Energy Breaker, for SNES
Rating: 9.0/10; Masterpiece
An absolute must for any fan of Jrpgs or tactical rpgs
Energy Breaker is a traditional Jrpg with a cast of loveable and colorful characters that uses a tactical turn based combat system. The game looks and feels a lot like Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics, complete with blocky terrain. The protagonist is a woman and the entire game is laced with feminine themes and style. All characters, including generic npcs and villains, use emotive animations and thought balloons that convey tone and mood. Character interactions are thus extremely well done and convey more information than many other games. These interactions are often cute and funny, with the heroes poking jabs at each other in an obvious "I make fun of you because I like you" kind of way. There is significant character development and even many of the npcs feel like old friends that you want to keep checking on to see how they are doing. This culminates in one of the best endings I have ever seen; full of emotion, resolving the arcs of each party member and giving just enough to indicate what the characters will be doing next while being vague enough to let the player's imagination run wild.
The areas in the game are fully explorable, like most rpgs; you will be moving around town talking to people and moving through dungeons using jumps to change elevation and looking for treasure chests etc. Battles take place at fixed locations and there is no change in terrain or scenery; you fight in the same place you explore. Most battles are one time events though a few locations randomly allow you to repeat the battle. This is a way to grind extra money and xp if you want, though it is always the same enemies in the same location, so these battles are more tedious than they could have been with a bit of variation. An overview screen shows you the victory and defeat conditions, and allows retreat. Win by defeating all enemies, or sometimes you can also just defeat a specific enemy or have 1 party member reach the opposite end of the map. Lose by allowing every party member to die or failing to win before the turn limit; yes every battle has a strict time limit that can easily lead to game over in any battle. Sometimes you will fail if a weak npc dies, a kind of escort quest, but this game amazingly allows you direct control of any temporary npc allied to you; a refreshing change of pace. The time limit is not a problem as long as your characters are decently leveled and you use good tactics, and you can freely save in separate slots inside and outside battle.
Battle alternates between the player and enemy turns and either can get to go first. Everyone has action points (called balance) that can be spent on moving or a variety of actions with no limit on order or how many you can do in a turn; spend all points on movement, stand still and only attack or mix it up. Moving costs a fixed 5 points to move anywhere within movement range, which is a minor flaw because you can't just use 1 balance to move 1 space for example. This is the most apparent when a character is hurt because fewer balance is restored as health goes down. So a character who takes significant damage during the enemy turn will be rendered immobile on your next turn, and this will also severely limit their offensive and recovery ability. This also applies to enemies and is an important mechanic to be mindful of during battle. Facing is important because everyone automatically melee counters any attack to their front (even ranged if used at melee range), and take additional damage from the sides and especially rear. I did find it odd though how if you attack a distant enemy with a ranged attack while another enemy is in melee range with you, there is no penalty. Special skills can be learned that cost more balance than the basic melee attack; things like ranged attacks, healing, buffs, debuffs, area damage and things that move allies or enemies. I found the costs and advantages to be very well balanced. Each character also has unique animations for most skills. For example, the heroine shoots a lightning bolt for her basic ranged attack while old man scientist shoots a rocket; a nice touch. Some of the animations are overly long though and get a bit tedious. Thankfully the game has an option to turn off animations for the more time discerning player (like myself, who would play games at the speed of thought if I could).
Using an item only costs 1 balance and is thus the cheapest action during combat. This can be a very important aspect of combat, especially if the battle is not going so well and you need a bit extra to stay alive or beat the turn limit. Healing items, scrolls to use skills and even items that restore balance, which can even be chained together to allow a character to perform an absurd amount of actions during a single turn. This is balanced out by limited availability of items and a terribly limited inventory system. Each character only has 8 inventory slots, which includes equipment and some quest items. On top of this, the method of learning new skills involves finding a grimoire item that teaches a new skill, and it is not readily apparent that you can sell them after using them to update your skill list. Why they were implemented as items instead of simply updating the skill list is a good question. There are item boxes to find that occupy 1 inventory slot while allowing a sub inventory; something that must have been more difficult to program than simply a larger base inventory. So the game forces you to struggle with this limited inventory and make tough decisions about what to throw away (there is a rather large garbage bin which keeps the items that you discard so you can sell them in town, but the only way to get them out of the garbage is to buy it back from the shop) and how frequently to turn in collectibles (ie far too often). By far the worst aspect of the game. A far better system would be to keep the limited inventory for equipment and items for battle while having a single infinite item box that cannot be accessed during battle, like the sack in Dragon Quest 6.
Characters level up by performing actions in battle, with the amount rewarded varying considerably. Healing someone at full health grants minimal xp while getting the killing blow on an enemy grants the most. Since your characters can move and act in any order you want, it is easy to allow weaker characters to get killing blows to catch up. The game does away with the large number of stats in most rpgs, instead having only 4 stats outside of health and balance, and there is a very simple system of buffs and debuffs directly affecting these stats. For example, the earth shield skill improves the constitution stat, which reduces all damage taken, rather than having its own effect. In addition to this is the energy system, which shows how proficient the character is with each of the 8 elements; the 4 traditional elements with light and dark versions for each. So rather than having separate elements for light and dark, there is instead light water and dark water. The character's level in the elements determines which skills they can use, but available skills are restricted by character (the little S above means they can use the skill). Each level up grants 1 element point and allows you to choose 1 element to increase its max level, though you can adjust the distribution of element points up to any maximums. Sound complicated? Yes it does seem to be a needlessly complex system. In practice the characters will max out elements anyway by the end of the game, but you may want to micromanage which elements to increase each level for earlier access to skills. The problem though is that you cannot access the skill list from the level up screen to see what element needs to be increased. I ended up keeping a save state before each battle and having to refer to it for each level up; needless tedium.
There is some minor time travel which feels kind of tacked on and underutilized. There are no critical things that happen during the time travel that could not happen in a simple flashback; the story could easily be altered to not have any time travel without affecting the plot. I also found the parts in the past to be too directionless, with too much wandering around trying to figure out where the next scene is. Despite the game's flaws (the inventory system is manageable when you know what can be discarded), the amazing characterization, story and combat elevate this game to the hallowed halls of SNES rpg masterpieces.
Pro
- Excellent story, characters, dialogue and setting
- Extremely well done female protagonist
- Animations and emotion balloons that add to dialogue
- Lots of hidden items and flavor descriptions
- Excellent tactical combat
- Can freely move and act with each of your characters in any order,
even having 1 do something then use another character to do something
followed by going back to the 1st to do something else
- Changing direction can be freely done and does not cost anything
- Unique robot character who is an invulnerable tank but can never
attack
- Having less than max health reduces available action points for you
and enemies
- Shop inventory is saved between stores and remembers everything you
sell
- Save anywhere, even in battle
- In depth dialogue system with tone (normal, friendly or aggressive,
though this is underutilized), give item and asking about key words
- Items bought at a shop can be put into a filled item slot and will
automatically sell whatever is there (great for equipment upgrades)
- Newgame+
- Can reorder skill lists
- Excellent soundtrack
Con
- Extremely limited inventory size that relies on finding item boxes to
expand it
- Skill books are items that can be discarded immediately after being
read, but the game does not indicate this
- Moving in combat costs a fixed amount of action points and there is
no way to use less to move a shorter distance
- All battles have turn limits
- Complicated energy allocation level up progression system
- Time travel that is not an important plot point
- Parts in the past (the time travel parts) are often just guess which
area to go to next to continue without hints on where to go
