Artifact Adventure Gaiden

I mean, I both do, and yet don't recommend this game. On the one hand, it is a decent RPG with an excellent DMG vibe. On the other, it feels sort of like Half Minute Hero with the combat. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but to me it is. I like Bump Combat, love Ys. I love the OG FFL games and still play through them regularly, super nice having those on my Switch. I am giving it a thumbs up, because everything is fine, I just personally do not intend to finish the game or the DX version, basically leaving this same review on both. Shame really, had I played this several years ago, I likely would have absorbed it. It's not you, it's me.

Takes a little bit to understand the mechanics and what's going on, but really great RPG after that.

Short review: It's good. Think Zelda II

I'm sad that I'm almost done with this game! It sucked me in and brought the essence of gameboy to my monitor. Highly recommend this fun game.

Let me give you the first impressions, because I did not play beyond that. I get some generic cutscene, then traditional JRPG style, talking with the king blabla After he stops spamming me with generic bs, I get control of the player and the game starts. If I talk to him again, there is no more adventuring, he insists its the end or sth, so I assume final area travel? No idea, but I didn't bother to do it, since he insisted there is no going back, just like NG+ in other games do. Ok, whatever, I go down to fight some monsters and levelup, but the castle is actually big and I have to talk with like 20 NPCs and choose 3 of which I want in my party. Pretty boring, not a great start. Bonus for the potion guy consuming all potions. Too many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ choices for the start of a game, when I want to just play the game!! I get outside, and get to fight some enemies, and I have no equipment or skill or anything. I just attack by touching enemies, so deep, wow. This proceeds to continue for like 100 seconds where I camp the corner and win pretty much. And after I insta-uninstall I type this negative review. Why? 1. 0 controller support. My controller wasn't detected wtf. 2. No Tutorial (I didn't even know the controls, or how to open the equipment screen) 3. Overwhelming the player with choices, when he doesn't even know how combat works (e.g. you can go to the city/village before your first fight!) I honestly don't doubt this game could be good, but not great. Combat looks interesting, combining what you see in the video with heavy JRPG stat elements. Fixing the above issues I mentioned should make it fun for perhaps a mobile game or something. 10$ for this is retarded, go get undertale or something with the same price. Or for free, go get Chrono Trigger on an emulator, to experience the best JRPG

This is an inventive game with lots of unique systems and good replayability. It has very little structure and from the very beginning, you're free to wander all over the entire world map. You can choose from a variety of companions and artifacts (skills), which allows from a good amount of character customization.

Don't be misled by the old school colorless graphics, it is actually a simple story but what you can do ends up pretty deep. You'll have to make many simple decisions that will actually end up changing the world and then the ending. Battle system is pretty basic and repetitive, reminding somewhat to the controversial Zelda 2 but the amount of customisation you can do before the battle make it up for it. Different weapons type, equipment, accessories, active and passive skill allow you to make the battles more involved and more to your liking. Do you want to evade enemies while casting spells? Do you want to be a tank and face rush into everything? Do you want to be agile with hit and run? There is a surprisingly high amount of equipment and abilities. It is open world and it has a new game + so don't worry about missing something, trying other battle strategies or wanting to try other choices. The first run will take a while after that you'll have a bunch of equipment and abilities to try in your next run. If the graphics and lack of color are bothering you, there is the DX version available that is pretty much the same game.