Esperia ~ Uprising of the Scarlet Witch ~

I honestly wish I could give it 3.5 but I'll err on the side of a higher rating because I do think someone somewhere is proud of this game and that's worth something. This game is *rough.* It's UI isn't particularly merciful, its controls occasionally make me want to scream blood (just let me use the other ctrl key, the one right next to the enter button I'm using all the time, I beg of you), I've noticed at least three typos thus far, and it did just crash on me after saving one time. But... There's something here at least. The plot is fine thus far as of chapter 5, the characters have some fun to them and you do eventually get used to the art style of their portraits, and it's still entirely playable. It's very much a bootstrap Fire Emblem and that's at least ambitious, and it's not nearly as terrible as it could be. I do want the developers to feel proud of having made it, video games are hard and theirs doesn't have too many pitfalls, and even manages to intrigue me enough to fill in the negative space of their setting and characters, and leave me guessing on certain things. So, kudos! I wish you luck for your new project! (That said, I bought it on sale and would probably recommend any consumers do the same if they're interested on taking a chance on something they find at random in the aether.)

I will preface this review with clarification that as of the time of writing I only reached chapter 9 and I'm mainly decided to write it because I saw the developer still updates the game with new content, quality of life features and bug fixes. Will probably play again when more will come, but as of now I really enjoyed the experience. I have encountered one major problem when playing this game and it's that whenever I tried to use the trade option the game crashes with the massage "singleton\singleton-itemcontrol.js" it somewhat hampered my enjoyment at the begining and led to a bit more difficulty, but it was managable. Also I didn't see anyone else have this problem, so it may be something on my side. I have played a few Fire Emblem games and Demo of Gales of Nayeli before playing this game. Game takes a lot of inspiration from FE and uses the same engine as GoN. Gameplay as far as I have seen is basically FE, you have got rock(axe), paper(sword), scissors(spear) and the rest bows, magic(light, dark, elemantal), etc. But it also adds some really fun artifacts that let you buff and debuff units, which surprisingly to me really came in handy. Maps are fun often requring decent amount of pre-planning if you are aiming for side objectives. I liked the bonuses from supports and skill system. Lack of weapon ranks was also fun. Each unit feels valuable and has place were it excels. Music and visuals are fine to good, nothing exceptional but can't say it's bad. I like the character art and it's still being expanded upon by the author which is nice. The opening after chapter 4 is really catchy and is probably my favorite pice (screams anime op, but I love it). Can't say much about story (didn't finish), but as far as I got I really enjoyed it. I like the character (Diana, Orphen Trio in particular). I really wish there was an option to see more supports in one playthrough even without the bonuses. I'm close to a limit so in conclusion: Like it, Waiting for updates.