The premise is that the protagonists must fight back against the political conspiracy of Count Vorakia Estuuban, and the leader of the party, Ellemine, must develop into a proper leader rather than remain an innocent princess forever. I really liked her growth throughout the game, since she becomes more confident and ruthless while also still retaining her sense of empathy.

The game does bring up some interesting thought experiments, such as the Erran ability to read minds and sense emotions. There's technology to defend one's mind against being read, but as Eryn points out, it can be scary that someone can figure out your insecurities and give you unwanted pity. It's also subtly implied that depending too much on mind-reading means one will be much worse at reading people without it, since Arcturo misread his "friend" Vorakia until it was too late.

That said, there is a pretty blatant use of writer's convenience at the start of the story. Eryn made the foolhardy decision to have Chad arrested simply for speaking out against Arcturo's charges. This seems like a risk not worth taking, since Chad had no evidence and is unlikely to significantly sway public opinion, plus Lady Marselva correctly points out that doing so will just make the other councilmembers suspicious. As a result, Vorakia is forced to accelerate his plans and lose the advantage of good publicity that would have otherwise made Ellemine's alliances impossible to form. While it's implied that Eryn's real reason for doing this is to gain hostages to use against Marselva, it still comes off as a blatant freebie for the good guys in the long run and it also seems like an overly convenient way for Chad to get involved in the plot. Additionally, it seems strange Vorakia and the rest of the conspiracy were surprisingly lenient about Eryn's mistake, and even stranger that Ellemine and Arcturo seem to hype Eryn's political wisdom so much. Personally, I would have preferred that Chad actually do something to warrant getting captured, since doing so would make him look more like a chad for taking initiative and make the enemies seem more competent.

On the other hand, if there's going to be a major screwup in the story, I definitely prefer it be on the antagonist side than the protagonist side. That way I can take some pride in playing as comparatively competent people.

As for the use of races in the game, there's a subtle aesop that one's environment contributes more to how one turns out than racial stereotypes. For example, the Farians on Kardel are known for using their hexes for crimes or at best, resorting to extreme measures to defend themselves against criminals in a dog-eat-dog planet that was ravaged by volcanic activity. In contrast, the Farians on Yurielle live peacefully due to being on a stable and pristine planet. Unfortunately, the Draconians and Gulanians/Granians get no individuality or nuance, since they're just generic conquerors and scientists respectively. While Zazir is a Draconian/Granian hybrid, he's a lab creation and is essentially an outsider to both races' societies, which to me comes off as a lazy way to technically have one of each race in the party without having to actually flesh out Draconian and Gulanian/Granian society. We really need to be able to visit their civilian zones somehow.

Finally, the script needs some proofreading. It's better than a machine translated game, but there are still some awkward word choices and grammar errors.


The game uses a RPS damage type system where physical attacks are advantageous against tech, tech is advantageous against ether, and ether is advantageous against physical, ensuring that AOEs won't be enough to wipe out sufficiently balanced enemy parties. Interestingly, most tech and ether skills function as "magic" under the hood and therefore can be reflected, but physical attacks buffed to deal ether or tech damage do not count as "magic" and therefore can ignore reflection. I don't know if this is actually mentioned anywhere in the game's dialogue though.

The game starts out fairly balanced, but the endgame starts getting weird. Since the characters have buffs and synergies that would be considered too OP in most games, the late game bosses start cheating the turn system like crazy. They tend to do things like AOE dispel, buff, and AOE debuff as sequential actions, and these can be triggered as HP threshold events or even at the start of rounds. As a result, combat gets really messy when you have use several turns to remove enemy buffs and set up your own, only for the bosses to reverse all that with what I refer to as their "boss combo."

Astral Mode is a really sloppy attempt at a survival horror minigame IMO. The idea is that Ellemine has to dodge Astral beasts while collecting powerups, but this isn't implemented well. For one thing, the powerups show up as glowing balls, which are easy to mistake for various lighting effects. Additionally, there's no indicator showing how many items are in each area, making it hard to tell if an area is fully looted. As for the Astral Beasts, damage from them persists into the next time you Astral dive and their positions don't seem to reset, so if you exited an Astral zone with several near the activation point, going back in will immediately result in damage.


7.5/10

The story and world building are ambitious, but some parts definitely needed a sanity check. The bosses do start to feel samey at the end, since they're all just spamming slightly different variations of the deadly "boss combo" just to keep up with the player's powerful skills.

This is an opinion, but personally, I prefer the pre-June update face portraits, since the AI-generated ones just feel more offputting than the RPG Maker style face portraits from before.

[h1]Raving and Ranting[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The premise is that the protagonists must fight back against the political conspiracy of Count Vorakia Estuuban, and the leader of the party, Ellemine, must develop into a proper leader rather than remain an innocent princess forever. I really liked her growth throughout the game, since she becomes more confident and ruthless while also still retaining her sense of empathy. The game does bring up some interesting thought experiments, such as the Erran ability to read minds and sense emotions. There's technology to defend one's mind against being read, but as Eryn points out, [spoiler]it can be scary that someone can figure out your insecurities and give you unwanted pity[/spoiler]. It's also subtly implied that depending too much on mind-reading means one will be much worse at reading people without it, since Arcturo misread his "friend" Vorakia until it was too late. That said, there is a pretty blatant use of writer's convenience at the start of the story. [spoiler]Eryn made the foolhardy decision to have Chad arrested simply for speaking out against Arcturo's charges. This seems like a risk not worth taking, since Chad had no evidence and is unlikely to significantly sway public opinion, plus Lady Marselva correctly points out that doing so will just make the other councilmembers suspicious. As a result, Vorakia is forced to accelerate his plans and lose the advantage of good publicity that would have otherwise made Ellemine's alliances impossible to form. While it's implied that Eryn's real reason for doing this is to gain hostages to use against Marselva, it still comes off as a blatant freebie for the good guys in the long run and it also seems like an overly convenient way for Chad to get involved in the plot. Additionally, it seems strange Vorakia and the rest of the conspiracy were surprisingly lenient about Eryn's mistake, and even stranger that Ellemine and Arcturo seem to hype Eryn's political wisdom so much. Personally, I would have preferred that Chad actually do something to warrant getting captured, since doing so would make him look more like a chad for taking initiative and make the enemies seem more competent.[/spoiler] On the other hand, if there's going to be a major screwup in the story, I definitely prefer it be on the antagonist side than the protagonist side. That way I can take some pride in playing as comparatively competent people. As for the use of races in the game, there's a subtle aesop that one's environment contributes more to how one turns out than racial stereotypes. For example, the Farians on Kardel are known for using their hexes for crimes or at best, resorting to extreme measures to defend themselves against criminals in a dog-eat-dog planet that was ravaged by volcanic activity. In contrast, the Farians on Yurielle live peacefully due to being on a stable and pristine planet. Unfortunately, the Draconians and Gulanians/Granians get no individuality or nuance, since they're just generic conquerors and scientists respectively. While Zazir is a Draconian/Granian hybrid, he's a lab creation and is essentially an outsider to both races' societies, which to me comes off as a lazy way to technically have one of each race in the party without having to actually flesh out Draconian and Gulanian/Granian society. We really need to be able to visit their civilian zones somehow. Finally, the script needs some proofreading. It's better than a machine translated game, but there are still some awkward word choices and grammar errors. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game uses a RPS damage type system where physical attacks are advantageous against tech, tech is advantageous against ether, and ether is advantageous against physical, ensuring that AOEs won't be enough to wipe out sufficiently balanced enemy parties. Interestingly, most tech and ether skills function as "magic" under the hood and therefore can be reflected, but physical attacks buffed to deal ether or tech damage do not count as "magic" and therefore can ignore reflection. I don't know if this is actually mentioned anywhere in the game's dialogue though. The game starts out fairly balanced, but the endgame starts getting weird. Since the characters have buffs and synergies that would be considered too OP in most games, the late game bosses start cheating the turn system like crazy. They tend to do things like AOE dispel, buff, and AOE debuff as sequential actions, and these can be triggered as HP threshold events or even at the start of rounds. As a result, combat gets really messy when you have use several turns to remove enemy buffs and set up your own, only for the bosses to reverse all that with what I refer to as their "boss combo." Astral Mode is a really sloppy attempt at a survival horror minigame IMO. The idea is that Ellemine has to dodge Astral beasts while collecting powerups, but this isn't implemented well. For one thing, the powerups show up as glowing balls, which are easy to mistake for various lighting effects. Additionally, there's no indicator showing how many items are in each area, making it hard to tell if an area is fully looted. As for the Astral Beasts, damage from them persists into the next time you Astral dive and their positions don't seem to reset, so if you exited an Astral zone with several near the activation point, going back in will immediately result in damage. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 7.5/10 The story and world building are ambitious, but some parts definitely needed a sanity check. The bosses do start to feel samey at the end, since they're all just spamming slightly different variations of the deadly "boss combo" just to keep up with the player's powerful skills. This is an opinion, but personally, I prefer the pre-June update face portraits, since the AI-generated ones just feel more offputting than the RPG Maker style face portraits from before.