Been between games for a while now, struggling to land on anything to play so I’ll happily give this a shot! Installed it on my Steam Deck and it works well enough, although is a bit janky. The brightness seems a bit low by default and navigating the menus is weird. The “talk to” button is different from the “advance dialogue” button, and I have accidentally skipped a couple cut scenes due to this confusion. But, I am getting more familiar with it!
I have not played many JRPGs like this, although I consider myself a liker of the genre they often end up being games I think I’d like to check out.. but I rarely get around to them due to the time investment. This one seems fairly bite-size so that’s a plus!
First impressions are good so far, it has a really nice early 2000s atmosphere. Music is great. The combat is deceptively difficult! When you’re one on one it’s a joke but as soon as a few enemies appear CC becomes a real issue, I assume there will be more tools for that later but early on I have just been spamming knockdowns and kiting enemies around. I’ve also found the game is really unforgiving if you don’t go and allocate your stats regularly. A couple times I have found myself hitting the monsters for 1 or 2 damage and had to run back to town, then come back with pumped up stats and they go down in just a couple hits. I think the fighting has a really satisfying rhythm, kinda reminds me of Phantasy Star Online.
Although it’s a been a challenging, the rhythmic combat and relaxing music give the game quite a chilled out and therapeutic vibe. Great pick!