Scarmonde

Played this after seeing it reccomended by St. Rev. Really liked it. * Playthrough 1: Got to immolis with paladin, thief, sage and duskar. Rekt. * Playthrough 2: Thought through mechanics more with pal, thief, sage & hunter. Got all the way to post game boss at around levels 80-60. Rekt. * Playthrough 3: Dancer. Named her Myria. Enjoyed the best Breath of Fire game with 100% evade and wrecked absolutely everything with ludicrous EXP boosts. Won post-game at level 190 Feels good man, 69 hours played (nice). Time for the random dungeon!

This game is both fun and the most painful grind ever. If you like everything to be hard mode and feel like an old 8-bit RPG, play this. It has a lot of game and it's done pretty well. The class system is really nice because it allows you to make a character pretty much anything you want by the end of the game. Items don't really trump just gaining levels, both are really important to progress. Levels go above 99, so you can become super overpowered if you wanted to grind a lot. You get items to put in to skills/spells you want. The battle system is what makes this game so brutally hard and fun. You will need to either be way over levels you could beat bosses and major battles at or set up for the fight with gear. Wanted a game where status effects not only matter, but they may be the only real way to win some fights? This is that game. This game almost forces you to have a person to absorb damage like a tank. Without one, this game will become crushing when enemies seem to start to target important people, like healers/dps. Bosses routinely get multiple attacks. Your party will also rely on items a lot, both in and out of battle. MP is very limited, so you need to plan around this and use items in a lot of later boss battles. You might also fall back on revival items and using a tank as an item user for status cures and refreshing MP. This game really makes every aspect of RPG type games shine instead of what most games do, which is make the end pretty much a single spell/attack and heal a couple of times. This game makes you try things more than once with different set-ups and forces you to try status effects at some points. It's much harder than a normal 8-bit RPG, but that's what makes it so fun, forcing a player to play a lot of major battles like they're the hardest fight they've fought in any game.

named party after 2 of my closest friends and my girlfriend. played through most the game making combat and gearing decisions exactly as they would with her watching the whole time. struggled through the optional boss in the third act. beat game, started post game content. girlfriend ended up being a lying cheating ♥♥♥♥♥. game was good enough for me to come back and finish the post game content regardless. bonus points for being able to rename characters. play it. very good classic JRPG https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3742447046

Very impressive by a solo dev and very well worth your time. It doesn't unnecessarily info-dump you and very much expects you to pick up mechanics as you go along and learn about the story (if you care) by talking to the NPCs out of your own free will! The pixel art is mostly very good with the highlights being the character portraits and the lows being some of the world tilesets. It really isn't as scuffed as an initial view of the steam screenshots might suggest. At the very start of the game you assemble your party and have to stick to it until the end of the game. This makes it seem like the initial choice is the most important one, but the game is made to be beaten by probably any party composition with a pleasantly moderate challenge. Expect the early game to be the most harsh as you get your bearings. The biggest problems are that there is no guaranteed way of avoiding random encounters or quitting to main menu mid-battle. The random encounter system makes backtracking a nightmare and you can get into a situation with one of your tanks where you cannot do anything due to a status effect and just watch it autoplay to no end.

After completing both main- and post-game with a full party (Paladin, Thief, Bard, Mage) and solo run (Warrior), I can say I like this one a lot it's real good.

[h1][b]6/10[/b][/h1] Cool retro style dungeon crawler RPG that hurts itself by having horrible menus, which affect everything including combat. I think the pros do slightly outweigh the cons here though, especially since many of these types of games force characters and classes on you whether you want them or not. The choice and subclasses here are a plus. [h2]Pros:[/h2] - Great party building options, overall. Apparently you get subclasses later and can even load up multiple subclasses on a main class - Music has a cool retro NES-era feel - Combat is pretty good (besides the menus) - Gives strong Final Fantasy 1 / early Ultima game vibes [h2]Mehs:[/h2] - Color palette is too muted - Magic Orb acquisition rate is too low [h2]Cons:[/h2] - Can't remap anything or use WASD for movement - Severe class identity issues for half the classes. For example, Monks just get some of the same elemental magic that other classes get. Thief mostly gets magic other classes get. Etc. It's just weird and doesn't give them any identity - Menus are extremely aggravating to navigate since everything requires 2 presses. So menu -> magic -> magic again -> learn ability -> learn ability again -> class -> class again -> ability -> confirm ability on class... all that just to learn something? Why? - Too many button presses required to just attack in combat. Should be an Autoattack option - Aggro system is very weird and not explained - Not enough speed options for combat. 4x is nothing. We need 16x at least if not more - Poor enemy variety Editing after having played quite a bit: the subclass system is more limited than I thought. There's usually not much incentive to add anything other than raw damage, limiting your choices. Kind of disappointing since I was really looking forward to subclassing.

Scarmonde is what happens with you take Final Fantasy 1 and integrate the game design decisions and lessons learned over almost 30 years of RPG design. Party Composition is important to consider, but allows for excellent min/maxing as well as just throwing a team together and seeing what happens. The jobs all feel unique in either their roles or passive boons. Gear and trinkets always have a use case. Status effect magic is useful - nigh critical - for many standard enemy fights and boss battles. If a fight is ending poorly, consider your options. Itemize for elemental or physical defense. Silence enemy mages, blind enemy physical combatants - figure out ways to neuter your enemy's strengths. Transit options open up reliably after major boss battles, serving as solid shortcuts through already-trodden roads. Additionally, very early on, you are granted an item that allows you to return to the surface at-will, and greatly reduces frustrating backtracking. Combined with the ability to save anywhere, and you have a game that can simultaneously support picking up and putting down as well as punching your way through 45-minute boss fight because you're just too stubborn to restart and that boss HAS to be getting low on HP sometime. I strongly recommend it - and this is after I was initially skeptical of its appearance and description. I originally considered writing it off as a retro-inspired cash-in or knockoff, and have been exceedingly pleased to have my expectations be proven wrong.

[h3]Thoughts after 60 hours:[/h3] I love it. An FF1-style RPG that feels really unique thanks to its mysterious/engrossing world and modern approach to mechanical depth. The battle system is still turn-based but incorporates things like aggro and procs, and emphasizes buffs/debuffs, status effects, resistances, and misc modifiers. Equipment stats aren't randomized, and almost every item and piece of gear has its use even through the postgame. Your characters level up and you also spend orbs to purchase their active and passive skills. Despite the complexity, combat is still snappy and includes 2x, 3x, 4x speed modifiers. The majority of the game is dungeon crawling, so don't expect story beats per se. More like a Souls-style atmosphere where you're traveling through the ruins of a miserable world and learning its history piecemeal through NPC interactions. I found the premise very engaging and the postgame does a great job of concluding the "mystery" of what's going on/answering all your questions. The art and music were also wonderful. I would've liked to see more enemy variety, and there were a few instances where I got lost and wasn't sure how to proceed (shout out Steam guides). I see some other reviews saying menus felt clunky and classes lacked identity, but I disagree. There are unique aspects to each class with enough overlap to ensure you're able finish the game with almost any party combination. (Lots of people have done solo runs and "four of one class" style challenge runs too.) Menus felt fine. [h3]Some tips for starting out:[/h3] - [b]Buy weapons and armor before you go down the stairs into the dungeon![/b] Your party starts weak and naked (ask me how I know). Spend your orbs to buy a couple skills too. - [b]Don't sell the gear you find through chests/enemy drops!![/b] Almost everything stays useful, and even gear your class can't wear now COULD eventually become useful once you start adding subclasses halfway through the game. - [b]...and that includes extra accessories,[/b] because there are times when you'll gain a lot of value from stacking duplicate accessories on one or more party members. - [b]You can use the Return Tome as many times as you want.[/b] Don't be like me and horde it like a consumable until you "find another one." - [b]Save before fighting a boss![/b] Bosses (and minibosses) are the only enemies represented by a sprite on the map. You can save anywhere in this game, even right in front of them. Most mid- to late-game bosses will likely wipe you on the first attempt. That's okay. The first attempt is always just for gathering intel on what you're up against. - [b]Sage AoE spells are great for farming.[/b] Invest in some MP+ passives and stack speed gear to wipe groups first round. - [b]Paladin is a great straightforward tank.[/b] Stack aggro and DEF and guard-spam your way to victory. - [b]Steam guides are a great resource for this game in particular.[/b] Any question about mechanics can be answered there, as well as full maps and a walkthrough. - [b]Leveling is useful but skills and gear loadout are usually more important[/b]. When you get wrecked by a boss, don't assume you're underleveled. It's more likely that some proper resistance accessories/passives, or a new healing/buffing skill, will tilt the odds in your favor.