Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

What a pleasant surprise. Imagine me, picking this game basically just to grab a cheap and beautiful little Action RPG (the name ATLUS did have its influence, though) just in case, and ending up with a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

The gameplay has its flaws, especially when it comes to inventory which is rather tedious. The hack-n-slashing has its shortcomings as well. True, the gameflow and the story/loading/actual game ratio is far from perfect. Indeed, the storytelling is over the top. Yup, while the graphics look like a labour of love, the design will not convince everyone.

Still. The fact that the game makes you play different chracters with different abilities and feel and that each sub-story is rather short adds a variety which most ARPG lack, and it feels more diverse than most class-based systems. The stories intertwine nicely (and you can see how by literally petting the cat at the start screen, more clearly than in SaGa Frontier 2, for instance). The game also sounds as gorgeously as it looks, with a great score a excellent japanese voices which nicely fit the dark romantic faery tale atmosphere.

This theme is actually what makes the game stick together as a whole, and borrows with intelligence from different mythologies. The faery tale metaphor from the gamestart screen, where a little girl picks up and reads book when you pick a character, neatly sums it up. Characters are archetypes, sure, but the diversity of points of view, and especially the magnificent and ambiguous dragons add depth to the experience. Hell, even the furry critter (the Pooka prince) has a little something more than usual. The mix of genuine Sense of Wonder and (tragic, not the too-watered-down kind) romanticism is spot-on.

This game is a nicely done and not overambitious story based Action RPG which totally embraces and enhances its 2D ancestry. If there ever was a "sequel", there would be plenty of room for enhancements and streamlining, but the greatest compliment I can make about it is that it does not need a sequel, it feels quite complete by itself.