That’s certainly a heavy burden to bear, but this is constantly contrasted with the beauty of the world and just what it is that she’s sacrificing herself for. It follows the eponymous Setsuna as she journeys-knowingly-to her death, as the latest chosen sacrifice in a thousand year old ritual to keep the world at relative peace from monsters. I Am Setsuna is a game of sorrow and loss, but also of hope and bittersweet nostalgia. It’s absolutely a love letter to the JRPGs of decades past, but it’s the kind of love letter that serves as a reminder of why those games are so beloved to begin with, rather than simply emulating them. Make no mistake-this is a complex, insightful game that goes so much further than its surface-level retro inspiration. ![]() I’d have played a fun, cute, classically-inspired JRPG with beautiful presentation, but I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the depth and nuance that it offers. Having now played the English version, I’m glad I didn’t play much of the import, because with my cursory understanding of Japanese, I wouldn’t have been able to really see what this game has to offer. ![]() Save for the niceties of its combat, it's the classic JRPG stripped to its barest essentials (even down to post-combat themes to gently echo those from Final Fantasy), and two decades later, it shows there's still plenty of joy in such a pure design.I imported I Am Setsuna earlier this year when it first came out in Japan, though I never got around to playing more than the first couple of hours. And that finish is a bittersweet wonder to behold, much like that shock of autumnal colors beneath that snow-smothered tree that first attracted me to this whole affair. The pleasant side effect of I Am Setsuna's unwavering focus on its story and setting is that it remains an agreeably paced adventure from start to finish. (Get too good at it, I found, and it can even trivialize some boss encounters.) As in the best of the old JRPGs, there's a great sense of purpose in play once you learn to get every party member performing the way you want to, and reaching the far-flung save points in higher dungeons begins to feel more like a deserved reward than a frustrating trial.Īll this takes fewer than 24 hours to complete. On the bright side, it's easy to get into the proper rhythm to pull this off just by playing the characters naturally. Save for the niceties of its combat, it's the classic JRPG stripped to its barest essentials. But in order to equip a tech you first need to have the appropriate "spritnite," and then you can only improve them with the help of "fluxes." The business of brawling is also more complicated than it was in the days of JRPGs past, as there's now a "momentum" system that rewards waiting for the action bar to fill up and executing perfectly timed button presses, sometimes resulting in a random "singularity" that grants your whole party, says, a boost to the number of points you're getting to build more momentum.īuilding Momentum by waiting to attack may trigger a random "Singularity," which sometimes gives your party godly boosts. Skills are called "techs" as in Chrono Trigger, and some of them even share the same names. It extends to combat, which starts only when you actively engage an enemy you found bobbing around the dungeon maps, and which unfolds with the "Active Time Battle" system that maintains the action even when you're digging in menus for specific spells and potions.Īnd then it muddies that fluidity with some unnecessary complications. It embraces them in some unexpected ways, such as how gear stays limited to weapons and amulets, thus minimizing the time you spend in menus min-maxing. The battle on the iceīut it's also true that I Am Setsuna starts to lose its way whenever it strays from the lessons the simplicity of the snow imparts. More snow, more trees, and not a random encounter to be had. I especially enjoyed the scenes with poor Nidr, a swordsman who battles both with the monsters in his past and those in abandoned villages, as well as the roguish spellcaster Aeterna, who looks after Setsuna as though she were family. There's not a one among her companions who isn't flawed and tragic and some way, but there are some standouts who thankfully remind us that our existence is one worth fighting for. ![]() ![]() As Endir, along with some other somber guards, you must escort her through the beasts and snowfields of the world so she may do her duty. Setsuna herself is a girl whose purity matches that of the surrounding snow, but she's willingly chosen to bow to local tradition and sacrifice herself at a faraway altar so the world can live in relative safety from monsters. Perhaps the lesson is that he's the right hero for a world as bleak and sad as this. Even the sound of the snow becomes part of the experience, as the heroes crunch through it and leave furrows in their wake.
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