False Skies

Short Version : A superb JRPG. Great use of the GBC-esque limited palette, the art is lovely from start to finish. Meaty length(took me a bit over 60 hours) with good pacing. Genuinely interesting story and setting. A Class/Job system with some real creativity and twists. Thoughtful enemy design that keeps the classic turn-based battle system engaging. Some of the better dungeons you'll find in any JRPG. Quirky soundtrack that fits the game really well. Highly recommended for anybody who wants a quality old-school style JRPG, but one clearly made with plenty of game design chops. Additional Notes: Your player characters are just kind of blank slate stand-ins for the heroes of the story. I cant say this is my favorite choice, as it's hard to get emotionally attached to characters who only really have implied dialogue, but I will say the game did a pretty great job of making the surrounding cast of characters fun and appealing to interact with, enough to keep me invested in the world and story as a whole. And moreso, this choice is probably a necessary one in order to make the class/job system work. Because the game *will* let you mess up your characters builds as you progress through new tiers of jobs, but because you can always train up new blank characters whenever you want or have ones in reserve ready to take over if needed, you're never completely screwed or anything. And the fact that you can mess up your builds if you're being careless is also part of what makes it so interesting, because the classes/jobs aren't always straightforward and you are encouraged to play around a bit and not just make cliche archetypes. I will echo complaints from others though, that some of this would be helped if there were explanations for skills ahead of time, before you permanently pick your next tier class. And speaking of skills, there's a lot of fairly unique and creative stuff going on here. Moreso than many JRPG's, you will not get away with just spamming 'Attack' and then healing every once in a while, at least beyond the beginning stages of the game. You'll have access to lots of different types of skills and you'll need them, because your enemies will have access to many of these same skills as well. This helps keep the combat mentally engaging and mildly challenging(or fairly challenging on Hard difficulty) throughout, helped by the game constantly throwing new enemies at you to keep things fresh. Yea, there's a fair number of color swap designs, but these usually always have new abilities and aren't just higher stat versions. Dungeons are something I need to touch on, cuz I think it's easily one of the best reasons to pick up this game. They start out fairly straightforward in the beginning to ease you in, but it wont take long before the complexity goes up. And it keeps going up throughout the game for the most part, with some of the later game areas/dungeons being very easy to get lost in or dumbfounded with, not because they're just so huge so much as they're just quite intricate and packed with alternate routes and puzzle mechanics and verticality and whatnot(and secrets of course). And because the game has random encounters, this could potentially be very annoying except for the fact that the game lets you buy these cheap items that will basically turn these encounters off for a brief while. Which is just a really great solution, both to alleviate frustration with them, and also to help control leveling. Overall, just really impressed with this one, super glad I picked it up after seeing it recommended by somebody on Resetera. A lot of care clearly went into this in all areas. And lastly, shoutout to the developer and his friend sdmax on the Discussion board, for being responsive and helpful to questions.

Fantastic, class-based classic JRPG that should have way more eyes on it than it does. There are dozens of classes to pick from, giving you complete freedom to customize your party of four (with up to eight in reserve) as you see fit; if something seems to make sense as an objective or build, you can do it. The story is compelling and full of twists and turns, and there are hundreds of secrets and optional bosses to tackle along the way as you aim for completion—and when you get there, a robust NG+ system that lets you determine certain parameters that'll change how your second run through goes.

My issue with the game is solely to do with the framerate (or something akin to this). When standing still, everything looks fine, but the second you move your character everything looks jarring. [b]8 Bit Adventures[/b] and [b]VoidSpire Tactics[/b] are a couple of fun retro RPGs that don't suffer this problem, play those instead.

Didn't end up hitting me right now, but it's a very fun dq3 gbc in semi modern times kinda rpg!

A damn good JRPG game made by someone who clearly understands the appeal of these types of games by the people who played them growing up. My only regret is I only discovered this during the current summer sale on a random post mentioning it and didn't pay full price for it, because this kind of thing is clearly made for me. I wish I knew about it when it first came out. I will buy something like this day 1 at full price every time if I know it exists. Please make another game.

If I could get this game injected straight into my veins, I would. I want 10 of these wonderful games, truly my favorite style of jrpg that exists. Super excited to see more of Feenicks and what they do!

It's like Dragon Quest 3. You can customize names, classes, and portraits. Nice story and aesthetic. Interesting enemies with a bestiary that gives combat information about them.

Has been a rather fun GBC style RPG.