Rise of the Third Power

Honestly, fantastic RPG. Suffers from a lot of the same bugs that plagued games during this generation, e.g. Rashim's wife's sprite has a beard. An NPC references their wife, despite having a female sprite. One of your companions is missing his gender. "Rashim" is a companion. (Ara Fell had no such bugs) Apart from that, my only nitpick was I wish there was more hidden rooms. Fantastic RPG otherwise, and I hope not the last in the Ara Fell universe.

I played this game on challenge from start to finish and did everything in it. Throught that journey the game want from a 3/10 to an 8/10 many times. Which in a way the steam binnary reviews can be insuficient to explain. In the end the game is a 5/10, some story beats are not well develop and three of the party members i don't like. But the first three you get are the best and the final scenes at the end of the game are great. But what made me decide ultimately for a negative review is how painfully slow the game is. Not in combat, but in the overworld, in cutscenes, in how you move. There are scene were solid 5 seconds of nothing happening as the sprits slowly move into place, and the game really needs a dash/run key, In the end this is a good game, but not one i would reccomend to anyone that dosen´t already loves this kind of clasicall sprite based rpg, and even then there are much better options.

one of the best indie RPG

Loved this game. Combat is engaging. The inter-party dynamics are interesting from the beginning of the game till the end. Extremely well balanced between challenging and rewarding mechanics. The story and the writing are excellent. The characters are well developed. The music slaps. Because you can use all characters in meaningful ways each battle, may not have the best replayability. If you like this genre, this is a must play.

Overall, a decent FF6-like SNES-style JRPG. You play a band of [strike]Returners[/strike] Resistance who are fighting to stop the evil Empire, all while battling its demonic lieutenant, [strike]Kefka[/strike] Viktoriya over the course of the game. Your quest takes you across several continents and many cities on quests to undermine the Empire's plot. The game is set with 18th century level technology + magic. As my opening implies, the game pretty much lifts FF6's backstory wholesale, minus the whole Esper bit, with a much vaguer and under-explored magical religion taking its place. The combat is decent; it does a unique take on this sort of game whereby magical abilities are much more heavily utilized. This has advantages and disadvantages- yes, you're doing less button mashing of "Attack". But on the other hand, it means MP basically has to quickly regenerate, and combined with the lack of items or elemental affects- it ultimately leads to you finding an optimal party layout and just repeating the same queue of actions over and over and over again in battle after battle. Pros: + Beautiful pixel art + Large map with a lot to explore and do for a JRPG + Story is decently told, if not very original + Unique combat; nice to see a new take on this sort of combat + Decent music and sound effects + Great length for the price Cons: - Ending is awful. A couple mediocre boss fights (not particularly hard or interesting), followed by a story that just kind of ends without resolving anything. The epilogue just reiterates information you already knew about events that already happened. The story was intentionally not given an ending so they could make a sequel, which I think is in bad taste. A story should stand on its own- not as an ad for a sequel. - Leveling system is not my favorite. You auto-level up, which increases only your health. To increase your abilities you use a shared pool of Talent Points that are used through your whole party- meaning its very easy to starve one or two characters in favor of another. The game relies on "Reset Talent" item so you don't screw yourself over too badly. You also "craft" items get automatically and permanently equipped- which serve as leveling up your other core stats. This isn't "crafting" in any real sense of the word as far as crafting gameplay typically goes. - The "items" part of the gameplay is strangely underdeveloped. Despite status effects playing a substantial role in combat, especially later game, there are no items to cure status effects. Which basically means you MUST keep your primary healer character with you in every major battle. - Combat stretches can get very very long and samey- fighting the same exact creatures over and over and over again using the same exact strategies. Forebearers like FF6 and Chrono Trigger did a better job breaking up the action with cutscenes or story or varying enemy types. - Several unfinished parts of the game- you blow up a pirate's lair- but if you later return it is fully intact, minus all the NPCs. There's also a fort in the desert you're told has some faction it in, but is in fact totally devoid of NPCs (though still has items in it). There is no story reason for this- it's just clearly unfinished. The game also has a "team ability" feature whereby two PCs can attack together (a la Chrono Trigger). However, strangely many of the character combinations do not have a team ability- this just feels unfinished. - Game is uber-woke. Game does the typical modern trope of pretending there are no differences between men and women and makes the women that are in the game universally act like men. Almost all of the leaders you meet across the world are women or become women. Naturally, the game smacks you across the face with unskippable homosexuality and even sneaks pronoun propaganda in at one point. As we all know, the 18th century was a beacon of wokeness so this tracks perfectly and doesn't break immersion at all.

Great story and fun gameplay. Not overly complex. Battles don't get repetitive, nor interrupt as you try to move on the map, which often happens with JRPGs.

Me: "Mom, can we have Final Fantasy 9?" Mom: "We have FF9 at home" : Rise of the Third Power MC literally gets cucked. Hard pass. Character portraits are so awful - CalArt style. Utterly Immersion breaking.