EARTHLOCK

I never dreamt to be a stategist on my life but this game almost made me do. Bought at insane 90% discount in 2023 and directly played it through but about 65% progress I lost interest and abandoned it. After becoming Achievement Hunter, I determined to clear the game and succeded with mixed feeling actually. because : Con : No maps in all dugeons and world map. You have to survive and prepare for surpised encounters. Maps only for marking treasure chests. Con : At early stages this game was easy to play and have easy boss battle..suitable for 12+ but afterward believe me it should be for 17+ Con : Grinding and warping to various places often. The best walking speed was [spoiler] Gnart [/spoiler] then [spoiler] PAT [/spoiler]. Con : Repeated quests. Con : Detail logs are inexsistance. If you don't remember where you left-off last time..you'll be running along all places just to figure-out. Hits places to do your progress, marked in yellow before you warp. + No random battles or ATB. Engage battle only when you're ready and you can escape/feign death except boss battle. + No free-loaders of all charactes. You have to play as all of them. Their turn will be available on spesific events and battles. + This game exceed S.Enix best strageist RPG..You have to manage Pairs, Bonds, Abilities, Talents, Foe's element vurnerabilities and also crafting items. + Perfect Achievement only for die-hard Strategist. Trust me it's hard to get, time-consuming and patiences deprived! but I still recommend this. Thanks the Devs for making the game. Hope Earthlock 2 won't be as hard as its preccedor.

It was pretty good! Had some systems that worked really well and some systems that struggled but the idea of gather enemies and then engaging them all at once made grinding more "fun". The story wasn't super gripping for me, but there was character development I enjoyed, I always get kind of a bad taste if a UI looks like it was taken straight from an asset pack which (whether it did or didn't idk) this game looked like which made it lose some luster for me. But it made up for it in gameplay. :) It wasn't the best indie RPG i've ever played but it definitely wasn't bad. I'd recommend someone pick it up (but on sale, $30 seems kind of steep).

Tedium distilled into video game form, I would spend more time elaborating but I have spent more than enough time on this game

I really enjoyed playing this game. It has an interesting plot and cool characters. I’d love to play something similar, but I haven’t found anything like it yet.

a love letter to rpg fans. hope more indie like this coming

Earthlock, desarrollado por el estudio independiente noruego Snowcastle Games, es una carta de amor a los RPG clásicos de los años 90, El Plot: Un mundo que dejó de girar La historia de Earthlock se desarrolla en el planeta Umbra, un mundo que sufrió un cataclismo miles de años atrás que detuvo su rotación. Como resultado, una parte del mundo está sumergida en una oscuridad perpetua, mientras que la otra vive bajo un sol abrasador. Solo una pequeña franja habitable permite la vida tal como la conocemos. El protagonista es Amon, un joven buscador de tesoros que vive en un asentamiento desértico con su tío Benjo. Lo que comienza como una simple búsqueda de chatarra y reliquias antiguas se convierte rápidamente en una conspiración global. Amon se ve envuelto en una guerra entre cultos antiguos y tecnología prohibida, uniendo fuerzas con un grupo de aliados improbables para evitar que el mundo vuelva a ser devastado. Puntos Fuertes 1. Sistema de Combate Táctico por Turnos Es, sin duda, lo mejor del juego. A diferencia de otros RPG donde solo eliges "Atacar", aquí cada personaje tiene dos posturas de combate: Amon (El Pícaro/Artillero), Gnart (El Sanador/Buffer), Olia (La Guerrera/Tanque), Ive (La Exploradora/Estratega), Taika (La Maga Elemental) y PAT (El Robot/Tanque de Apoyo). Cambiar de postura consume un turno, lo que añade una capa estratégica necesaria para explotar las debilidades enemigas. 2. El Tablero de Talentos (Talent Board) es probablemente la mecánica más profunda de Earthlock. En lugar de que los personajes ganen estadísticas automáticamente al subir de nivel, el juego te da "fichas" para que tú mismo construyas su crecimiento. Funciona de forma muy similar al Tablero de Esferas de Final Fantasy X. 3. El Sistema de Vínculos (Bonds) Cuando emparejas a dos personajes en combate, su nivel de amistad sube. Esto desbloquea habilidades pasivas y ataques especiales combinados muy poderosos. Fomenta que pruebes distintas combinaciones de equipo en lugar de usar siempre a los mismos tres personajes. 4. Gestión de la Isla Plumpet A mitad del juego obtienes una base en una isla mágica. Aquí puedes cultivar plantas para fabricar tu propia munición y pociones. Es un sistema de crafting muy relajante y bien integrado que te ahorra gastar dinero en tiendas. 5. Estética Colorida El diseño artístico es encantador. Mezcla un estilo low-poly moderno con entornos vibrantes que recuerdan a las maquetas de los juegos clásicos. La banda sonora también acompaña muy bien la exploración. Puntos Débiles 1. Narrativa algo genérica Aunque el trasfondo del mundo es interesante, el guion y los diálogos no siempre están a la altura. Los personajes pueden sentirse un poco planos y la historia sigue tropos del género que ya hemos visto muchas veces (el héroe joven, el imperio malvado, los cristales antiguos). 2. Curva de dificultad irregular Puedes ir venciendo a los enemigos comunes sin esfuerzo y, de repente, llegar a un jefe que te aniquila en dos turnos. Esto obliga a realizar grindeo (subir de nivel matando monstruos repetidamente) de forma algo artificial para poder avanzar. 3. Falta de "vida" en el mundo Aunque los escenarios son bonitos, a veces se sienten vacíos. Las ciudades tienen pocos NPCs con los que interactuar y las misiones secundarias no son especialmente memorables. Veredicto Final Earthlock es un juego sólido que cumple lo que promete: una experiencia retro con comodidades modernas. No reinventa la rueda, pero es perfecto para quienes buscan un RPG que no dure 100 horas y que se sienta como volver a casa después de mucho tiempo. Ideal para: fans de los turnos clásicos y jugadores que disfrutan de la gestión de recursos. Evitar si: Buscas una historia profunda y buenas cinemáticas.

J'aime tout le gameplay de ce jeu. La D A est plaisante. J'attend le 2 en espérant qu'il soit traduit en français aussi.

I have mixed feelings on EARTHLOCK, so it’s best I just describe my experience and let you decide if it’s for you. Storywise, it’s nothing new. The world is threatened by an ancient evil and set off to fight it, picking up friends along the way. The final team comprises six characters, all with different backgrounds, races, roles, and abilities they apply on the overhead map as well as during the battles. The battles are engaged by running into the monsters who are all visible in the world – there’s no random encounters here. While the enemies are generally grouped in packs of 2-4, it is possible to kite them around, pull them apart, and engage them in smaller numbers – or larger if you want to clear them out quicker in groups of 8-10 – or just avoid them altogether. A lot of effort has gone into giving you complete control over how you want to play. When killed, the monsters stay gone while you remain in the area, but respawn after you transition to another zone. During combat, each of your characters has two stances they can flip between that affects what abilities they have access to. The characters also operate in pairs, allowing them to build bonds with one another that unlocks additional perks, as well as sharing a power meter that, when activated, opens up a special ability tree that bolsters a number of their standard moves, often allowing them to affect the entire group instead of a single target. The gameplay is quite slick as a whole, with fast transitions between combat and exploration along with quick battle animations that’ll get you inputting your next round of attacks within a few seconds of the last one going off. The levelling system’s also quite unique. On top of the standard stat gains, you also get points that allow you to slot cards that give additional stat boosts and abilities onto a board, allowing you to build your team however you want. That said, the game isn’t great at explaining its systems. I was halfway through the game before I figured out the pairing system, and I had to work out most of the buffs/debuffs based off the small icons that appear above the characters’ heads (some of which I still don’t know exactly what they do) since there doesn’t seem to be any in-game windows that allow you to analyse status icons. This could be a positive or negative depending on how you like to play, and while I found it frustrating in places, I can’t deny I got some thrill from the discovery aspect this created. When not fighting, exploration is split between the overhead map and the dungeons littered about it. There’s been an effort to make the world seem big, with alien words and races a plenty, but this wasn’t enough to disguise the fact that it’s really quite empty. There’s only two towns in the whole world, and while the land is split into four elemental zones, they all felt identical beyond the colour scheme. Each has one low-end dungeon, one side quest hub, one late-game dungeon you return for, a bridge dungeon used to move between the areas, and a whole lot of emptiness between. Sure, they’ve dotted a few collectibles around to break up the monster packs, but these are identical in every area and not hard to find. In contrast, the towns/dungeons, while on the small side, did have a lot more detail in their appearance, along with a number of extra puzzles, and I generally found them interesting and fun to work through. For those who like to challenge themselves, there’s only one difficulty setting, and it’s kind of on the low side. Despite the characters having two stances, one is obviously superior and once you realise it you’ll be going into every fight just spamming the same abilities. I was very quickly grouping the monsters up into as big a pack I could make and aoe’ing them down. The handful of wipes I had across my playtime resulted mostly from being too lazy to single-target down the one monster that can kill you if left alone. A couple of bosses also caught me off-guard with some of their counter abilities, but should you die to a boss, a handy helper NPC pops up at the nearest save point to give you a hint on how to beat it, though I never actually spoke to him so I can’t say how detailed that is. My biggest gripe, however, comes from the storytelling. The speed of the gameplay bleeds over into the story, and while the cast has variety in its makeup, they’re not that well developed as you whiz around the world. The initial quest is to save an uncle kidnapped by the country’s military organisation, yet while chasing them down, you stumble across a soldier from that same military who is just happily invited into the party, no questions asked. When said uncle is found locked in a prison and literally dying from an illness, our heroic protagonist and nephew is content to just go off on a quest to recover a stolen artifact from the nearby museum for another member of the group, seemingly unconcerned with the seriousness of the timeframe at play here. Later on, you stumble on the wreckage of a crashed military flagship, a result of sabotage and betrayal, a storybeat that’s resolved 10 minutes later after collecting five pieces of scrap scattered around the area so that the scavenger of YOUR party can repair the ship and they can fly off home – something the engineers on this ship apparently couldn’t do themselves. The last recruit is a revived ancient robot that joins with zero fanfare and just starts interacting with old tech in the world with not a single party member even commenting “Wow. Isn’t that something?” I'm not looking for non-stop bickering here, but some friction, caution, or just excitement for what's being found wouldn’t have gone amiss once in a while. The whole plot plays like a collection of bullet points turned into quests that you go through one by one, and while I enjoyed the gameplay and wanted to love the world, by the end I was ultimately left feeling hollow and lacking any memorable moments. All told, I’d say EARTHLOCK is a decent enough RPG for the price, but one better suited to younger gamers looking to break into the RPG scene, where the quick gameplay and forgiving difficulty can keep them engaged while their heightened imaginations can fill in the gaps in the story and characterisation.