Recent reviews by bugfragged

The good news is that there is some more individual characterization for some of the Scrap Springs Division party members, since many of them suffered due to the ESA's tyranny. It's a good way to handle both the macro story of the ESA and the micro story of individual characters, and motivates the player to fight the ESA even harder.

Chronus-13's interactions with the party are weird, since it doesn't seem to mind at all about being ostracized by everyone and it generally acts as a medium for Zeron to communicate with everyone else. This might be intentional, since Krax likely didn't want it to develop too much free will and run off with the important Molarian data. Personally, I would have found it more interesting if Chronus did have more agency and question which side it wants to remain loyal to, since it is essentially treated as a tool even by the good guys. It would add a lot more weight to its digital death in the ending of the game.

As for the macro plot, we get more context about how Carol Everson got blamed for the Raxion II incident, and how Novus went along with the ESA in framing her. We also get to see how the ESA propaganda works due to the news networks framing the story to suit the country's agenda, which is eerily similar to the real life war on terror. Personally, I think the news segments are a good way to show what each country or faction expects their citizens to believe. It's also a good callback to the optional NBN event in Origins, where the player themselves could have been easily suckered by the pro-Novus documentary.


The game is mechanically very similar to Origins. However, there are some new additions that greatly affect the balance.
* First of all, there are both one-time and respawning enemies, and taking advantage of the latter means the player can reach the party's power ceiling much more efficiently.
* Shops now have an accessory that can grant a passive speed buff with a power penalty, with the latter not actually mattering due to how power cost scales to max power anyways. This is an excellent placeholder until the user can learn the temporal acceleration passive from their own skill tree.
* There are now robot party members, who use an entirely different skill tree. They cannot benefit from the brain drain series of skills nor can they use the more broken non-robot equipment, but their ceiling is incredibly high due to their threadripping skill tree, which can grant them three actions a turn. They do have some weaknesses though, since they require specialized synthetic healing methods and they are very weak to electricity by default.

Like before, every humanoid character has very similar skill trees, though due to the higher enemy power ceiling, it becomes even more obvious that the Technician class is the best one. They have power/charge regen as well as passives for power attack, making them excellent at pretty much every role in the game, though their best role is to refill the party's power/charge as required. While their OPness is somewhat acceptable in this game, in the main "Suikoden"-like game, they will definitely need to be nerfed to prevent the player from just running through the game with a party full of infinitely recharging Technicians. The only non-Technician class that stands out is the Combatant, since they have group buffs that surpass the generic support drones.

As for enemies, the first dungeon of this game is more beginner friendly than Origins, since it's smaller, has mob sizes of 1, and has a boss with an easy alternate win condition, which makes it doable on normal. Afterwards, you get access to the shop to properly prepare for the real challenges of the game. However, enemies also require you to learn the electric and antimatter damage types, since many of them will easily tank Matcon Scythe attack spam. Fortunately, if you have the brain drain series of skills, you can easily farm enough knowledge points to learn every damage type you might need.

One thing that really tips the scales in the favor of the player is that shops have almost all available equipment tiers available from the start, instead of unlocking progressively. This means if you farm enough money through criminal skills or Blackjack gambling, you can make a fully decked out team before the first true boss of the game and clobber them even on very hard. Shops for humanoid equipment are also fairly frequent, though robot shops are much rarer for some reason, so make sure to take full advantage of the latter before making any story progress. The only things truly locked behind story progress are the far futuristic weapons in Time's Eclipse, but you probably don't need them for beating the final boss.

As for the infamous Doppelganger armor, I think something like this should be locked behind challenging late game sidequests, since it seems like something that is too strong to simply be buyable from the start. Additionally, the temporal acceleration passive should be similarly difficult to obtain, since increasing the characters' speed in an ATB game gives a huge advantage. Combining these two can completely break the game in half due to the player gaining a massive turn advantage even on the highest difficulty.

Tactics battles are mostly the same as before, though I do find some maps easier to deal with than others due to the available space to maneuver in. One thing I did notice is that for some battles, you have more control over your units' starting positions than others, which can be bad if the game starts off your allied units facing away from the enemy. Also, like before, tactics battles do not have the same extremely high preparation ceiling as regular battles, so I stuck to normal mode with these.

One new addition are cyberspace battles, which are basically regular battles but with a more limited skill tree and item loadout. This time, the skill trees have even less individuality and a fairly low ceiling, so I stuck with normal mode for these.

ORC: We have supply issues because of the ESA's crackdown.
Also ORC: We sell almost every tier of equipment in the game. Have fun.
7.5/10
The story is much better than in Origins and you get a better sense of what's at stake for those who fight against the ESA. I do wish Chronus-13 was more fleshed out, since it feels like the story couldn't decide if they wanted it to be a tool like the fully robotic party members or if they wanted Chronus-13 to truly be a main character. As for the gameplay, the way shop progress is handled, or lack thereof, makes it hard to find the balance between being underpowered like in Origins's first dungeon or grossly overpowered like my fully equipped team. Maybe it's better to treat this as a preview of the main game's potential power ceiling.

The basic premise is that Utania Village has to hire mercenaries to protect their festivities from the Goblin King Frinch, who hates Christmas enough to wage war on a small village that celebrates it. We don't really get a reason from him other than how he finds it annoying. Things escalate when it turns out that Frinch's assisstant, Gobi, reveals that he's just using the king as dumb muscle and starts hiring other Christmas-haters to join the war effort. The next hater is Lord Aldwol, an evil lovecraftian alien who hates Christmas despite being from another planet. Then we get Matria, the BlueSkies setting's Satan equivalent, whose reason for hating Christmas is a little more understandable since it's associated with her rival goddess. Eventually, Gobi himself becomes the boss of the final campaign, where he reveals that he actually has a very understandable reason to hate Christmas: Vyena's Holy Order slaughtered his people on Christmas day while hypocritically seeing themselves as the heroes. That is indeed a sad story, but there is quite a bit of whiplash considering that Frinch and Aldwol hate Christmas for much pettier and comedic reasons. Regardless, it is heartwarming when the party manages to make peace with Gobi and get him to celebrate Christmas alongside them.

I do worry that I'm missing a lot of context for this setting, since it's supposed to be a spinoff of the BlueSkies series. The Christmas part of the story is mostly self-contained, but Gobi is actually the apprentice of a major character in previous game.


Your mercenaries will always get reset to level 1 at the start of a campaign. While this is to make it so that players won't feel compelled to overlevel and stick to one team, it does end up creating a meta based on who has the most useful skills at an early level, which could make it hard to use late-bloomer characters that don't learn essential skills until way higher levels.

The game uses a weakness triangle system like RPS, but it also splits characters into three general roles: nuker, tank, and support. However, this means even if you build a balanced team, that means whatever type your nuker is bad against will likely stay on the battlefield the longest. I ended up going with a tank + double nuker strategy so that my two nukers will be able to cover each other's type weaknesses, even at the cost of non-item healing from support character. Fortunately, if your DPS is high enough, you can probably kill most bosses before you run out of items (each one has its own cap). In higher-level gameplay, you'll also get a lot of powerful skills with the instant property, which encourages you to buff up and deal devastating attacks in the same turn. This, along with how high the base damage of enemy skills are, made the game fit the Rocket Tag Gameplay trope in that both sides are trying to burst each other down ASAP. The idea is that if you can thin the enemy numbers quickly, you won't have to endure as many powerful attacks, which makes offense the best defense.

Adding to the weakness system, I feel like the meta favors characters that start with both single-target and AOE options over characters whose skills hit random targets. I personally don't want to rely on RNG to hit type weaknesses, thus my preference for single-target skills I have full control over. This is especially important when enemies have counterattacks and reflect states, which can make random-targeting skills backfire.

You can buy items in the village, but it usually takes a lot of story progress to get the inventory to change, except for decoration updates which are more frequent for some reason. The good news is that all campaigns are perfectly beatable with whatever equipment tier is available to them during your first try, but it does feel weird to unlock the 10k armor at the same time as the 150k armor. After I beat the game, the dev added more consumables to the gift shop, which can help with the inventory management aspect and give the player a sense of progress. On the flip side, having a longer gap between equipment tiers does mean the player will waste less money on equipment that could quickly become obsolete, so it does make shopping easier towards the end of the game.

8.5/10
Although the story has emotional whiplash towards the end, I still enjoyed Gobi's villain arc and I'm considering getting into the BlueSkies series just to see if he'll ever make a reappearance. I'm personally not used to boss rush gameplay and I mainly play JRPGs with a more traditional gameplay loop and sense of progression, but I think the game is balanced enough, even if it does seem to favor DPS. I did find the glass cannon party builds fun in their own way, since there is a dopamine rush when you manage to score a lucky crit with an AOE skill or permanently remove an enemy threat before it can do anything.

The game is rather weak in terms of individual character development and the story mainly just focuses on missions with minimal dialogue between the player characters. The only characters who get a lot of spotlight are Everson and Archer, who seem to share the protagonist role nearly equally. Everyone else just feels like extra DPS to ensure that we can survive tough battles. This makes me worried because the later magnum opus of the series is supposed to have over 100 characters.

On the bright side, I am interested in how the overall fate of the universe plays out. The plot initially seems to be a standard "defeat the evil empire" adventure, but the time/space travel aspect makes this much more complicated. The game subtly implies that the villians will use time travel to rewrite their defeats into victories and while the good guys seem to be gaining access to the same time/space powers, the game also drops another related crisis where the universe literally collapses due to people abusing time/space powers. This means even if we manage to defeat the evil empire at their own game, the universe might not survive the crossfire, which makes me interested in what kinds of endings will be in the main game of the series. There's also the ethical dilemma of preserving and trying to improve a bad timeline versus going back to a better one, since many will have their histories changed for the better or worse no matter what we choose.

The game also presents the existence of multiple factions, and the non-empire factions aren't necessarily our friends. The Dauntless crew is obviously leaning towards restoring their old timeline, which goes against the interests of all the factions that split off from the ESA. Additionally, while the Dauntless initially team up with Novus Federation, it's clear that this is merely an alliance of convenience rather than one of genuine camraderie. At the same time, the menu shows that you can team up with many different factions, including the ESA. I'm guessing the only possible reason to team with the ESA is out of fear that using time travel to fight them will only worsen the stability of the universe, though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth due to how cartoonishly evil the ESA is.


Unfortunately, this game performs a lot of RPG Maker crimes, such as:
-Allowing enemies to move during dialogue.
-Not unequipping party members who leave the party permanently.
-Slow attack animations (in both regular and tactics fights).
-Automatic interaction with all events/NPCs upon collision rather than explicit use of the confirm button.
-Making it hard for newer characters to catch up to older ones.

The tutorial dungeon is the hardest one in the game due to the fact that your party's "power ceiling" is very low and you don't get access to the equipment shop until afterwards, which is bad because the enemies feel like they expect you to have at least tier 2 armor. The second and third/final dungeons are much easier in comparison because the player will have much more room to prepare. IMO, the first dungeon should include a way to either buy or acquire tier 2 gear to teach the player the importance of staying ahead of the equipment curve. Adding to that, the Nexus shop is way better than the Keskus shop for some reason, despite being available first. This led to the infamous tier 5 scythe cheese strat in the Steam guides, and I think future games should take care to make sure all equipment is available in linear order of story progress.

There is an interesting skill system, but the common skill trees are way bigger than the more unique race and class-based ones, which means it's very easy to just end up with homogenized roles for everyone in the long run. Worse yet, I fear that the redundancy will be exacerbated in the main game with over 100 characters.

The tactics battles have a better UI than The Tiamat Sacrament, but it's not as good as Conviction, as far as RPG Maker games go. You can't examine enemy skills, movement/attack range, and behavior easily, which can make it hard to outplan them. Additionally, it can be hard to tell what tiles are passable. Finally, enemy corpses are impassable in space battles while they're passable on ground battles, which seems backwards. That said, the overall balance for all three tactics battles is overall better than the regular battle system.

6.5/10 - Barely Passable
I think the ramifications of using time travel to fight time travel is interesting, since it presents quite a dilemma when fighting the evil ESA. Unfortunately, the individual character arcs are almost nonexistent compared to the focus on the "macro" story. I also had a lot of issues with the gameplay, and it felt like the developer was trying to experiment with a bunch of systems over actually balancing them. Overall, I really hope the main game can improve on individual characterization, gameplay balance, QOL features, and tutorials, while still living up to its lofty ambitions.

Zosma is an unsuccessful Astra Hunter who is unable to collect treasure due to all the safer ruins being looted clean. One day, he plummets to a subterranean tower where the only way to escape is to pass the Crescent Moon Tower bosses' trials and helping them with their problems. These bosses all turn out to be historical figures who faded into obscurity and left the world unsatisfied, which seems to be a parallel to Zosma's likely fate. In the ending, Zosma ends up seeing the treasure not just as a means of fame and fortune, but as a way to share the stories of the people of the tower. Depending on the ending, he will get varying results in his Astra Hunter career and his goal of sharing everyone's legacies.

The game doesn't truly have antagonists like the previous Torch games, but it does explore similar themes about purpose. The bosses of the tower all had their own purposes and goals, but felt they couldn't live up to the expectations they set for themselves or became disillusioned, which is why it's up to Zosma to give them a second chance to live out the hypothetical prime of their lives. At the same time, it's noted that everyone, no matter how great, is mortal and will eventually be forgotten after death. TBH, the game makes me depressed about my lack of resolve in making my own legacy, but that's on me.

If there's something I want to see more of, it's lore on how Zosma's world is connected to the overall "Torch multiverse." Not only do a lot of treasures reference the other games, but the ending CGs also hint at a connection that goes beyond mere cameos. I'd also like to see actual descriptions for the collectible treasures too, since they're all supposed to have their own stories to tell.


Zosma's chain system has quite a lot of depth, since you have to keep using skills of the same type in order to build up the chain multiplier. At the same time, the chain multiplier is easy to reset if you are ever forced to heal, and you start each battle with 0 SP, which means you have to think about your actions a lot. IMO, the elemental sunder skills are slightly OP, since they have a net gain of 1 SP, deal more damage than a normal attack, and set up the enemy for big elemental damage. Personally, I find it ironic that Zosma is considered an underachieving Astra Hunter when he's the only person in the world with this mechanic. Maybe he would have found more success as a gladiator or soldier?

One of the skill types is the Astra type, which requires both Zosma and the blob to be alive. While all the Astra skills are powerful, they can only be used once-per-battle. However, these are also the main source of debuffs that the player can inflict on the enemy, which means the player can't maintain a status advantage forever.

Personally, I'm not that big a fan of AI-controlled allies, and the AI for the blob is completely random. However, you can set which actions are allowed for the blob to gain some control over them. Of course, I just set the blob to spam AOE healing every turn, since it makes it easy to save on healing items on hard mode. At the same time, the blob is able to do some things that Zosma can't, like non-once-per-battle stat debuffs and stat buffs, so I may have missed out on some interesting gameplay by playing too defensively.

8.5/10

I really like Zosma's chain mechanic, since it allows a high amount of actions per turn even with a small party. The AI blob is a mixed bag for me though, since while there are some nuances to the blob's skill system, I still prefer fully controllable characters. As for the story, I feel like every game in the Torchverse is calling me out, especially this one. Maybe that's a good thing, even if I never get a positive character arc like Zosma.

Ash is a teenager who has lived a hopeless life, only to get isekai'd into Below, a psychological horror fantasy world. Ash is tasked with slaying the Crimson God, but he has no confidence in himself and there's an evil cult trying to sacrifice him to that god. He does go through quite a compelling hero's journey and really shows his chops in Chapter 5, only to have a crisis of doubt in Chapter 6. IMO, the crisis of confidence in Chapter 6 and 7 would work better if the reveal of the 3 soul pieces' weakening effect on the Crimson God was revealed after the first Crimson God fight, and not in Chapter 2. I guess the point is that the trauma of nearly getting killed is too deeply ingrained in Melody even if she knows about the soul pieces, but it still feels really off that the protagonists would get cold feet despite knowing the Crimson God got nerfed and is no longer capable of oneshotting the party tank. Revealing the soul pieces' true nature later would have better put into perspective how far the protagonists have come and make them realize the power to attack and dethrone God was always with them. Adding to that, it would also make more sense for Peter's secret scene to only be available after the first Crimson God fight, since hearing that he fears the protagonists should be a confidence booster, lol.


I really did like the twist about the Crimson God's true nature of being Jesus, who didn't forgive humanity and lost sight of his past altruism. He's meant to be what Ash could become if the latter gave in to his hatred, which is why the true ending requires Ash to spare and save his friends even though they wronged him, as well as to hold out hope that life can get better.


The game has multiple endings where the true ending requires both correct moral choices and for two tricky sidequests to be completed. The most critical moral choices involving Ash's friends are actually fairly obvious, but there are also other choices in the game that may or may not actually affect the ending and mostly seem to be there for the sake of being there. This caused me more anxiety than it should have, lol.


The game does have some NG+/hard mode exclusive lore, which feels like padding. Fortunately, the game does include script files in the folder if you don't feel like doing a second run.


This game is an action/turn-based hybrid, but the start of the game has a lot of RNG mechanics that makes the battle system feel unrefined. The hit rate of normal attacks is very low and faster enemies have a chance of denying a dodging minigame to the player characters. This is somewhat balanced by Ash having high ATK growth, the Blessed Ring (boosts accuracy to saner levels), and the exchange of damage being somewhat merciful for a hybrid system.

However, I ended up using Blessed Ring for the whole game, since it's the most efficient way to deal damage while saving MP items. I feel like none of the other accessories were worth using, since I prefer having consistency in my attacks.

Enemies have some tricky, but very cool-looking attack patterns that makes each one feel unique. Unfortunately, all player attacks are simple slash graphics with different colors, which was a letdown. Even Ash's ultimate attack, Arcane Beam, doesn't have a laser graphic despite several enemies having laser type attacks.

The UI feels very dated compared to basic RPG Maker games, since you cannot load your save file during a gameplay session. Instead, you must cold restart the game, which can be annoying if you're trying to redo a certain segment or minigame. The UI for the casino games is also very clunky, since you can't increase your bet in increments higher than 1. Instead, you have to hold down your input button for a long time and watch the number slowly increase.

This game features a death count system, which is why there is only one save slot. The intention is for the player to maintain a 0 death run to make sure the statues of might are active, but I never found the trade-off of the statues of might worth it. I would rather the statue system be scrapped so that the player can have multiple save slots, which is necessary in a game with so many choices. I ended up having to manually copy save files to separate folders just to be able to have multiple saves.


7.5/10

I did enjoy Ash's growth throughout the game and would consider the story better than average. However, I felt like the battle system having such an RNG factor with landing hits and enabling dodge windows defeats the purpose of having skill-based button inputs and evasion minigames in the first place. The exchange of damage is still doable on normal mode, so the game is still overall playable.

The premise of the game is that Terra was destroyed by an antimatter comet and humanity had to move to Luna to survive, but now Comet Coda is going to hit Luna. There's also the threat of antimatter beasts known as the Murks, but the protagonist, Bella, can sense the Murks' sorrow somehow when no one else can. IMO, the game made the twist about the Murks too obvious from the start by having Bella sense their emotions even before the game starts. It would have been more interesting if the prologue included a segment on Bella being a greenhorn who has yet to actually fight a Murk and show how she reacted to the first time she realized they had emotions, rather than introduce her as an experienced yet conflicted soldier.

I did like the Murk Slayer's development from an edgy rival character to the secondary protagonist and party member, as well as the revelation about how he wants to atone for being used by Saros to create the Murks. It feels like he got the majority of character development in this game compared to everyone else. I'm hoping the Monsters of Magnesia quest sheds more light on his past.

For the final part of the game, most characters join Bella in opposing Saros, despite the latter's previous good publicity. I'm conflicted on this, since it does seem like a challenge that was overcome too easily. On the other hand, you can argue that Saros left behind enough circumstantial evidence due to the constant missing people reports to make Bella and Nickle's testimony more believable and that the scientists of Lunex Space Station would have the expertise to connect all this circumstantial evidence. Additionally, a lot of people may secretly resent Saros for doing nothing about the missing people reports, especially if they were friends or family with the missing people. I wish the game would make it more clear why people believe Bella beyond just being friends with her.


The gameplay is a strange combination of the Mario RPGs, Undertale, and Megaman Battle Network/Starforce. Your own attacks either function as simple commands or as commands that need you to follow button prompts. However, you get a choice between 3 random skills from your support skill pool, and you have to make sure your pool only includes the ones you need the most to manipulate statistics in your favor, which is supposed to be similar to folder building in MMBN. You also have to dodge and block enemy attacks, but your environment for doing so changes based on the enemy attack. Some will have you move in a 3x3 or 1x3 grid, while others will have you control an Undertale-style soul to dodge bullet hell patterns.

Although the game is balanced for a standard exchange of damage, the game features a ranking system based on how many hits you take. This is based solely on hits taken rather than time, so you can technically cheese the rank system by using more stun-based strategies instead of direct damage if you suck at dodging. However, ranking doesn't seem to affect your rewards, so it's solely for bragging rights and meeting the quota for certain sidequests. If you really want to challege yourself, you should refrain from using invisible, the first hit barrier upgrade chip, or stun-based skills to ensure that you have to perfectly dodge every enemy pattern. I ended up having to resort to stun spam in the endgame, since I'm really bad at reacting to the ever speedier enemy patterns.

There are no random encounters, so if you clear all mandatory encounters, you can freely explore any dungeon. However, you'll need to grind respawnable enemies if you want to afford every single upgrade in the game. At the start of the game, the best grinding method is to fight Chronos EX repeatedly, since it takes less effort to deal with a single boss enemy with easy patterns than large mobs of enemies with a variety of patterns. Later, Xenotaur EX becomes the best refightable enemy because of its excellent rewards to HP ratio. IMO, it's strange that there's a lot of refightable bosses that don't drop much more loot than Xenotaur EX despite taking several times more effort.

Tetra can enter Network Dive segments, where she can shoot enemies with her buster and dodge obstacles. Unfortunately, the field of view is way too small, making it hard for the player to see any long-range attack coming and react to it.


8/10
The gameplay is very creative, though there are some cheese strats and some skills completely overshadow others *coughRelicSwordcough*. The story is alright, but it could have done more to increase the impact of learning that the Murks have emotions and aren't just standard chaotic evil beasts.

From the trailers, you're probably expecting that Marty or Hans's ghost are going to be the main bad guys responsible for the murders. Hell, Hans would seem to have the biggest motive since Case 0 hinted that he may secretly be more sinister than he looks. However, the real answer turned out to be a different evil spirit. At this point, you'd think Marty was in the clear, but then it turns out that he was committing murders of his own and that the enemy in the first bad end actually had several traits that indicated they were human. It was quite a clever twist, though I wonder how he's going to continue fooling Sally in future games. Maybe she'll turn against him, or maybe her new zombie body will eventually corrupt her mind to the point where she won't care that Marty killed Lily for her sake. I guess you could say that he's a twist on how an unconfident person develops into becoming more confident and decisive, since he's now extremely determined to get a happy ending with Sally at the expense of everyone else.

As for Lily, it's sad that she dies in the true ending of her debut game after going through so many trials with the Ghosteaters. She gets to live in the normal ending and it does give her the opportunity to find some kind of meaning as an exorcist, but it also means Marty's journey ends abruptly, so that ending would be unsatisfactory in a different way. It sounds evil of me, but I'm personally hoping that Lily succeeds in her evil spirit revenge arc contrary to Marty's expectations, or at least finds a way to avoid getting exorcised like a throwaway villain.

I also like how the game expanded on Jade's characterization, since she normally seems to be just a manipulative sadist, but it turns out she can hear the voices of the elder gods and she learned they could potentially end the univese any time they want, which probably caused her to decide to join the winning side. This ties together Marty/Nya's arc with Brucie/Jade's arc to show that they are much more connected than most people originally thought. In hindsight, I really should have seen this twist coming due to how similar Jade and Nya's motivations are. Though I wonder if Jade truly enjoys what she's doing or if she's trying to appease the elder gods so that they spare the universe. That will be a question for another game.

I'm pretty sure I saw a few screenshots of combat on the dev's twitter, but those were cut during development, likely because there are actually very few major battles in this game. As a result, this game is entirely just talking and activating events, with all battles happening in cutscenes. Personally, I would have liked to see how everyone uses their different fighting styles in a battle system, especially Lily who relies on money. To be fair, some of those battle cutscenes are pretty epic, especially when Jade uses her own period against the ghosts in the final battle.

9/10

I like that it ties up loose ends from the prequel Cannibal Boy game and how it makes Jade a more interesting character with her connection to Nya. I just hope the next games can give more spotlight to Lily and hopefully make her a great antagonist, now that she's stuck in the evil spirit role.

This is a game about living with the consequences of your actions, both in terms of mutually exclusive player choices and in Morgalia's villain arc. This means some choices can result in certain characters joining, the another choice could have those very same characters die or become enemies. This can lead to some interesting possibilities, though it can also be hard to make a logical connection between the choices and the outcome for certain characters, such as Virgo becoming a boss.

Like in the Trails of Cold Steel series, the majority of character development will take place in bonding events, but since you have a limited number of activity points during each town/camp segment, you'll need to save and reload in order to see them all, but that shouldn't be too hard and it's worth it IMO. Though both possible final party members to join technically only gets very few bonding events to flesh them out. However, each individual character ending changes based on their final link level, which means someone you didn't bond with will likely have a less satisfying ending. That makes me feel somewhat bad for the people I neglected though.

As for the elephant in the room, yes, the bad guys are corporate fascists, but I do think it's interesting that the major villains have a fair amount of individuality compared to some of the other antifa-coded games I played. They all have their own backstories and even their role in Zeta's dystopian state differs. Zazz is one of the most unusual fascist villains I've ever read about, since while he's a human supremacist who wants to make non-humans into third-class citizens, he's also the only human currently alive and that means he can't just immediately build a cult of personality around his master race until he can revive the rest of humanity. Instead, he has to rely almost entirely on capitalism and imperialism as tools to conquer, control, divide (based on economic class), and impoverish non-humans while manipulating them into aiding with their own oppression. I think this is partially the point: the party can't let Zazz succeed in his plan to revive and indoctrinate humanity to follow his hateful views, or they'll be trapped in an unwinnable battle against full-power fascism.

I feel like the inciting incident to motivate the protagonist uses some plot convenience. Basically, Aries shows up and puts the party in critical condition, but after syncing with Barbados, Barbados/Aries apparently have enough stamina to wipe out Pon Pon, but not enough to get past Libra to finish off the weakened party. That seems hard to believe considering that Akira took enough damage to be reduced to gas form.

The story's darkest section is when Morgalia blows up the mines and frames Akira's party, or it would have been if we could actually see the citizens' reaction and actually have people visibly turn on the party. Instead, the party almost immediately goes to Aquarius Temple for the next plot macguffin. I feel like this is a missed opportunity to make Akira question if their journey is really worth it now that they see the risks that they bring upon themselves and others by rebelling. The closest we get to this is during dialogue that occurs specifically if you recruit Kael, who explains that change needs to happen despite the risk of bringing the Zodiacs to Zazz's doorstep, or Zazz will just keep exploiting people for the rest of eternity. Even then, the whole situation smells of tell, don't show.

There are some unclear or loose ends in the story, such as what happened to the Kolfos during Zeta's occupation of Vulcanite. Zeta's records don't mention them at all, which implies that Zeta did something so horrible to them that they were wiped from history as stage 10 of genocide. There's also the conflict between the angels and the demons, as well as the God of Cycles punishing humanity for ruining the environment. The last point was either added very recently or a new game plus only detail, but I really think such an important point should be accessible on all playthroughs. Additionally, I feel like we need more specifics on how Akira's party is going to change society. While it's implied that Vulcanite will return to its collectivist roots or at least something resembling it, it's unknown what exactly changes in Zeta's government system where the corporation and state are nigh indistinguishable. Additionally, I have no idea what Akira's party plans to do in regards to the environment, since they have to avoid harming it or the God of Cycles will retaliate against them too. Hopefully, the sequel will expand on these points.

I feel unsatisfied by the Evil Runi route. For one thing, I don't see how it's supposed to change the overall fate of Zeta as advertised in the Steam page, since the reformation of Utopya, Vulcanite, and Pon Pon happens anyway. Maybe the sequel will allow us to choose which outcome is canon? Maybe the world will become a worse place without Runi to help reform it? Additionally, Akira blames the demons for this situation, which while mostly true, makes it seem like they're ignoring their own role in isolating Runi. The whole thing just seems really out of character for Akira, since even disregarding the very act of unfriending Runi, you'd think Akira would have a moment of self-reflection in the ending. To me, the choice for Akira to befriend Runi should be the canon one. TLDR, if you plan to do multiple playthroughs for the sake of achievements, I recommend doing the objectively worst route first so that every playthrough afterwards feels better.

Edit: The updated version of the ERR actually does have dire consequences now.


The game uses a Hype system, where MP upkeep is difficult unless you hit enemy weaknesses in order to steal Hype from them, and enemies can do the same to you. This means you'll have to tailor your team to the enemy weaknesses in order to win efficiently, which works for most enemies except those without weaknesses. For the most part, I found the combat balanced, though they do take a decent amount of time on hard mode because of the lower active party headcount, which makes the party cover fewer weaknesses while having less DPS. Additionally, some enemies and bosses have no weaknesses, which kills your resource loop pretty hard. Fortunately, those are usually reserved for a handful of endgame and optional bosses.

As for regular encounters, they're pretty balanced for the most part if you figure out the best party for the majority of enemies in an area, but the bonus dungeon really mixes up their weaknesses. Since you can't run away from battle, this can potentially put you in a bad situation if you're unlucky with enemy weaknesses.

Note that you can't revisit most dungeons after you complete them, but I feel like the game is balanced so that even on hard mode, you can win even if you don't pick up every single piece of unique gear, though it certainly helps.

Related to that is a romance system, where certain characters can get romance endings with Akira if you always go for their bonding events. Like with Tales of Symphonia, one of of the characters is mechanically easier to pair with the MC than the others. Note that if you're like me and you like evenly distributing everyone's sync levels to ensure everyone has more skills on rotation, it will be very hard to commit to a relationship other than Eliza and maybe Setzuna. Yes, I have commitment issues.

Yes, my review title is clickbait, but I think the game does a decent job at exploring the ramifications of using reincarnation to make up for the mistakes of a previous life. While Glenn/Van did manage to do a lot of good in many of their lives, having multiple lifetimes also means a lot more opportunities to make mistakes. Additionally, his desire for atonement also gets warped into an unhealthy obsession that causes him to shut down at perceived mistakes, even if they're out of his control. The lesson he learns in his current life is that he should focus more on becoming a better person tomorrow than trying to "cancel out" his past mistakes, since good and bad deeds aren't a zero sum game.

While this game does handle Glenn's redemption fairly well, I feel like they didn't put in the same amount of effort in Kylian. After he betrays the party and reveals that he's siding with Nabrelia, I feel like he not only loses a lot of sympathy, he also loses a lot of relevance. All of his later betrayals end up feeling like they don't matter in the grand scheme of things and that most events could proceed without him, making it seem like he betrayed all the factions for nothing, and never really gets closer to his supposed utopian goals. He has a few moments of self-reflection, but only his last one really seemed to have any impact, resulting in him only showing signs of redemption in the literal final phase of the final boss. IMO, his redemption would be more believable if he actually had a more significant role in the story, had more actual interactions with the party after his first betrayal, and actually performed more sympathetic actions even as an antagonist. Right now, he only exists as a vague expy of Glenn's first incarnation, Van, in order for Glenn to have his own person to forgive as part of a cycle.

Related to the above, the game also relies very heavily on subtext for all of their aesops, but it also feels like you need some kind of liberal arts master's degree to cut through all the subtext. For example, I'm pretty sure Whyatt is meant to a representation of what Glenn could be like if he took his desire for redemption to toxic extremes, but this only comes up in a short boss battle dialogue and Glenn himself doesn't bother commenting on it. While some believe subtext is good, this game uses so much subtext that it also unintentionally makes some characters less interesting than they could be and results in a lot of missed opportunities in the dialogue.

As for the political intrigue aspect, I feel like some betrayals are just there for shock value and removing relatively minor NPCs for little real impact. Though the Church betrayal was admittedly pretty interesting and sets up the sequel.



The CTB style battle system makes it so that you can see the turn order and plan around that, though any AGI alterations will immediately change the order. When targeting enemies, you can also see which specific enemy turn could be affected, so you can also strategically try to finish off enemies that you know are about to get a turn.

Unfortunately, the Overdrive system adds a lot of RNG to combat, since a random skill type is displayed near the gauge, and performing that skill type moves the gauge to the left. This means if the wrong types keep getting displayed by the gauge, it can be very hard to keep your gauge in the advantageous zone. Additionally, it makes certain enemy formations harder than others, since enemy actions always move the gauge to the right. The intention is to keep players from simply spamming their best skills, but being forced to play subpoptimally all the time while relying on luck isn't good either. IMO, it would be better if the player had a limited number of resources that could instantly change the displayed skill type without taking up a turn, instead of simply forcing them to waste a turn. That way, the player can still play the OD minigame without interrupting their own strategies too much.

One thing I do appreciate is that many starting skills can still be relevant even in the endgame, though you do have to make sure they have synergy with your other skills and passives, since you can only equip a limited number of skills. The class emblem system also allows you to teach certain universal skills to the party members, which aren't as potent as the party's native skills, but can easily fill in gaps in their native skillset and make it slightly easier to deal with the OD gauge.

Interestingly, a lot of buff skills will buff/debuff both physical and magic stats at the same time. This is a convenient way to buff the party regardless of what damage type they focus on, though it also makes me wonder if the game would be much different if everyone just had universal power stats. Still, I appreciate the convenience in doing more with fewer actions.

The game doesn't have a traditional leveling system and instead requires you to defeat bosses to get Grimoire Shards, which can be spent to learn skills, and spending a certain amount does result in stat increases too. This is intended to create more of a focus on strategy than grinding, but in practice, there are still other ways to increase your party's power levels that do rely on grinding. You can use ability crystals to add additional passives to your characters, and this requires you to farm crystals (sources have cooldowns) and open more slots on equipment. You also have to grind SP to upgrade your skills to get the most out of them, but most enemies drop only 1 SP each by default, making it so that you have to grind a fragile but large mob of starter enemies. You probably don't need to grind at all on normal mode, but hard mode is extremely grindy in the beginning. Still, this amount of customization can lead to some interesting builds, like using multi-hit attacks to proc status ailments or simply building towards as much DPS as possible.

Speaking of hard mode, it feels like the majority of stat based hard modes in that they're balanced for the end of the game rather than the beginning. This is especially true in Chained Echoes, since the increased enemy speed and smaller good section of the OD bar makes it so that it's much harder to balance the OD bar. It's possible to beat the early game on hard mode, but it feels more grindy that strategic, since you have to grind for a lot of AGI crystals to make up the difference.

The game also features a modified version of the main battle system for Sky Armor combat, but Sky Armors are also less customizable and the OD bar is actually harder to manage, since it's based on gears rather than skill types. While all Sky Armor battles are beatable on hard mode, the party feels relatively weaker in this mode and it does take away some of the thrill that's supposed to come with piloting a mecha.



7.5/10

If you don't like the way most light novels handle reincarnation power fantasies, maybe Glenn's story is just what you need, since it shows both the good and bad that can come with constant reincarnation and trying to redeem oneself for bad past lives. Unfortunately, the writing didn't completely land with me due to the rival character Kylian being poorly handled and because there's too much subtext for my small brain to comprehend. The rushed redemption arc makes me think the game ran into deadline issues or something. The gameplay is also a mixed bag for me, since there are a lot of interesting skills and ways to customize the characters (at least in non-Sky Armor combat), but the Overdrive system makes the combat less fun because it's luck based and forces the player to interrupt their own strategies.

This game has a very big world map with many locations, and each one has its own history. There's also lore about the heavens, the Nether, and a very complex element system. And yet, all of that is used to tell a very simple and short story about a bunch of friends camping out in the wild and having a good time. There are no super strong monstrosities to slay, except for one optional dude in the second dungeon who was literally too angry to die.

For the writing, I really did enjoy the interactions between the characters, as well as learning their stories. The ending was also very heartwarming and makes me feel happy for Tole getting closure. Unfortunately, the translation is very inaccurate, and not in an unintentionally funny way like with Sword of Paladin.


Each character doesn't really learn a whole lot of skills, but you can clearly see that some thought was put into setting up resource loop so that Tole can fill up the TP of the heavy hitters Zong and Rosy. However, due to the plot, there is also a clear power different between the characters, so in an extended fight, it can be hard to keep the resource loop up if Tole dies from his lack of levels, though he and Rosy do have decent stat growth. Sadly, there's also only one real challenging boss in the game, so there's no chance to see your weaker characters grow.

Unfortunately, the ATB system makes it so that time flows in the outermost menu, which made the combat more frantic than it should have been, and there's no way to adjust the ATB settings or speed. In short battles, this isn't a problem, but in a longer and tougher boss fight, it's very easy to panic and lose control of the situation. Personally, I would prefer a full-wait mode for the ATB so that time pauses whenever I have to make a decision.

7.5/10
Although the game is short, I did like characters and I hope to see more of the setting in a sequel or spin-off game. However, the translation really needs an overhaul and the ATB system needs a full-wait setting.