This game is very clunky feeling by design - the movement is sluggish and the combat relies a lot on reacting to tells with pretty strong telegraphs, especially starting out. One of the telegraphs is so poorly explained ingame that it almost feels broken. If you see a pink circle, roll away as far as you can. Contrary to the tutorial, these are not rollable or blockable; just get out of the way. If you don't get hung up on this, combat here can be a fun back and forth and very satisfying. The visuals are detailed and beautiful - all the enemies are also very expressive and react with proper animations to getting shield broken, overwhelmed, parried and the like. It looks very fluid and helps the combat feel satisfying. The game is heavy on narrative, but not heavy on dialogue. The rats basically communicate in pictures, which is unique. I think it has charm, but they also have their own "sim-lish" comprised of what I think are flute sounds. Those can get grating quick.
This is a great turnbased RPG. If you like those, you WILL like this one. I bought the game because I still remembered Shadows of Adam and I was not disappointed. Story: Where Shadows of Adam felt smaller scale, this one is as epic as you can get, which all the twists and turns you could want, airships, a LOT of party members and side stuff to do. Characters: The frst couple chapters are character chapters, kind of like Octopath Travelers introductions (or possibly Live A Live which I have yet to play). They give you a good idea what each character is about, but oh boy are they whiplash-inducing. I started with Nikolai and then went to Ben, going from war story to basically slice of life comedy. I ended up liking every character, but this is something that stuck out. The tone ends up coming together into coherence (which fits with the setting actually), but if you're sensitive to that, it's something to push through. Certain characters also develop way more than others, which feels kind of unavoidable when there are fully formed adults and teenagers on the same cast. Length: I beat the game in 30 hours, reaching the final dungeon at the 20 hour mark. 10 hours were sidequests. I did not beat all of them (I don't enjoy the cardgame so I left that unfinished) but I did all the character quests, which tie up loose ends and shine light on some stuff. They felt less like side content and more like part of each character's arc. I liked them a lot, but was surprised to see them labeled as side content. Combat & Difficulty: I played on the recommended Normal difficulty. The game felt just right on this setting for a smooth story experience. Enemies do sometimes hit quite hard, but with character swaps and AP management I already knew from Shadows of Adam, I always had the tools to deal with stuff. I enjoyed it so much, I'm thinking of giving Hard a shot sometime. Oh, and status effects are really good here, even on bosses!
I bought Rise of the Third Power because I liked Ara Fell. Ara Fell's writing felt like a strange mix of cozy JRPG and whacky early RPGMaker days and Rise of the Third Power, despite its way more ambitious inspiration does retain that feel in a good way. It feels like the devs managed to keep what's good about those roots and cleaning it up. I'm thoroughly enjoying the characters' interactions and the political scheming adds that extra spice without being brooding or overwhelming. I'm not done with the game yet, but so far, it flows really well and the climactic moments REALLY hit. Just don't talk to too many non-story/quest NPCs, I feel like they didn't get nearly as much attention (understandably so) The consistency of the character art could use some work - some important characters lack art completely, while some existing art is weirdly disproportionate compared to others (Arielle's head is a big one). The music is great throughout. I'm no music guy, so I have no indepth critique here - however, nothing felt grating and there are plenty pieces I actively enjoyed. Lots of variety too.
