2 years after the fall of the Black Tower, Abbie suddenly disappears, and Mari has to actually learn how to participate in combat in order to search for her. This isn't an easy task, since she'll have to travel all over Ambrose and explore both old and new locations. For the most part, it feels like going through old KB locations in monochrome is meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia, as well as loss because most of those locations got rekt by the rising sea levels. The sense of loss of locations is probably meant to be a parallel to how the party members are dealing with loss. Mari lost Abbie, Keller lost Morgoth, Stray lost Ruth and Gwen, and Malady lost Uno, and things haven't been the same for them. They also have to deal with their worst fears concerning their loved ones, though I wish the Tower of Trials also showed visions for the non-Mari party members, since those seem like they could be interesting.

Although it's somewhat brief, you get to confront the one manipulating Typhus, Lilith, and Morgoth, and it is indeed Zamas. I honestly didn't expect that we would be able to attack and dethrone (or at least temporarily inconvenience) God so soon, but it's finally happening despite this being the second-to-last game in Timeline 1. It seems strange that the series would peak in terms of villain threat level at this point in the timeline, but it's not like we can permanently defeat him anyways. Surprisingly, despite being a human-hating jerk with a name similar to another human-hating jerk in an anime, Zamas is shown to be a slightly tragic figure because he's miserable from the loss of his sister and tries to shift the blame for it. He even shows mercy to the protagonists because he senses his sister in them somehow, though we don't know how exactly the protagonists are related.


The game mostly does away with unique skills and instead has all skills come from equipment and skill orbs. Additionally, most equipment is no longer exclusive, giving a greater degree of customization, though some characters will obviously excel at certain roles. Personally, I would have preferred the characters having more unique and permanently learnable skills like in previous games, since I feel that this gives them more of an identity in combat.

The gameplay does get grindy at around the middle, and I feel like some enemies, such as the scorpions in the Underworld, were a bit too op. Additionally, I felt like magic builds were overall better, since physical damage strategies tend to burn through too much TP to sustain while magic damage strategies felt more sustainable in terms of both MP and TP.

The bide and calm mind skills can be useful for quickly bursting down a boss, but it'd be nice if they also buffed the accuracy of the next attack too, since a lot of time and resources go into buffing up the attack.

While the game does try to capture a retro aesthetic, the UI for showing player and enemy states wasn't good. You can't see enemy states at all and you can only see two player character states at a time. The next game does fix this by giving more room to show player states, but enemy states are still unreadable.


7.5/10

I like how the story shows the effects of the previous events on the returning characters and I'm looking forward to seeing how the heroes confront the main antagonist in Timeline 2. However, the UI could definitely use some work and I miss the characters having more unique skills related to their actual fighting styles.

[h1]A Monochrome Adventure[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] 2 years after the fall of the Black Tower, Abbie suddenly disappears, and Mari has to actually learn how to participate in combat in order to search for her. This isn't an easy task, since she'll have to travel all over Ambrose and explore both old and new locations. For the most part, it feels like going through old KB locations in monochrome is meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia, as well as loss because most of those locations got rekt by the rising sea levels. The sense of loss of locations is probably meant to be a parallel to how the party members are dealing with loss. Mari lost Abbie, Keller lost Morgoth, Stray lost Ruth and Gwen, and Malady lost Uno, and things haven't been the same for them. They also have to deal with their worst fears concerning their loved ones, though I wish the Tower of Trials also showed visions for the non-Mari party members, since those seem like they could be interesting. Although it's somewhat brief, [spoiler]you get to confront the one manipulating Typhus, Lilith, and Morgoth, and it is indeed Zamas. I honestly didn't expect that we would be able to attack and dethrone (or at least temporarily inconvenience) God so soon, but it's finally happening despite this being the second-to-last game in Timeline 1. It seems strange that the series would peak in terms of villain threat level at this point in the timeline, but it's not like we can permanently defeat him anyways. Surprisingly, despite being a human-hating jerk with a name similar to another human-hating jerk in an anime, Zamas is shown to be a slightly tragic figure because he's miserable from the loss of his sister and tries to shift the blame for it. He even shows mercy to the protagonists because he senses his sister in them somehow, though we don't know how exactly the protagonists are related.[/spoiler] [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game mostly does away with unique skills and instead has all skills come from equipment and skill orbs. Additionally, most equipment is no longer exclusive, giving a greater degree of customization, though some characters will obviously excel at certain roles. Personally, I would have preferred the characters having more unique and permanently learnable skills like in previous games, since I feel that this gives them more of an identity in combat. The gameplay does get grindy at around the middle, and I feel like some enemies, such as the scorpions in the Underworld, were a bit too op. Additionally, I felt like magic builds were overall better, since physical damage strategies tend to burn through too much TP to sustain while magic damage strategies felt more sustainable in terms of both MP and TP. The bide and calm mind skills can be useful for quickly bursting down a boss, but it'd be nice if they also buffed the accuracy of the next attack too, since a lot of time and resources go into buffing up the attack. While the game does try to capture a retro aesthetic, the UI for showing player and enemy states wasn't good. You can't see enemy states at all and you can only see two player character states at a time. The next game does fix this by giving more room to show player states, but enemy states are still unreadable. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 7.5/10 I like how the story shows the effects of the previous events on the returning characters and I'm looking forward to seeing how the heroes confront the main antagonist in Timeline 2. However, the UI could definitely use some work and I miss the characters having more unique skills related to their actual fighting styles.