Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX is a charming little retro RPG with a big promise. With its open-ended nature, its quests with multiple solutions, and its fun array of gear/customization options, this is truly a game you won't play the same way twice.
The plot of AAGDX is simple. The king of Regulus has had some kind of prophetic vision of world-ending disaster. To that end, he's placed all his faith in one person: you. To that end, you're invited to wander the kingdom, level up and find gear, and otherwise steel yourself for the journey into darkness. But why would the king choose you so? Perhaps you'll find out along the way...
Before you go, though, you're encouraged to form a party with one of three "distinguished individuals", and two of six other volunteers found around the castle. These people don't join you directly in battle, but confer passive bonuses and perhaps starting skills. Battles are played out in real time on a 2D battlefield; your character stands there, weapon poking out in front of them, and to attack, you move left/right and jump to ram that weapon directly into the enemy. You can also equip three active skills with varying effects and independent cooldowns. For example, if you choose Roland the knight as a party member, you get the Deity Blade skill, which causes damage to all enemies onscreen. You can also find the Photomana skill in the castle regardless of party; Photomana launches homing orbs at enemies, and the longer you wait between casts, the more orbs it shoots.
But if you don't like the battle system, that's okay! The vast majority of encounters are skippable! On the world map, enemy encounters appear as monster icons that sidle around a la Zelda II. But in dungeons, enemy encounters are marked by spider webs. You can't walk through the webs, so you have three options: find a way around, voluntarily trigger the battle that web represents, or spend a "Kindling" item to burn the web and remove it from the map without a fight. Most dungeons and quests can be traversed without getting into a single battle, and you can beeline to later dungeons to loot strong weapons from them even at level 1. Choosing Rex the explorer to join your party makes this easier, because not only does he unlock fast travel to every town and dungeon, but burning webs has a chance to not consume Kindling when he's around.
So the question may arise, why bother with the dungeons at all? Well, because there is a final boss, and you'll want to be ready for it somehow. To that end, there are over 20 quests you can undertake. Some are tied to your party members, while most are started by talking to NPCs. But it's not long before these quests show their true colors. For example, the town right next to the castle where you start the game has a bedridden soldier, who asks you to search a cave for the "Bloodnuts" to cure his illness. Once you get there, though, you're warned that there's no guarantee these Bloodnuts will help the soldier. Then you're told that you can either give the Bloodnuts to the soldier, or dispose of them. AAGDX's quests have two or sometimes three different outcomes you can aspire to, each bringing vastly different endings and rewards to the questlines. These consequences aren't immediate, though; once you've had your fill of exploring and questing, you can return to Regulus Castle and consent to a three-year time skip. Then you can revisit areas to see how your choices have shaped them. Each choice also gets a shoutout in the game's modular ending, which tends to follow those consequences even further into the future. If you choose Hershel the noble as a party member, he gives you 1 million gold. Then you can easily and afford the skills and gear for sale in the towns before doing these quests, and far earlier than said quests pay out.
This speaks to AAGDX's greatest strength. This is why I've mentioned the three distinguished individuals in those prior paragraphs. This RPG is very non-linear, and it's very easy to put yourself in a position to emphasize what you like about it, and downplay what you don't. If you're interested in the combat, Roland can assist you most directly. If you enjoy exploring and questing, Rex lets you skip around more easily. Or you can make both aspects easier by buying Kindling and gear with Hershel's money. By the end of the game, I was starting to find combat a little too simple and samey. Maybe because I skipped ahead to an optional challenge where you fight three end-game bosses in a row, before I'd ever fought them individually? But given the way encounters work, I was able to opt out of fights whenever I didn't feel like fighting. That is the true strength of a nonlinear video game, and one that AAGDX captures simply but beautifully. You can engage with this game as much or as little as you want. You can challenge yourself by not picking any companions. You can skip side quests. The final boss is the only required fight in the game. I could see this becoming a fertile speedrun game for awhile if it took off more, with people searching for the quickest, barest minimum of things you need to do to beat that final boss.
AAGDX is not without its problems, but they don't bother me much when playing for small stretches at a time. It's a perfect "in between" game, something you can boot up while you wait for friends to get ready for a multiplayer game, something like that. If you try to marathon AAGDX, it starts to feel repetitive. But then it's got all those branching quests, and if you're going to try New Game Plus, you're gonna have to remember somehow what quest solutions you did the first time. Its quest log itself tends to be a bit unhelpful, only providing the barest minimum of information, and very few quest stages beyond "quest starts" and "quest complete, come back three years later for a reward".
AAGDX is a simple little game with a big promise. Tackle the world in any order you choose, complete the quests however you like, and have fun with it however you're able to. And on those promises, it delivers. Some aspects are simple, undercooked, won't hold your attention for long, but the foundation here is incredibly solid.
