and powerful lightning hit all, and meteor as the best single target of that level. Level 3 spells were mostly gadzap the most powerful single target nuke. The all enemies spells of that level were more overkill. I never used enclose but I read it can disable even the final boss for multiple turns. She needed a little more water skill to unlock a few more spells while the other characters were missing a lot of theirs.
I proceeded through to the end of the game missing the 3rd optional dungeon. It was in the savanna somewhere around where they returned from orbit but no idea how I missed it. Too bad there was a point of no return or I would have back tracked out from the final boss to do it. There were epic scenes though I thought Justin's low point came from no where and was too easily fixed. The final dungeon was good with challenging enemies, big battles, and more creative dungeon design. I loaded upon finding the final boss because I wanted to use the stash outside to fill up with the best stuff. Everyone except Justin had a trust though I never used any. Everyone got a revival, then I spread a mix of hp, sp, status recovery, mp and buff items. Would have been cool if weapons and accessories could be swapped in battle. Everyone had instant death protection going in with Feena wearing a talisman (immune to status) just incase. Phase 1 was a typical multi part boss, and the boss acted so fast with all those parts. The only real threat though was the cyst doing fairly big damage. I focused on killing the main body and keeping everyone high hp and was definitely feeling the pressure to end the fight before people died. Killing the cyst first would be the better strategy and instant death protection was not needed. Phase 2 was the classic big central boss with 2 little things to the side. With no idea what would happen I decided to burn 1 minion asap while leaving the other alive in case they revived. Almost everyone died at some point during this fight breaking their revivals until I figured out what was going on. The minions spawned even weaker tentacles that did basic physical attacks, area spins, and massive single target damage. I had to use healing items to keep everyone up and should have stocked more since I used 0 mp items. I had everyone spread out using evasion or attacks, made sure to critical the minion whenever it tried to spawn more tentacles, and tracked the extreme single target attack to defend it. In between heals everyone pumped damage on the boss, or used a few sp items. I also cast a lot of digging and 1 or 2 attack up on Justin. Both phases liked to dispel buffs but that also removed my debuffs and prevented a big nuke. Oddly this phase only did it once and let me stay well protected. The final phase was just a token fight with no real threat. I was worried briefly when it cast snooze to sleep everyone except Feena but it had no powerful attacks to capitalize on that. The ending was good, touching and humorous. The big bad turned into a giant tree and source of new life. The last bit was in the beginning town with Sue grown up and smoking hot. I honesty wondered if she would grow up ugly given how obnoxious and vain she could be as a kid. 2 kids get in trouble just like her and Justin did showing the cycle continues, animal people were everywhere, and Justin and Feena pumped out several kids. You didn't see the parents but it was not really necessary. It painted a very good picture of what the world was like and how most of the characters were doing. Justin's mom was only a couple text lines and there was nothing about the other party members so it could have been a little better. Then I grinded a little bit to get Feena 4 wind to unlock zap whip. Justin got a little fire, Rapp got some earth and Liete only needed 1 more water to get her great buff spell. I did the final boss far more easily this time. Enclose on the cyst while burning it down so that it never got an attack off, then regular attacks to finish phase 1 with chain gems. Swap gear after. Phase 2 I used enclose on 1 minion while burning it down, and occasional critical on the other to stop spawns. Only 2 tentacles were created and I only healed once. Killing the other minion also killed the tentacles and from there the boss was trivial.
End stats
Justin: lvl 39, 72 sword, 39 mace, 25 axe, 5 fire, 4 wind, 16 water, 7 earth. Equip: spirit sword, armor, shoes, shield and helm, energy charm
Feena: lvl 37, 27 dagger, 66 whip, 36 fire, 15 wind, 8 water, 4 earth. Equip: lite whip, devil robe, battle boot, mn shield, Pope hat, holy ring
Rapp: lvl 36, 68 dagger, 16 sword, 40 throw, 19 fire, 1 wind, 11 water, 5 earth. Equip: god knife, devil robe, battle boot, l gauntlet, deth mask, combat ankh
Liete: lvl 36, 32 mace, 23 fire, 24 wind, 19 water, 24 earth. Equip: spark rod, devil robe, lion boot, l gauntlet, angel hat, spirit charm.
This was a top tier Jrpg with many excellent features that was a joy to play. Most of the music was good, other than some of the ambient wilderness and town tunes. I especially loved the battle victory tune that only played with flawless victories. Sometimes I let that play for a while. I could see playing through again in the future to get what I missed and make the characters more powerful, especially if there was a hacked hard mode. Knowing what will come and using a walkthrough will negate a lot of the annoyance caused by limited inventory and navigation. The game never opened up the world by giving a flying vehicle like most jrpgs, and did not have much side content. I did not have a problem with this but I should have been able to go back and do all 3 optional dungeons from the final save point. Even if it was like a new game+ reward after beating the final boss. Even better if that allowed you to swap in the temporary party members.
9.2/10
