Johan is a village boy whose village was destroyed by the mad Aeon cult, with one of the leaders being his extremely divorced father. Now he has to team up with Aiden and Crysta, who also fear the Aeon threat, but the flashfoward prologue sets up Johan as turning to the dark side. As a result, Aiden has an almost equal role as the protagonist by the endgame in his quest to bring Johan back to his senses.

The beginning of the game is crafted to leave a strong first impression, especially with the severity of the destruction of Vereta and the murder of Johan's mother. I also liked seeing the corruption within the Kingdom of Alexandria and how it's an empire in decline with an incredibly insular upper class, which can feel relatable in these dark times. However, due to deadline and financial issues, the endgame had a lot of cut content and rushed scenes, making it so that there's a lot of loose ends, such as what exactly the rapture is supposed to do to Alexandria, what is King Zelos's role in all this, Zach getting a proper reconciliation and/or condemnation from Johan, Rachel getting a more detailed resolution with Aldus, and more details about Crysta's background and home country. I've played plenty of games with rushed endings, but most of them are at least able to properly NAME their final boss and give them bits of dialogue, unlike this one. The game also has some awkward scenes in the second half, like Naomi being spared by Johan for no reason even though she's his mother's killer, Isolde surviving the castle's destruction despite falling unconscious and the Aeons wanting her head, and Drago not putting up a fight against Isolde. It's like the game couldn't decide how to kill or defeat them.. There's supposed to be future DLC to address the loose ends, but it still seems like an incredibly bad idea to leave so many questions unanswered and the game seems more like an early access game than a full release as a result.

I really liked Isolde as a villain due to how blatantly corrupt she is and how she cares more about crushing Lance and his commoner friends than actually doing anything about the Aeons. The fact that she's a former commoner who now hates commoners is a hint that she's a product of the kingdom's prior corruption rather than its cause, and that she just made a bad regime worse. IMO, the final chapter should have made either Lance or Evil Johan duel her one last time before the Aeons capture her, just to wipe the look off her smug face.


The combat system uses RPG Maker 2003's ATB system, which is unfortunate because RM2K3 implemented it in a really jank way. The game did try to implement a full wait mode, but it has a seemingly unfixable softlock, so it's recommended to use Active mode, which at least still pauses once a character is selected. Additionally, it looks like buff durations are based on all turns rather than the user's turns, though to the game's credit, it tries to mitigate this by making the duration longer than most games to compensate.

In this game's resource system, characters can accumulate up to three relica bars by using normal attacks or spells, which allows them to pull off a special skill with their weapon. Additionally, a percentage of MP is restored upon initiating a normal attack, whether or not the attack connects, which is a good way to ensure even misses aren't wasted turns. Guarding recovers HP (and MP in Crysta's case due to her lack of attack command), making it a way to save on items once your HP is higher. Meanwhile, consumable items scale well to HP and MP, but don't grant relica bars, which balances them and rewards the playing for not relying too much on items.

After leveling up, characters gain Bonus Points that can be allocated to stats, but I personally don't like this implementation compared to Ara Fell's. For one thing, Bonus Points must all be spent upon leveling up, which means if a character gains levels offscreen due to story reasons or joins late in the story, they won't get to benefit from Bonus Points. Also, the way it's implemented grants a bonus stat point if you concentrate all four points into a single stat, which is not explained in the game. Finally, there's no way to reallocate Bonus Points for the sake of experimentation. The good news is that even if the player spends Bonus Points poorly, the game is still beatable, but it does beg the question of whether or not this feature was even worth implementing. Also, this is just my opinion, but I think agility should be exempt from this system, since agility is extremely OP in an ATB system and investing only in speed over the course of the game makes early joiners incredibly strong compared to later characters.

As for character balancing, Johan is a physical glass cannon, Crysta is a standard mage, and Aiden is just really good in every stat for some reason, along with having really strong dark spells that makes him a better mage than Crysta as long as the enemy doesn't resist that element. It seems odd for Aiden to be so OP, but I take it as a sign that he is in some ways the true protagonist of the game rather than Johan, who gets privileges that other characters don't. However, Lance and Karuka are guest characters who have decent physical attack and HP, but mediocre speed and magic, and they don't have access to Ethrel weapon upgrades. Karuka at least has the advantage of having the only attack/defense buff in the game, but Lance has a really luck-based unique skill instead. IMO, these two need some kind of weapon upgrade event that puts them on par with the main characters' level 5 weapons for the sake of balance.

Outside of battle, you can interact with the environment in various ways, like finding clean ledges to jump from, picking up various plants as consumable items, and grabbing spare change. The maps look very complex and large, though most encounters don't respawn, giving you the sense of slowly conquering each vast region and allowing you to appreciate the old school aesthetics.

The game has many missables and points of no return, so I definitely recommend using Firefly's guide from the very start.

7.2/10
This game does a lot of interesting things that push the limits of its engine, even though I'm RPG Maker 2003's biggest hater, so I can respect the effort put into that. Though that does make me wonder what this game would be like in a newer engine with a better ATB system. As for the story, the first half knows how to keep the player engaged, but the ending dropped the ball so hard because of the deadline. I'll update my review once I play the future DLC.

[h1]It All Started with a Custody Dispute[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] Johan is a village boy whose village was destroyed by the mad Aeon cult, with one of the leaders being his extremely divorced father. Now he has to team up with Aiden and Crysta, who also fear the Aeon threat, but the flashfoward prologue sets up Johan as turning to the dark side. As a result, Aiden has an almost equal role as the protagonist by the endgame in his quest to bring Johan back to his senses. The beginning of the game is crafted to leave a strong first impression, especially with the severity of the destruction of Vereta and the murder of Johan's mother. I also liked seeing the corruption within the Kingdom of Alexandria and how it's an empire in decline with an incredibly insular upper class, which can feel relatable in these dark times. However, due to deadline and financial issues, the endgame had a lot of cut content and rushed scenes, making it so that there's a lot of loose ends, such as [spoiler]what exactly the rapture is supposed to do to Alexandria, what is King Zelos's role in all this, Zach getting a proper reconciliation and/or condemnation from Johan, Rachel getting a more detailed resolution with Aldus, and more details about Crysta's background and home country. I've played plenty of games with rushed endings, but most of them are at least able to properly NAME their final boss and give them bits of dialogue, unlike this one. The game also has some awkward scenes in the second half, like Naomi being spared by Johan for no reason even though she's his mother's killer, Isolde surviving the castle's destruction despite falling unconscious and the Aeons wanting her head, and Drago not putting up a fight against Isolde. It's like the game couldn't decide how to kill or defeat them.[/spoiler]. There's supposed to be future DLC to address the loose ends, but it still seems like an incredibly bad idea to leave so many questions unanswered and the game seems more like an early access game than a full release as a result. I really liked Isolde as a villain due to how blatantly corrupt she is and how she cares more about crushing Lance and his commoner friends than actually doing anything about the Aeons. The fact that she's a former commoner who now hates commoners is a hint that she's a product of the kingdom's prior corruption rather than its cause, and that she just made a bad regime worse. IMO, [spoiler]the final chapter should have made either Lance or Evil Johan duel her one last time before the Aeons capture her, just to wipe the look off her smug face.[/spoiler] [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The combat system uses RPG Maker 2003's ATB system, which is unfortunate because RM2K3 implemented it in a really jank way. The game did try to implement a full wait mode, but it has a seemingly unfixable softlock, so it's recommended to use Active mode, which at least still pauses once a character is selected. Additionally, it looks like buff durations are based on all turns rather than the user's turns, though to the game's credit, it tries to mitigate this by making the duration longer than most games to compensate. In this game's resource system, characters can accumulate up to three relica bars by using normal attacks or spells, which allows them to pull off a special skill with their weapon. Additionally, a percentage of MP is restored upon initiating a normal attack, whether or not the attack connects, which is a good way to ensure even misses aren't wasted turns. Guarding recovers HP (and MP in Crysta's case due to her lack of attack command), making it a way to save on items once your HP is higher. Meanwhile, consumable items scale well to HP and MP, but don't grant relica bars, which balances them and rewards the playing for not relying too much on items. After leveling up, characters gain Bonus Points that can be allocated to stats, but I personally don't like this implementation compared to Ara Fell's. For one thing, Bonus Points must all be spent upon leveling up, which means if a character gains levels offscreen due to story reasons or joins late in the story, they won't get to benefit from Bonus Points. Also, the way it's implemented grants a bonus stat point if you concentrate all four points into a single stat, which is not explained in the game. Finally, there's no way to reallocate Bonus Points for the sake of experimentation. The good news is that even if the player spends Bonus Points poorly, the game is still beatable, but it does beg the question of whether or not this feature was even worth implementing. Also, this is just my opinion, but I think agility should be exempt from this system, since agility is extremely OP in an ATB system and investing only in speed over the course of the game makes early joiners incredibly strong compared to later characters. As for character balancing, Johan is a physical glass cannon, Crysta is a standard mage, and Aiden is just really good in every stat for some reason, along with having really strong dark spells that makes him a better mage than Crysta as long as the enemy doesn't resist that element. It seems odd for Aiden to be so OP, but I take it as a sign that he is in some ways the true protagonist of the game rather than Johan, who gets privileges that other characters don't. However, Lance and Karuka are guest characters who have decent physical attack and HP, but mediocre speed and magic, and they don't have access to Ethrel weapon upgrades. Karuka at least has the advantage of having the only attack/defense buff in the game, but Lance has a really luck-based unique skill instead. IMO, these two need some kind of weapon upgrade event that puts them on par with the main characters' level 5 weapons for the sake of balance. Outside of battle, you can interact with the environment in various ways, like finding clean ledges to jump from, picking up various plants as consumable items, and grabbing spare change. The maps look very complex and large, though most encounters don't respawn, giving you the sense of slowly conquering each vast region and allowing you to appreciate the old school aesthetics. [h2]Other[/h2] The game has many missables and points of no return, so I definitely recommend using Firefly's guide from the very start. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 7.2/10 This game does a lot of interesting things that push the limits of its engine, even though I'm RPG Maker 2003's biggest hater, so I can respect the effort put into that. Though that does make me wonder what this game would be like in a newer engine with a better ATB system. As for the story, the first half knows how to keep the player engaged, but the ending dropped the ball so hard because of the deadline. I'll update my review once I play the future DLC.