There are other Chrono Trigger references both big and small - including some that don’t pay off until the very end of the game - yet in some ways Setsuna feels drastically different from its time-travelling ancestor. Fire II! X-Strike! Delta Force! Experimenting with these combos is fun and usually necessary to take on some of the game’s trickier monsters. Each character has his or her own array of skills (called “techs”) that can be combined to create more powerful attacks. There are a few new mechanics - we’ll get to those in a bit - but at its core, this is the same battle system that we played in 1995. In fact, Setsuna‘s combat system is almost identical to Chrono Trigger‘s: If you run into an enemy on the battlefield, the game will seamlessly transition into combat mode, where the heroes and enemies will begin to trade off turns using the Active Time Battle system that old-school Square relied upon. Everything feels familiar and smooth, as if Square never stopped making 2D role-playing games at all. Director Atsushi Hashimoto has said that he and his team actually went back and meticulously played through the old Square classic, measuring map distances and combat speed so they could use those numbers as a guideline for Setsuna. Setsuna‘s biggest inspiration is the one RPG that just about everyone loves: Chrono Trigger. There’s a world map, an airship and a never-ending stream of items to collect as you adventure from place to place. It hums a familiar tune from the outset, bouncing from serene village to monster-infested dungeon like so many RPGs we’ve played before. Like many of those older games, Setsuna is a turn-based JRPG with an angled top-down perspective. I Am Setsuna - which really should have just been called Setsuna - is designed to feel like a JRPG from the revered SNES era, when new classics out of Japan were an annual tradition. It could never have been made on an assembly line. It’s a sweet, sorrowful game with a beautiful soundtrack, splendid art and characters with real personality. With their debut, I Am Setsuna, this small Japanese team has made something that feels unique and handcrafted. Yet the actual Tokyo RPG Factory, a small Square Enix-owned studio that was formed in 2014, takes the opposite approach. Every day they must crank out a new RPG to be shipped across the globe for mass consumption. An assembly line for role-playing games, perhaps, where dozens of masked workers flank a conveyor belt, smashing together parts: An oversized sword here, a Firaga there, a melancholy hero to tie it all together. And when you hear Miyoshi slamming down on the keys for the explosive theme for incoming danger, it resonates with how the characters in the game must feel.The name “Tokyo RPG Factory” conjures a dreary image. Do you want to feel like a fearless warrior setting out a grand expedition? “March of the brave” inspires exactly that feeling. It may not seem like much, but it’s remarkable how much personality Setsuna’s score brings to the game while simultaneously representing a quintessential vintage RPG experience. More so than most games, when you hear a track like *Setsuna’s “The Winter Breeze”, it is the perfect accompaniment to the game’s first world map setting likewise, when in a small village or sleepy hamlet, tracks like “Tender Glow” and “A sense of Safety” give off a calming character. The soundtrack was composed by Tomoki Miyoshi, seemingly a 22-year-old piano prodigy, who has echoed as much of the game’s plaintive, frozen setting in emotional turns as he has the fable-esque essence that gave RPGs such a mythic presence in years past. For whatever reason, that sweeping, classic sound has mostly gone out of fashion. Even Final Fantasy’s original theme had that in spade. This is where the score - beautifully arranged almost entirely in solo piano compositions - becomes integral.Īnyone who’s familiar with the best games of the genre is well aware of their lineage of musical grandeur, the sort of pieces that invoke an intrepid spirit of adventure, powerful kingdoms, and the thrill of wide-eyed exploration in far-off, fantastical places. How the story plays out, at least over the five or six or so hours I’ve played so far, is much more traditional, with archetypal characters and plot developments embellished through some impeccable localization. (Which is to be expected, since the developers at Tokyo RPG Factory made it a point to emphasize a melancholic tone in a somber world of forever winter.) As far as old-school JRPGs are concerned, it’s not the happiest subject matter. As the story goes, Endir finds himself head of Setsuna’s guard, and is charged with protecting her until she fulfills her duty. To complete the old ritual, the sacrifice must make a pilgrimage to a ceremonial site, accompanied by a guard detail.
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