Earthlock Festival of Magic, for xbox one

Rating: 7.3/10; Good

Played: 2020

Recommended for fans of old school Jrpgs, though if you are new to the genre play a classic masterpiece from the 90s instead.

Earthlock is a traditional Jrpg that harkens back to the days of Final Fantasy 9 and 10. It has a likeable cast of characters that are decently fleshed out, an interesting enough story, and very solid mechanics, but does not live up to the games it emulates. There is nothing really wrong with the game, it just needed more oomph to elevate in into the halls of greatness.

The setting has an interesting backstory about ancient highly advanced civilization and a disaster resulting from the planet no longer spinning on its axis; hence earth lock. This leads to one part of the planet being in perpetual day, with a mix of lush green environments and scorching desert, and the other part being frozen in darkness. Guess which one is the end game. The game opens with a bit of a combat tutorial as you control Ivory and her pet magic dog, before switching over to the actual main character. There are 6 characters who join the party with 4 in battle at a time. You can swap party members around at any time outside of battle, allowing you to make use of everyone; something so many rpgs get wrong. The only way it could be better would be if you could also switch during battle, but you can only switch the order of the combat team. Order matters because each character is paired up with another in a bond that gives both passive and active bonuses. As characters fight as a pair they gain points to level up their bond, unlocking passive abilities that can only be used when they are paired in battle (such as improved damage, adding poison to basic attack, and immunity to a status effect) and permanent talent points that are like free level ups. A kind of mana bar also fills up as the pair fights, allowing one (or both if you want to deplete it faster) to enter a more powerful FF9 trance style mode where most regular abilities are changed to hit all versions that do not suffer the usual diminishing damage for hitting multiple opponents. This is great for putting on the hurt for multiple opponents and for recovering massive damage. Using these abilities properly is essential. The only annoying thing is that cancelling out of the mode early resets the mana bar so you have to fill it all the way back up before you can use it again, so you might as well blow it all as fast as you can. Though you may be able to make the character skip their turns to save it. Talent points are also gained with each level up, and since the max level is only 20, you are encouraged to rotate bond pairs to get those free points. Each talent point can be spent to put a card on the character's talent board; kind of a mix of stat gains, equipment and skill tree. The board contains 3 types of slots and you can freely change cards outside of battle, giving a huge amount of build depth. The 1st type gives raw stat boosts, such as attack, magic, speed and defense. The 2nd gives special bonuses, like extra damage vs a specific enemy type, while the 3rd gives new combat abilities unique to each character. Cards are treated as items that can be found in chests, dropped from enemies, and crafted. Once a point is spent though, an appropriate card has to always be equipped. And since there is a limited number of each card you have to be careful about putting them on the 2 characters not in your main party. As long as you fully explore and do the few side quests you should not have any problems optimizing the characters. I went with a fairly balanced approach that worked well, but you can try to rearrange stats and abilities to counter a specific boss.

Each character has 2 stances with slots to equip 4 abilities for each; 1 for each face button, giving even more of a deck building feel to the strategy. Again they can be swapped at any time outside battle. Items are also equipped to the 4 face buttons, which means no digging through the inventory mid battle. Ivory is a Jill of all trades with her scout stance getting a basic melee attack, a variety of traps that activate on the enemy's turn, healing and stealing. Her other stance uses a crossbow with a variety of elemental ammo for long range attacks. The farming minigame is your primary source of ammo, and you are strongly encouraged to use ammo because of the ease in exploiting elemental weaknesses and flying enemies being completely immune to melee attacks. The other main character is Amon the thief, who uses a variety of roguish melee moves and has a ranged stance very similar to Ivory. The dog is the black mage of the group, but stat distribution is entirely up to you so there is no reason she can't be good with her bite and take a few hits. The elemental attacks are area effect with the damage being spread over all targets so the bite is invaluable for focusing targets down. She only starts off with 2 elements and to learn more you must use the sixth sense skill on an enemy of appropriate element. This is a fairly easy and shallow mechanic though, nowhere near as deep as blue magic or Gau's beast skills. Her other stance is pure support with buffs, the most important of which are the stacking magic defense and single target elemental immunity; the latter of which is pretty much essential for beating some bosses that use a periodic hit the entire group for massive damage attack. Gnart is the white mage of the group with a variety of healing abilities, and even crowd control and a straight up nuke. The standard heal spell is not available at the start so you instead have to rely on regen; and boy is it a good regen. His alternate stance provides passive boosts to accuracy, magic and attack, but I never once used them. The 5th character is a warrior who uses high damage physical attacks of both piercing and slashing type. Her alternate stance puts her in tank mode where she taunts enemies to attack her instead of the others, allowing a more MMORPG strategy. The final character is like a synergist whose alternate stance is just like the dog's, only for physical attacks, while also having an ability to make the enemy weak to physical damage. The other stance is just generic attacks. I barely used this character though because by time I got him he was so under leveled as to be completely useless. Even with rotating for bonds, it would take a huge amount of grinding to keep the 2 underused characters up with the rest of the party. This is why separate xp for each character sucks.

Turn order is displayed in battle with the speed stat not only allowing first action but also more frequent turns. The characters have 3 different sub menus, which can be easily switched between using the analog stick. The default menu shows the 4 combat abilities, while the others are for items and misc actions, such as rest and feign death. I don't really see why they tried to be different by using feign death instead of the normal run away; the mechanics are the same. Resting is important though because it is how you recover action points. Every action in battle costs action points, with more powerful abilities costing more. Characters generally start off with 4 action points and recover 1 every time they act; rest recovers 2. So to keep using the better abilities the characters will have to periodically skip turns. This was most noticeable with Gnart because regen costs 2 AP and his 1 AP melee attack is worthless. At least it was for me because I never gave him any attack cards. There are a limited variety enemies with a variety of nasty abilities. Their overall levels are hidden so you can fight more powerful versions of earlier enemies that look exactly the same. It is a flexible way of making better use of assets instead of the old palette swap. Strengths and weaknesses stay the same and are visible in the bestiary after defeating the enemy. Overall the combat is engaging and balanced. Since hp is not restored for free after battle and you can only use abilities to heal during battle, you are encouraged to fight efficiently and go all out with abilities. You also get more rewards for getting into riskier battles with many enemies. Enemies are visible on the overworld/dungeons and chase the player, with combat starting when they touch or a timer counts down. This allows you to round up more foes to fight at once, and those battles can be intense even if the enemies are relatively weak. Boss battles are challenging and may take a few tries to figure out, but there is always a save point before.

Save points also function as a fast travel system using the hub area where you can rest for free, craft, and do the simple farming minigame. Despite the game being a reasonable 30 hours or so, it feels more like 1 chapter in a larger game. It feels like there should be more world to explore, like another continent or islands. It feels like not enough plot and character development happened, and that the villains were too easily defeated. But all of this is understandable given that it is a low budget indie game. The game is not annoying in any way, with fairly simple and unintrusive puzzles. The game mechanics are surprisingly deep and combine with a good level of balance and polish to make the journey engaging. While a lot more could have been done, especially in the story and character department, the whole is a relaxing, nostalgic and enjoyable romp.

Pro

• Interesting story, characters and setting
• Freely swap party members and builds outside combat
• Significant depth to character and combat mechanics
• Good music. Especially the way the overworld theme seamlessly transitions into battle theme

Con

• No traditional equipment
• Uses save points
• No saving on overworld
• Area attacks reset cursor memory in combat
• Farming minigame is extremely simplistic