I wrote this review for Backloggd, a website I do not pay to host. I should free myself of feeling like I have to write ‘excellent’ reviews for this website. I gave it a 4.5/5, or a 9/10 rating.
I finished this a few months ago but I needed time for my feelings on it to settle. This is a really good game with a really good story. The environments are beautiful, most of the soundtrack is lovely, every NPC in the world appears to have a unique model and animation. The piece of every NPC having a unique model and animation is really really special, because I don’t think very many games past or present do that.
The game’s visual effects look unique/almost arcadey in a way I don’t usually see in modern games or other games of the era, though I suppose that’s because it’s a Dreamcast game as opposed to a PS2 game. I appreciated them whatever the case.
This is either a pro or a con depending on how you feel about it, but resource management is basically a joke. Your 1MP restore item is dirt cheap and you can basically restore everyone’s HP and MP to full for nothing. When you get to the point in the game where Fina or another party member has the “restore 1000HP to all party” spell you can restore the party’s HP to max for like 2MP or 4MP at worst.
The game’s combat is simple. Every character can learn every magic spell that costs MP but also have a unique set, which only cost spirit points that accumulate with every turn. Your status effects can be cured by the same cure spell (except death). You can pretty easily understand what your stats do too so no difficulties or confusion there. That said I struggled to find a use for Aika throughout the game (Delta Shield blocks friendly magic too?!) when her base attack is so weak and her S. point moves do inexplicably low damage. I hear she’s a good item user because of her speed but that seems a little sad.
I kind of just dealt with the much-complained-about encounter rate as part of playing an older game and it was fine ultimately, but it did mean I wasn’t too keen on exploring for all the discoveries.
The ship battles are fun set pieces but when you get to the final stretch they really really drag because you can’t just kill in 2 hits with your super cannon (which is how they should work smh). Playing it safe and healing while waiting for the chance to use your super cannon really feels like the only strategy.
At the end of the game mass destruction rains upon the earth irrevocably changing the map. I wish the game had a point of no return warning because as far as I can see once that’s happened you can be locked out of getting all the discoveries and one of the major locations is just gone. Your final save point is also just before the final boss so if you wanted to beat the final boss, then leave to keep exploring or capping off unfinished business you’d have to fight your way back through the dungeon. I might be expecting modern QOL things here before they existed but given you spend a fair bit building up your ship’s crew and your base I’m surprised you can’t head back for a victory party and a sliver of post-game content.
Each of the game’s nations are based on orientalist versions of real-world cultures (Nasr is kind of Arabia, Valua is vaguely Spanish but the place itself is a grey hellhole so it doesn’t quite shine through, Ixa’taka is an indigenous people pastiche, Yafutoma is not-Asia (I think it’s meant to be China?) Obviously this is going to rub many people the wrong way and it has to be mentioned as a point of potential frustration for people.
For my shit-talking that’s why I can’t give the game 5 stars. But it is still excellent.
The story is not very complicated and is built on tropes but it’s like really good toast with really nice melted butter, in that you go “wow I didn’t think toast on butter could be this good!” Vyse and Aika have a nice dynamic with one-another, I like Fina’s expertise despite her shyness (justified in-universe as she’s pretty new to interacting with people outside of the silvite shrine), I love how the models in the in-engine cutscenes move and interact. A newer game might just offload the expressiveness that to portraits layered on top of the characters standing around.
The game doesn’t dance around the evils of the Valuan empire and its fleet either. Valua surprise wars Nasr and drags back its leaders to be publicly executed in a stadium. You can wander around the ruined city and talk to the NPCs who’ve lost so much. The Valuans enslave Ixa’takans to mine moonstones. We see the immense, cruel class divide in Valuan society. Despite all this, the party remains optimistic in a way that feels realistic and earnestly hopeful. It is easy to be optimistic when there isn’t much to be pessimistic about but this game presents both terrible things and optimism. I think that’s admirable.
Ultimately the game is about that optimism. The Silvites who chose to end the last world by calling down the Rains of Destruction feel they must do it again because humans are intrinsically evil. They have sent Fina down to earth to gather all the gigas crystals needed. They sent down Ramirez earlier but he’s gone AWOL. As it turns out, Ramirez, in line with the Silvite worldview, has become a Valuan general partnering with Galacian to gather the crystals and cleanse the world of evil humans. Fina and the party reject that humans must be cleansed for their evil and fight against Ramirez. I thought it was a good message about how believing people are evil leads you to dark places.
I kind of wanted Enrique to have accidentally leaked where the Blue Rogue’s base is to the other Valuans when he returns, or to have been executed for piracy, or to have monumentally failed in his mission to talk sense into the empire. He goes from “The Valuan empire is evil I must leave” -> “I’m going to beg my mother in person to do something about Galatian”, to which his mother doesn’t do anything and he only survives the total evisceration of Valua because of plot armour. The game’s credits also imply to you that Enrique becomes the new emperor of Valua and that they retain a fleet, suggesting they’re still doing evil empire shit. Not a fan
Overall very very very good game that is well worth your time!!!