Ikenfell (2020)

I played on Switch (finished on my Switch 2) as part of the Grouvee Game Club. This one wasn't my cup of tea. The story is a decent one about a school for magic where a muggle girl is searching for her magical sister. Along the way, she builds a team of students and teachers who help her out as a deeper, more sinister plot is unveiled. What kills the story, in my opinion, is the heavy melodrama and the characters repeatedly expressing forced self-doubt despite beating monster after monster. The focus seems to be on the characters' trauma. While that may work for others, I wasn't that interested in it. It felt far too forced for me and not very genuine.

But it all would have been easier to handle if the gameplay was more fun. The spell-based combat is entirely timing based. Both the strength of an offensive spell and the damage taken by defending against an enemy attack depend on hitting the button at precisely the right time. It's made worse by the fact that exactly when in the process you're supposed to hit the button is only made clear with success.

This mostly works for offensive spells where you have the opportunity to test the timing again and again. There were examples of a few spells I rarely used where I wasn't sure when to hit on those occasions I did use them. But it's in defense where I really grew to dislike the game. There are challenging games that are fun to try and beat with different strategies or getting that one hit in. This is not one of those. The boss fights are difficult but there's nothing to do differently other than time your press better. Especially when attacks are intentionally designed to throw off your timing. I ended up defeating the final boss by grinding until I was max level and had a large number of healing/resurrection potions that basically let me keep coming at him.

I can't give this game one star. After all, I kept playing it until I had beaten it. And I can imagine that there are people who truly love this game. It has good LGBTQ representation. It will make erstwhile Harry Potter fans disappointed by JKR's recent behavior happy to visit a Hogwarts friendlier to trans identity. I bet the story and characters will speak to someone. And maybe I'm just an old man shaking his fist at clouds for how much I disliked the combat. For me, I'm glad it's done and I can start playing something else.

So since I do like the general vibe of discussions on this site, I think I'll also start writing reviews?

Let me start with my two biggest letdowns. Firstly, the combat is repetitive and not great IMO. The game's generally JRPG-style combat has some timing based attacks which are frustratingly punishing at the default settings. I switched this quickly to semi-automatic timing (you'll always get a "nice" but can still achieve a "great" timing) and it makes the combat easy but not trivial, although the timings can still be frustratingly uneven. The other problem with combat is that there just isn't much tactical difference between fights, the few systems that exist don't work well together and 99% of the time you're just trying to deal damage or heal it. Positioning, status effects, traps, different attack patterns, all this exist but it doesn't really achieve anything. There are like 100 enemy types (including wacky things like bewitched paper airplanes and mini-moons that try to kiss you) and these all have say 5 different attacks each with mostly custom animations and in the end it all boils down to "they move around then do some damage from a distance".

My second complaint is that the game is just a few hours too long. I finished it in around 20 hours but too padded out. Especially the first hours are a bit uneventful. I think it's maybe all the same kinda magic school related tropes we've seen before, or maybe the art is a bit too generic at the start.

However! I don't want to sound too negative as it's quite clear that Ikenfell is a labor of love. The characters each have their own personality, and the game highlights this both in story, battle abilities, little animations and even theme songs. About halfway through the game the story really kicks in and started hitting some quite emotional notes! It all has oodles of charm. There's also a weird obsession with bathrooms and cats. I understand the cats, the bathrooms less so. But okay! Everything is still lovely!

Highly recommended, especially if you're fan of witchy or queer themes. I'm mostly neutral on both but still liked this a lot!

I did nominate this as the winner of my Game of The Year 2021. This game possesses an indescribable charm. The rhythm RPG gameplay is a ton of fun. But most importantly this game is a step in the true right direction of the kind of thought-provoking and respectable narratives that we want to take video games in.

Everything feels well crafted. The graphics are simple but appealing. The dialogue is rich and the cast of characters is diverse and interesting. The game itself runs like a classic RPG, but the rhythm-based attacks in the turn-based strategy battles make it feel nice and fresh. Couple that with the amazing music and the battles and environments are filled with such feeling and mood.

Where this game shines for me especially, and the main reason for crowing it my Game of The Year 2021, is because of its HBTQ+ themes and characters. I haven't seen these topics being integrated so nicely into any other game I've played, and I truly believe we need much more of this integrated respectfully and interestingly into the game medium.

And that's exactly what makes it the crown winner, of course alongside the stunningly excellent composition of music, cast, and sprites. More of this, please!

The bones are good in this one. The speed based, grid tactics rpg is surprisingly engaging throughout the entire adventure. The numbers stay low and meaningful, all the while your decisions matter moment to moment. So many cool boss battles! Choosing what party members you want to use is fun, their abilities all pretty unique. Plus, everyone equally gains xp regardless of them being in your party or not. Chef's kiss.

But whatever, that's not why we're here. The. Characters. Are. Good! They all have their flaws, their misbeliefs, all which leads to fun and exciting teen drama. Their designs are pretty good across the board, there's a ton of fun side characters, and the plot moves at a brisk clip. In particular, I was blown away by Ima's ze/zir pronouns. Idk, it's small, but so cool to see that in a well made game on my PS4.

One negative is that the art and music notably improve as the game goes on. That is to say, don't be discouraged if the game's aesthetic doesn't hook you in the first hour. I enjoyed that hour, but as soon as you're in the school and start meeting party members, the art and music improve immensely.

So go check it out! You'll fall in love with the world and characters, I just know it.

My favorite aspect of Ikenfell is the grid-based battle system. You move your party members around a battlefield, setting traps and using various area of effect spells which, in addition to timed action commands, adds a nice layer to make combat engaging. Battles can kind of drag however, which is why I think the Switch version is a good way to go. Most dungeons also feel just about the right length for one gaming session.

There's great variety amongst enemies, puzzles, and party member abilities to keep things from getting stale, and the premise of visiting a magical school to find your trouble-maker sister is fun.

I didn't always love the story beats or all of the characters and their interactions but it was not enough to damper my experience by any means.

On paper, Ikenfell sounds amazing. It’s a 16-bit RPG with gameplay inspired by the Paper Mario series and a setting reminiscent of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. I wanted to find something to like in this game, but there are numerous elements to the game that didn’t work for me. The story is a wild goose chase. The gameplay is punishingly difficult. The presentation is bland. There are some really odd-ball soundtracks that I found unfitting, grating and annoying. And the queer moments are too forceful and off-putting.

The game centers around Ikenfell. Ikenfell is a school for young and gifted witches. Due to unusual circumstances, the entire campus has gone under lockdown. You play as Maritte, a girl looking for her sister Safina, who is a student at Ikenfell. Unlike her sister, Maritte doesn’t attend Ikenfell because she is an “ordinary”, someone who can’t use magic. Maritte makes camp one night and suddenly discovers she can cast fire. You learn soon after that no one in Ikenfell has ever had the power to cast fire and suddenly it seems that magic itself has gone haywire.

The opening premise loses its momentum once Maritte reaches Ikenfell. The majority of the game becomes a wild goose chase to find Safina. As an early game example, Maritte and her new friend Petronella discover that Safina’s dorm room is locked with a magic spell. Petronella suggests to find Rook who is an avid researcher. Rook says he needs to go to the Library to do more research on the magic lock. Unfortunately the door to the Library is haunted by a wall spirit and has locked the door shut. So now Maritte and friends have to go to the Alchemy Lab to find something that will scare away the wall spirit. Once you enter the Library, they discover they have to do yet another thing to unlock the door to Safina’s room. I abhor this kind of quest design because it artificially pads the game length. I don’t see how it is any fun to find keys to unlock chests that contain keys to unlock doors where there is another locked chest. While this kind of padding is common in other RPGs, I found Ikenfell’s padding especially insulting and egregious.

Unfortunately the fun doesn’t get any better as the gameplay combat is problematic. There are no random encounters. You fight enemies by bumping into them, but there is no way to gain or lose initiative. The combat takes place on a 12x3 grid with your characters to the right and your enemies to the left. Each turn, you or the enemy can move and use an attack. Attacks have specific ranges so positioning is key. All attacks can be timed to deal extra damage or to lessen damage from enemy attacks. And lastly there is no mana in the game so spells can be cast as often as possible with some that have mandatory cooldowns. On paper, the combat doesn’t sound that bad and strongly reminiscent of the game South Park: Fractured But Whole. In reality, the combat in Ikenfell is a mess.

The biggest problem with Ikenfell’s combat is the timing system. You can completely whiff the timing, get a Nice timing or get a Great timing. Mistime an attack and it barely does any damage. Mistime an enemy attack and it takes off almost a third of a character’s health. Even if you can consistently complete Nice timings, it is barely enough to survive most boss battles. The timing system does not communicate itself in a consistent manner. Every spell has a different timing window and every enemy has a unique attack. Don’t let this kiddy, cartoony RPG fool you, this game is TOUGH even for RPG veterans. Fortunately, if you dig in the options, you can completely bypass the timing system by always granting Nice timings (Semi-Auto) or Great timings (Auto). I felt using the Semi-Auto option was what the game should have set as default, while using the Auto option completely trivializes the timing system.

Looking past the timing system, the combat is incredibly sluggish often taking minutes to complete each battle. The first turn is often wasted because your characters are too far away to land any attacks. Enemies have ridiculous speeds and often land multiple attacks before you get a chance to even control a character. And this game LOVES to have bosses with multiple forms that can summon minions. Maybe it’s a sign that something is too difficult with the game’s combat when there is a setting in the options to bypass them entirely.

There are some glimmers of brilliance in the combat system. Some characters have the ability to lay traps and summon dummies. I was able to smartly place traps to cause an enemy to lose their turn and use dummies to act as projectiles with Maritte’s fire punch ability. I also had a late-game character who can teleport and equipped her with an accessory that can damage nearby enemies to create a kamikaze-like archetype. Unfortunately for every goodwill that the game earns, there are also situations that extinguish that goodwill. Large enemies, especially bosses in the foreground can obscure what’s happening in the background (mind you this is not a deliberate gameplay mechanic) making it difficult to land timings and easy to accidentally walk into traps. There was also this one boss that I trapped into a corner, making it easy to lay spells on it. Rather than rewarding me with a brilliant tactical move, the game instead grants the boss an unlimited amount of turns to attack my characters that were pinning it, until one character was KO’ed.

It is hard to appreciate any element in this game when I found the story meandering and the combat punishing. It also didn’t help that Ikenfell is fairly plain in its presentation. There’s nothing offensively wrong with its’ 16-bit graphics, but there is also nothing stylistically unique or eye-catching either. The music on the other hand, ranges from okayish JRPG sounding music to completely oddball soundtracks that don’t fit the game at all. There is this one particular rap song that plays from out of nowhere with references to Martin Luther King Jr. and Bob Ross. The presentation altogether feels disjointed and plain, especially when compared to hit indie games like Undertale and Stardew Valley.

One thing that I can somewhat appreciate about Ikenfell, is the incredibly diverse roster. Most of the party members and characters you meet are women (I mean you are going to a school for witches). There are also several dark skinned, gay and trans characters. Outside of Final Fantasy X-2, I have never played an RPG with such a strong women roster. It is honestly refreshing to play an RPG that doesn’t immediately relegate women to their typical roles of healer or archer. Unfortunately the game is not subtle at all with the diverse cast. There is a female character that is heavily implied to be attracted to other women, but the game has the need to have her blurt out “I’m so gay!” if it wasn’t obvious enough. There is a trans character who is asked if he is into men. Instead of simply saying “no”, he has to explain that he is “non-binary”. And minor spoiler alert, the ending sequences heavily imply that most of our characters form same-sex couples. My problem with the game is that it tries too hard to normalize queer relationships to the point where I found it incredibly repulsive.

It’s hard for me to trash an indie game that was developed with a lot of heart and care. I simply couldn’t look past the wild goose chase quest design and the excruciatingly difficult and sluggish combat. My rating for the game isn’t a depiction of the game’s overall quality. This game ran bug-free, told a charmingly queer story and is fairly beatable after adjusting the options. There are simply other good games I’ve played and enjoyed my time with and unfortunately Ikenfell is not one of them.

Ikenfell is a great experience. Or, because context matters, Ikenfell is a great experience if you like turn-based RPGs and the description—where the plot has you exploring a magic school as you try to find your character's sister—speaks to all those latent "I wish I could live the Harry Potter life" dreams that gave been crippling us millennials over the last two decades. If that describes you as it does me, well, full steam ahead.

You play as Maritte, who has come to Ikenfell, a school of magic, to find her sister, Safina, who hasn't been communicating with home—especially concerning because it's break, a time when most students are home. The hope, of course, is that you'll just find her being irresponsible, ie Saf being Saf, but it doesn't feel right—a feeling compounded when things at the school feel... off. So—explore the school, fight bad guys, save the world. Easy peasy.

Aside from the obvious appeal of clunking around a large magical school—which despite the throwback art style is gorgeously communicated, both in aesthetic and the actual design—Ikenfell's biggest strength lies in its characters. Maritte—aside from being the main character—has to play both weak and strong. She's the newbie in town, only just discovering her magical abilities. At the same time, she's the de facto leader of a group of students who realize that Safina's disappearance holds larger, more dire implications for the school. While the simplified artwork of the in-game characters don't really convey much (other than Gilda's enthusiastic dancing), the icons that accompany the dialogue text is fantastic. They really did a great job of bring characters to life through those images. And the whole group is fun, from the previously mentioned Gilda (your first two battles against her are some of the highlights of the game, courtesy of Gilda's incredible theme music), to Pertisia (Safina's rival—always trying to foil Saf's plans), to Rook (a bookworm and good friend to Safina, not to mention the character with the best battle mechanic)... I could write a gushy love letter to each of the five companions that Maritte picks up.

But there's a bit of a problem. That's six playable characters, yet you can only use three in any given battle. On the one hand, I don't know that battles would be better if you could use more characters, but the result is you'll end up with three that you default to over and over. Basically from the time I discovered the last character, I had a set 3 that I used almost exclusively. (Maritte, Petronella, and Gilda, if you were wondering—and I know you were.) And the reason is, those three possessed the skills I valued the most: Maritte has effective close-rage attacks that (can) span multiple lanes, Gilda has effective long-range attacks (and can teleport, extending her impact), and Petronella has the most effective healing spells. The times I tried to incorporate the other three characters felt like I was trying to fight with one hand tied behind my back. And sure, there were a few times I'd be in battle and think, "Actually, Ima's skill would work well here," but this isn't like The Witcher where you know your foe in advance and can strategically plan out your ideal crew/skills/potions in advance. Games like The Witcher reward preparation; games like Ikenfell reward familiarity.

The battles themselves take place on a grid. Each character gets a turn, where they move, then either cast a spell or use an item (or, just pass—never ideal, but occasionally necessary, such as at the very beginning of battles when a character doesn't have the range to reach an enemy yet). The spells have specific ranges they can effect—shown on the grid by the square changing color—so your movement will largely be dictated by which enemy you want to attack, and with what spell. The casting of spells (and, just as importantly, the defense of enemy attacks) has a button-press timing mechanic, much like you'd see in South Park and the Stick of Truth. That means there are three tiers to damage delivered: Whiffing = low damage, close-but-no-cigar = medium damage, spot-on = high damage. Defense is the same, just flipping "whiffing" to "high" and "spot-on" to "low." The button presses range from obvious/easy to "wtf"/hard, with the latter becoming (surprisingly, lol) more regular the deeper into the game you get. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, games need to get harder. On the other, the game doesn't really communicate when it is you SHOULD be pressing, so it's a whole lot of trial and error, and that deep into the game, there's not a whole lot of time for trial and error; you have to be hitting those button presses or battles are going to being going really bad really quickly. So it's a mechanic that's great when the timing makes sense (Rook's aforementioned "best battle mechanic," where he both deals damage and tries to steal an item from the enemy, is a buzz of pleasure every time), but super frustrating when you can't figure out when the button is supposed to be pressed and the attack deals a lot of damage (see basically the entire last handful of battles).

Outside of battle you're roaming around, exploring, and solving puzzles. The exploration is pretty well guided—you're mostly unable to access areas that will be featured later in the game, but the world opens up naturally the deeper in you get so that, by the end, it's an open world map—but it also doesn't feel linear. At any time I could, if I so chose, backtrack and, say, hit up the tavern or amble through the dorms. But, aside from restocking on potions or finding a save area, there are very few reasons to backtrack. The puzzles are mostly well done, with creative envisioning and execution. A couple felt a bit too random (those first stages of Archives) or like the game didn't give enough information to know what was going on (Twilight Yard, some of the Spelltower stuff), but those are offset by some really elegant puzzles. (Even the Twilight one is elegant—it just took a sharper mind than mine to pick up on; s/o to Reddit for a minor clue to point me in the right direction!)

But it's the characters. The characters and the details we learn about them, the stories that drive them. That's what kept me exploring the endless (not literally) school rooms, fighting increasingly strong foes, and buying entirely too many revive potions. Yeah, the flaws are suboptimal, but they're manageable (at least, if you're willing to turn to the Internet for answers for some of the peskier sections). Highly recommended.