Dear Readers,
I decided to finally try out the demo for this upcoming RPG. It took me a while to get around to it!
My first impression is that there are a lot of logos! In addition to Square Enix and Acquire there's Unreal, Criware... yeesh! They can be skipped thankfully.
I had a choice between two characters only: Primrose the dancer and Olberic the warrior. It's not an Octopath yet. I don't know what the term is for only two paths. Bipath? Twipath? Duopath? I dunno. But anyway, the second person bios of the two characters on the selection screen are nicely written :)
I chose to be Olberic this time. Olberic Eisenberg as known by my enemies as they behold me in fear! There's voice acting and yeah there's a fearful tone in their voice :)
The music is a lot more dramatic and exciting than in Lost Sphear.
Wow, "blackguard". I don't hear that word very often from people in other countries. We use it here alright.
My character has a deeper voice than the other soldiers. The voice actors can do some good drama... I just watched the scene where I watched my King Alfred get killed by Erhardt, who was supposed to be on our side. This is a nightmare I have every night about my past.
I noticed a local boy named Philip spying on me. What a Dickensian accent he has! His surname wouldn't happen to be Pirrip would it? :)
The font is decent, though it is a bit small.
So in my new life I'm a swordsman for this village, which has a bandit problem. I'm here not only for protection, but for training others too. I met with the Headman and Philip's mother. Philip wanted to be in on the training.
So as Olberic Eisenberg(or Berg, as I'm known in my life here) I can challenge others to a duel and as Primrose, I can allure them into joining my party. That's pretty cool.
Now for the battle system! I challenged the two watchmen and got some tutorials. One of them was good to attack but not so good to defend, and the other was good to defend but not to attack. I got these boost points per turn which lets me inflict more hits in the next turn when I use them.
Philip wanted to train too but I refused him. Just a kid after all. After this, brigands attacked the village! Just like in Final Fantasy, they appear in the battle screen looking much bigger and dramatic than on the map screen. I got more of a feel of the battle system. The defence breaking makes them dazed and miss a turn when I use the weapon of their weakness on them. I absolutely adore this :) It means I can keep some battles going without getting hit at all with enough smart thinking!
I defeated them, but Philip got kidnapped! I had to go after him and leave the village.
I got into a battle with two Rockadillos; like armadillos, but with rock plating! Their weakness is spears. It took a while to defeat them but I was still sussing out the boosting and shield breaking. I used more boosts in a row and defeated them that way while the other one was dazed. So a different number of enemies on screen requires a whole new train of strategic thought! This is pretty darn cool :)
And yes, the game has random encounters.
Then I fought Azure Ratkins and Hill Ratkins. They were weak to swords and I was able to juggle between them by making sure they were dazed when it was their turn.
My HP and SP replenish when I level up, which is awesome :) There's a decent amount of save points as well.
I'm getting more used to stacking boosts and getting to know when to use them at the right time. I feel like I'm getting somewhere with this and it's easy to learn :)
I then reached the brigands' cave. I got into a battle with 2 Green Cap Brigands and 1 White Cap Brigand. The white one had more shield points. I timed Level Slashes and normal boosted attacks when the time called for them and beat them all within a few turns while enduring just one hit! It felt pretty good :)
With the Brigands out of the way, I went into the cave and it looks pretty cool in there with my lantern and all the stalactites and stalagmites and everything :)
I got into a battle with a Ratkin and a Scaled Viper. The Ratkin had 2 shield points and it seems the Viper was able to take a turn after recovering from dizziness... hmm... its weakness was spear attacks.
Then I fought a Black Bat by itself. Weak against spears. I wonder if at some stage I'll be able to one shot the weaker enemies.
I made my way to where they were holding Philip. There was a whole bunch of them and their ringleader Gaston, who was wearing a horned helmet; and for some reason, he had Erhardt's sword!
A big boss battle followed. Gaston was humongous on the battle screen! He looked like one of the Gauls from Asterix, but much bigger! He had a big furry cape and mustache. Looked awesome :) Now that I think of it, he looked a bit like the Ox King from Dragon Ball. He also had two Red Cap Brigands as cohorts. He had 6 shield points and the Brigands had 2 each. I fought for a while and lost.
Then I came back and tried again. This time I focused on the Brigands individually to clear them out. For some reason one of them left behind his shield status after dying! Odd glitch but it didn't break anything :)
I then tried all kinds of strategies on Gaston but mainly tried to stay alive. He had a nasty bide charging move which cancelled whenever I broke his shield. When I got him dizzy I struck him with my most powerful spear ability and I eventually defeated him! Woo!
I quizzed him on Erhardt and his own life choices. They were mercenaries together before they went their separate ways. He told me that someone named Sir Gustav may know about Erhardt.
The watchmen then appeared and they spelled "gaol" instead of "jail". Wow! Gaston then realised who I really was and that I was from the old kingdom.
What followed was an emotional scene where I was saying goodbye to my fellow villagers on my quest to find Erhardt. The music, the voice acting, the epilogue text... it was really nice and emotionally involving! The whole demo was like this really. To compare this to the Lost Sphear demo: they're both good but this one is much more exciting!
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