Path of the Midnight Sun

Very polished and beautifully done. Gameplay has four primary mechanics: 1) Combat, 2) Visual novel storytelling, 3) Strategy map, and 4) Exploration. The combat is turn-based and familiar, yet punctuated with unique touches. You can attack, defend, use items and special techniques, etc. Each party member has a particular role to play and feels distinct from the rest. Each also gets two skill trees to choose from, so you can customize their growth and freely respec at any time. Fights are generally tough but fair. The storytelling is the biggest selling point. Voice acting is there often enough and its quality is very good. The plot itself is focused on a demon king causing trouble, which isn't the most unique thing in the world, but the characters really sell it. Character interactions are the best part of this game, and you do get plenty of dialogue options, which subtly affect things throughout. There are romance options if you want, and one of these in particular had the most satisfying ending I've seen (i.e., Suzaku/Shiori). The strategy map is a bit like Fire Emblem maps, in the sense that you choose when and where to engage targets, which can bring advantages or disadvantages, and you can look for treasure. Its most unique feature is the use of time. Both in and out of the strategy map, time passes, and you're expected to get things done by particular deadlines. If that sounds stressful, it's not. I personally don't like time pressures, but this game uses the clock in a way that just keeps you moving along without pushing you too much. Exploration is like an adventure game, where you point and click to find treasure or interesting things for your party to comment on. This mode is also how you engage with NPCs for quests and shopping. It's simple, but it works well. It's worth noting that there are pleasant sound effects for every little thing you do; it's a nice touch. Overall, this game was a pleasure from start to finish. It was a passion project, and it shows. I loved my time with it and look forward to more from this developer.

Path of the Midnight Sun is an indie RPG with a unique feel that managed to surpass my expectations. Combining elements of RPGs, visual novels, and point and click adventure games, it provides a story and characters that are compelling, and it is easy to become emotionally invested in many of the characters, even some you might not have thought you would initially. There are great plot twists, and the story is rather dark. However, there are light-hearted moments that bring relief and make the main characters all the more endearing. There are three main characters, and you will play from their different perspectives during part of the story, and dialogue choices will impact both the amount of affection between others that are present in a scene as well as a sanity stat that will have an impact on how a character performs in combat. There is also a romance subplot where each main character has different routes that will impact the outcome of the story. So your choices will matter if you want a happy ending. The banter between the characters has a similar charm to that in the Lunar series, which is high praise coming from me. The combat is very fun and there is also a strategic element in which taking certain actions will cause time to pass and you have a goal that must be achieved within the time limit. The combat dynamics are fun and engaging and there are multiple difficulty settings so players all kinds of skill levels and temperaments will find something to enjoy. There are a limited amount of battles so it is best that you defeat all enemies and there is no need to grind. There is a skill tree mechanic that functions by gathering the mana points of all of the party members built up in battle and storing them in a mana crest after your victory. The mana points can then be assigned to unlocking certain potential skills for each party member. So keep this in mind regarding how you end your battles, this will allow you to get more mana points to build your characters in a way that fits your preferences for combat. On every level, Path of the Midnight Sun succeeds and excels. It is visually appealing, it has a great story with depth and endearing characters, the music is great and very fitting, the voice acting is done well, and the combat is engaging and interesting. This is an S-Tier indie RPG, and it deserves to be praised and included among the biggest names in that category. This is not only one of my favorite indie RPGs, but one of my favorite RPGs in general that I have played, starting with Phantasy Star in the late 80s as a child. The game is in the 20-25 hour range, depending on how you play, so it is a short and sweet experience. I look forward to playing this developer's upcoming game, Food Devils, which could deliver another great gaming experience.

TL:DR; this game doesn't deliver on any of its promises, don't buy it. Demon king battle is insane, the game was effectively trivial up until chapter 10, only to spike well beyond all reason on that map. The moth enemy especially is just stupid. They're supposed to make a row take less damage, but since they guard themselves as well it's basically the same as just giving the entire row a huge health buff. That's not strategy, it's just more health with no way around it. Adding to that the enemies now prominently feature mana-drain bugs that are faster than your entire party and effectively stunlock your casters by draining their mana, as well as eliminating any option from your other characters such as Rya except meekly shoot. On the topic of eliminating options it sure was a bright idea to have the demon king cast Taunt and Mirror Coat in sequence on the character that literally cannot do anything except deal damage no matter what with his skills and attacks. Sure gives the player options when trying to circumvent the boss's mechanics. God I love strategy. On top of that you're basically softlocked once it starts if you aren't prepared well enough since beating the king himself necessitates a huge amount of consumables that you just can't get at that point. Unless you wanna go back hours and assuming you even have the save to do so. Oh yeah and none of this is really alleviated on the lowest difficulty (I changed from normal after my first wipe to the king) since all a lower difficulty does is add a damage modifier. Shiori was still being stunlocked and Rya was still useless. Oh yeah and then the enemy got reinforcements. They never did on normal mode. Why would you make that random? Or assume that a player picking the lowest difficulty wants *more* combat? And why is there no menu in combat, even for loading saves, quitting the game, or sound settings? Why do I have to force a wipe just to try again instead of letting me skip past the animations of the final turn and the slow-ass game over screen? Was this game ever playtested? If yes, how did anybody sign off on this? I really like the idea of managing time on a map in a Visual Novel/RPG, in fact I picked this game up because I am a fan of Love Esquire, which did exactly that. However managing time mostly only comes up on battle maps, and means basically nothing in dialogue. And even on battle maps it's a dubious concept. Like how it'll just teleport you back to town on occasion, such as after the Squinking quest. All of a sudden I went from trying to make a tight deadline work to being given 45 minutes for nothing. I also like that mana is a resource for skill-ups, though it renders levels more or less redundant. On paper the idea of dragging out fights for more XP is quite cool but it could've used a second draft. I'm also not big on the game being extremely unclear about what you can do when, which led to me missing quests twice. Why am I supposed to assume that a hot springs scene will progress the story and prevent me from turning in the medicine I picked up? Also I was given way too little access to the camp and its resources, which is bad if you want me to prepare for fights by using it. I think it appeared 5 times in 10 chapters, when really it should've been there at all times after Hoikade, assuming I wasn't in a battle map. Sort of like the camp in BG3. The live2d animations also don't do the game any favours. Rather than dynamic action poses for cut-ins, and several sprites reflecting the character's emotions like you'd get in a real VN, for cutscenes all we really get are these stiff cardboard puppets using like 3 different drawings per character that look lifeless and ugly, more often than not. Finally I want to throw some doubt on the idea that my choices mattered, because I played Suzaku as a relatively reserved and very polite character, but for the onsen cutscene and the demon king fight he was written as a fairly unlikable quipster, and Rya and Christoph called him out on being sarcastic earlier even after he had been nothing but polite. And when I *did* pick the sarcastic option, as the game so desperately seemed to want me to, it usually lowered either the other party's affection or sanity, indicating that it's the wrong choice. Look, if you want Suzaku to be a dubiously charming rogue just write him that way all the time, don't give me choices that you pretend matter. Writing that made me remember that sanity is in the game. It doesn't matter on normal mode so why even bother? It's always gonna be max almost no matter what you do. Food barely does either, I think it's kind of a wasted opportunity that you *don't* eat food during rests, kind of seems like what the option was meant for. Also the characters are weak, relying more on trope knowledge than actual writing, and the world building is decidedly unremarkable, but neither of those turned me off the game. What did was realizing that my choices were meaningless and the gameplay an afterthought.

Path of Midnight Suns is, unfortunately, the kind of Visual Novel that starts off boring, picks up, keeps up momentum, and then just fails at the end. Moreover, the combat system even on the lowest settings tends to be a chore with certain elements, notably: Moths/Knights who will always act first and make killing the row they protect an absolute pain. This isn't helped by the fact said enemies also benefit from damage reduction that they give their allies until they die. Said Guardians can also protect healers, who proceed to heal said damage sponges... and potentially themselves. Status Effects are just... incredibly frustrating. Poison in particular chunks 1/3rd of your health every turn and it feels like at least one in four enemies has it. Panic Status (No Skills or Mana Regen) is absolutely disgusting, but it was also often paired with Curse (you MUST use Skills or Attack) and to top it all off, Immunity does not cleanse debuffs, meaning you can have someone become Immune to status effects after the enemy has blinded, gagged, and enraged them and still get their turn skilled because OOPSIE, NO MAGIC! The game's systems encourage grinding for both long-term experience and materials, but put time limits on every mission that punish doing so. Additionally, certain characters have exponentially more value than others (namely Rya is effectively dead weight compared to anyone else, and long-term progression will punish you for not specializing nearly all of your resources into Suzaku early) Forge and Food Crafting are both extremely limited and change every chapter. Trying to get missing resources for one item might be pointless as next chapter rotates them out. This is fine for weapons, but one very notable time I had wanted to make a full set of Poison-Resistance (not immunity, resistance) earrings for my team, but lacked the copper. They were rotated out before I could do so, and had to deal with Poison the rest of the run. I never saw the impact of this supposed 'Secret Personality System' as my Suzaku was a joker despite choosing the polite/knightly choices consistently, which lead to some annoyance with the character (particularly in one of the endings) as I was told my dialogue would affect their personality but did not. Regarding Story, it starts with an Amnesiac [b](Cringe)[/b] but does pick up fairly quickly. However, some story beats are... too predictable. Sometimes they take several chapters to announce a conclusion I'd already pieced together hours ago and was just waiting for them to figure out on their own, and arguably the largest twist in the entire story occurs because of pure negligence of all involved parties. Frankly, it'd be hilarious if it didn't have nearly half the story behind an incredibly obvious oversight. I also admittedly didn't like the ending: [spoiler]The story set up a Love Hourglass and then it expects you to sort out who gets left out in the cold. I chose specifically to watch all of the scenes and then I left Suzaku out in the cold, only for him to be totally fine. I admit, I was hoping he'd crash out and give me a Bad Ending of some kind, but no, somehow the actual ending was more disappointing.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Turns out the Church was behind everything, big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shocker, and the Pope wants to become a God. She's directly responsible for everything that happened too, and then successfully ascends into Godhood despite the fact I made sure to spend pretty much all of the mana in the plot device so I handed her essentially the equivalent of a half-charged AA battery. We also never get an explanation for how the ♥♥♥♥ she's been alive for so long, or any indication that Cloning is a thing in this world but that was a part of it apparently.[/spoiler] I [b]paid[/b] for this. I spent almost a day playing it on the lowest difficulty. It was absolutely not worth it.

Good game. I wonder if the top reviewer and his 8 supporters (as of right now) playing the same game as mine. For me, the game never crash even once. (Game installed on SSD, Core I5, RTX3060TI, RAM 32 GB, window 11) Gameplay just read and click, really, even monkey can do it (but I'm not sure about monkey reading part though) I play on normal difficulty and clear it without even retry because I "read" what each characters can do that others can't. There is a dude who wield axe as main weapon and has many debuff attack skills but he also the only one in the party who can heal and revive. Of course you know what skill to prioritize your mana points for this guy right? Story is good (Better than Expedition 33) It is simple with some twist and turn. A little bit of cliche but that was made it fun. Characters. Of all the RPG games I've been played. I never experienced annoying or hate any characters here. I even got tricked by demon lord despite all the evidence of his plans I found throughout the game. Each characters backstory may not be that deep but you can clearly see they're all have a heart. I gave this game 9.5 out of 10. The missing point is what happens after I chose Suzaku to romance Faratras and then saw a sad Shiori. I request a harem ending, please. Edited: Thank you for the jester award. Now I got enough coin to buy Tlipoca avatar I been eyeing it for a while.

Cloud Saves when? I really want to like this game, so much so that i purchased the collectors edition. I rembemer trying it out long long ago when it was still a Fire Emblem rom hack, ibut I geniuenly cannot get into it or properly enjoy it for one simple reason- no cloud save. I am constantly on the move and sadly rely on cloud saves in gaming way too often to continue my games on the go, and without a cloud save feature for this game I sadly cannot ever really get into it, since I always have to drop it for longer periods of time and when I get the chanche to play it again it just feels weird to continue such a story heavy game after a longer break. So I'm begging the dev Team sincerly, please add Cloud Saves! Most steam games have them and I admit i don't know how hard it is to implement, but I am begging, please add cloud saves for ppl like me. I will change my recommendation to positive once you do because i simply cannot enjoy the game without this simple feature.

Unfortunately, I only really like it because of its connection to Fire Emblem, but... it is pretty cool. The artist is fantastic, but I feel like the art direction and story are heavily mismanaged. Curious to see if anything else comes from this team.