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• INTRO

Ara fell is a turn-based indie RPG developed by Stegosoft Games and released on PC. It is created in a style reminiscent of classical 16-bit sprite based RPGs such as Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy or more recently Radiant Historia.

The story takes place on floating islands of Ara Fell, and centers around a young girl named Lita who discovers a magical macguffin that marks her as the chosen one who will save the world from total destruction at the hands of a race of evil vampires. So as you can see, we’re already overloaded with completely original ideas from the get go. To be fair, familiar tropes and narrative premises are completely acceptable so long as you have a strong enough cast or at the very least throw a spanner or two in the works to keep things from becoming too predictable. Xenoblade for example isn’t exactly the most original trope-free story ever, but that story worked because it didn’t waste time, focused on characters and relationships, and kept things constantly moving forward.

• PRESENTATION

While the story of Ara Fell won’t ever leave you jaw on the floor surprised at anything, I get the feeling it wasn’t supposed to. If you’ve played any number of RPGs as of late, you’ll have noticed a common flawed logic dominating a lot of them. The idea that more, or longer is innately better. The problem is if you look at some of the best games of the genre, a lot of them are better partly because of how short and focused they are. You can beat Chrono Trigger in less than 20 hours on your first time through, and I don’t think more needs to be said about Undertale.

Ara Fell took be a grand total of 9 hours to playthrough and that is actually a massive point in it’s favor. Aside from being a respectable length for a $10 game, the developers didn’t waste time with menial side quests or filler and busy work that was there just for the sake of padding things out. There are plenty of optional quest along the way that grant rewards that make them worth it if you take the time to complete them, but it’s never a scenario where the story is somehow gated off until your complete some side mission that you may not really care about, keeping things constantly moving towards the final goal, instead of arbitrarily drawing things out with gathering missions or slaying x number of monsters because random NPC #46128 said so.

It’s also nice to play a game of this type that doesn’t take itself so ludicrously seriously. Excluding The Witcher and basically anything Bioware puts out, too many RPGS especially continue to cling to their irrational phobia of having even the slightest sense of humor for fear of not being taken seriously. For all intents and purposes, Ara Fell is more comedy than it is lord of the rings style fantasy adventure, and a lot of that comes from the exceptionally well written characters. Your only have 4 party members for the whole run, which is good as it lets you get to know each one better as a result. They feel more like a cohesive group with their own personalities, interests and nuisances to them, all delivered through consistently tongue and cheek dialogue.

Not that that’s to say there's no drama or heavy moments throughout, but their aren’t overloaded to the point of mundanity and are used in just the right moments to add the impact they need. Without spoiling anything, for example, there’s a scene between Lita and her father, where she’s just gone through some traumatic events and decided to sleep it off, to which her father decides to come and tuck her into bed with a few words of comfort. And that’s all you need. No melodrama or drawn speeches or why our hero is so important or any of that. Just a brief genuine moment and you get the emotional resonance you need.

The journey through Ara Fell is consistently entertaining and endearing for nearly the whole run, but in the spirit of fairness, I’ll need to be honest and saw that unfortunately the ending is a bit lackluster. Naturally I won’t give anything away, but it fumbles in a ways similar to Final Fantasy VII, for those who have played it. Everything builds to this big climactic battle, you face and beat the final boss,they through one more spanner in the works to ramp up the tension, you have the big climactic resolution and then BAM ending credits roll as you just sit their with the ever so classic “Wait, is that really it?” look on your face. I won’t call it bad as theirs probably enough there to make a reasonably accurate guess as to what exactly happens to everyone after the end, but it sure would be nice to actually see it. For one example, the game spends a fair amount of time building developing a romance between two of it’s leads, and despite most video games constantly one-upping hollywood for most awkwardly forced and uncomfortable “love stories” ever delivered in narrative form, I actually found the romance in Ara Fell rather cute and endearing and wanted to see it develop. Then the ending comes and I just kind a have to guess as to whether or not they did decide to go full on babies ever after. I get your game isn’t Harry Potter. I don’t need a whole 10 year time jump to see the future of Lita’s grandkids or anything, but I’d typically expect if a writer loves their characters so much they’d want to give them at least some sort of proper closure or epilogue.

• GAMEPLAY

Gameplay wise, well, this is a classic turned based RPG with preset abilities for each character, so you know how this goes. Combat slogs along it’s repetitive way against trash mobs and standard enemies, while really coming alive with the more intense moments being saved for boss fights which thank goodness are genuinely fun, each having their own gimmicks and strategies that keep you on your toes the whole time. The fact the it copies Chrono Trigger’s Active Time Battle system, instead of straightforward turned-based combat definitely helps with the strategic element of gameplay. And the addition of more modern features like increased maneuverability when exploring, or being able to choose which specific stat to advance for each character upon leveling up all help really help make the game feel like the appropriate mix of old-school features but modernized in just the right way.

Right off the bat, the game gives asks you if you’d like to have access to the “Story Mode” ability, which is basically just a special attack you can use at any time in combat to instantly kill all enemies you're currently facing. And your first reaction might be, “well way to go and make half of your entire game completely pointless when you can now just ‘story Mode” spam your way to victory.” But truth be told, I actually approve of this. On on hand it’s completely optional so you can get rid of it whenever you want. And really, all it does is cut down on the time you spend spam fighting the same trash mobs over and over again, which even the most hardcore JRPG fan will tell you is the WORST part of any JRPG. Plus your whole party is fully healed after battle anyway, to there is no unbalancing there. And if I’m here for the characters and dialogue anyway, the less wasting my time from getting to that meat the better, I say.

• VISUALS/AUDIO

Aesthetically speaking, Ara Fell was made to look like a SNES game, which again isn’t exactly new at this point, but it doesn’t make the game look any less visually appealing. I’d have liked it if the character artwork in conversations wasn’t exactly CLAMP levels of “meh”, but the detail and art direction in the both the sprites and environments is both constant as well as consistently nice to look at. The music is much the same, and while I can’t say any particular song or melody stood out to me aside from maybe the title menu, and the lack of a catchy standard battle theme immediately calls the legitimacy of this game's claim of being a “JRPG” into question the music as a whole was wonderfully atmospheric and always set the tone of each area and scene perfectly. There’s no voice acting, but that’s to be expected with the kind of budget that forces you to develop your game in RPG Maker, and honestly with how well written the dialogue is, I’m even really sure that it was needed.

• FINAL THOUGHTS
  

Before I get into my review, I would just like to shill for my Backbone One for a moment. If anyone has an iPhone 11 or newer (there’s an android version but I haven’t used it), for $100 (a third the cost of a Switch, a quarter of the cheapest Steam Deck), you can have a decent mobile gaming platform. It’s true that mobile gaming has a lot of crap but this game and a few others I’ve tried are proof that there are good games to be found.

As to Ara Fell itself, I quite a bit of fun playing it. A well done story with a good, appropriate ending. There’s a pretty large cast of NPCs and they all have well designed personalities that play out through numerous cutscenes. I really like that notion of who is an enemy, who is a friend and what motivates each shifts a bit over time.

I played on normal difficulty which was just about the correct way to play. I died quite a few times but you just a grind a little and you’re ready to fight that fight again. The one thing that annoyed me a bit (and I say this as I advocate for playing it on an iPhone) is that some of the puzzles were difficult to solve because the solution was too difficult to see on a small screen. The game usually solves this for you by having the solution blink. It’s not a game that asks you to work too hard. :)

I wouldn’t put this game on my top ten list or anything but it’s short and enjoyable and accessible and on many platforms and helps make the Backbone One worth it to me, so I see no reason to give it less than 5 stars.

So let's get the biggest thing out of the way right at the start. This is an RPG Maker game, and I know that RPG Maker games don't have the best reputation. I get it. The RPG Maker engine lets anyone make an RPG, and with that kind of access there will be lots (LOTS) of people making games who lack the talent and the commitment to create anything worthwhile (or worth even the dollar some of them are asking).

This is not one of those games.

This game is an example of what a small but committed group can do, pushing RPG Maker 2003 to its limit and making something I really think is worth playing. If you are even a little bit curious then I encourage you to put aside any preconceived notions about RPG Maker games and read about my experiences with this title, judging it by its own merits.

---The Good---

The best feature of this game, believe it or not, are the graphics. As an RPG with pixel-art style the game world is incredibly vibrant and alive. There are little animal sprites running around everywhere. Each area feels handcrafted and unique, so that I really felt like I was exploring an organic fantasy world and not just something plotted out on graph paper. Even by the end of the game I still found myself compelled to explore, not just to uncover secrets but simply to see what was around each corner.

The battle system was also snappy and fun, with a real-time / turn-based approach (where you wait for your action bar to fill up before a certain character or enemy can take an action). Of course there are way too many encounters, but honestly that is part of this genre and did not feel out of place. Battles were quick, not very flashy, and not based on random encounters, so I could move through them relatively painlessly.

Finally I can't talk about this game and not mention the music. The creators picked a great soundtrack for this game, full of emotion and ambiance that matched very closely with the overall fantasy feel of the game. Sometimes it was a little hit-or-miss. The flute music the main character sometimes plays just didn't make sense for her (it was too complicated for someone who literally stole a used flute and just started playing) and the actual flute sound file dropped out at the end which felt a little unpolished. But otherwise it was all spot-on.

---The Bad---

Probably the part of this game I liked the least was it's writing, but I say that with some hesitation. The game's dialogue was actually reasonably well written. The writer did a good job of communicating emotion, even sarcasm and humor which is not always easy to do. The problem wasn't what the characters were saying, but the characters themselves.

To put it bluntly, the characters were flat. They were all crafted from RPG hero archetypes we have seen a hundred times before. The free-spirited girl, the stoic scholar, the mage with a bratty attitude and a taste for the finer things, and WARRIOR. The good dialogue made them feel a little more modern and lively, but I did not really feel any emotional attachment to them as I moved them through their journey. I'm not expecting this game to re-invent the wheel when it comes to story and character design. I find even simple hero journeys to be lots of fun. But doing something to disrupt those tired character archetypes would have really pushed this game from the realm of "good" towards something truly memorable.

---The Verdict---

For anyone with any fondness for JRPGs, especially those that were popping up in the mid and late 1990s, I think you will find something to enjoy in this title. At about 20 hours of play time (for me at least, with my characters being a bit over-leveled for the final boss) this game does not overstay its welcome and hits all the right JRPG notes. It's a solid title, just don't expect anything revolutionary.

I purchased it on (Steam) sale for around $4USD and I think it was absolutely money well spent. I'm not so sure about the full asking price of $10USD, but if you are a real fan of the genre then I don't think you will regret it.