First off, I would like to admit that I don’t play a lot of JRPGs, nor do I have any nostalgia for NES-style graphics. The reason I decided to give this game a try was because I followed the developer from their previous game. While I can tell the sorts of games it is taking inspiration from, thankfully, Geo Mythica is perfectly capable of standing on its own ideas, where underneath retro-appearances lies a modern, fluid action-RPG that I had a lot of fun with.
If I had to make one loose comparison to one JRPG I have played and enjoyed, it would probably be Final Fantasy VII Remake. While visually the games couldn’t be more different, both games will have you fighting monsters with a party of colourful characters through linearly designed dungeons, switching between basic attacks and unique special attacks in real-time combat. There are many areas to explore with people to help and with plenty of side activities.
Geo Mythica decides to take what works well in modern RPGs while mixing things up with retro RPGs tropes, such as the world being split up into a world map and individual zones, making travelling between main locations quick and easy. Since the game is using a 2D top-down perspective, you always have a full view of each battle, allowing for more strategic battling. You’ll have to make considerations of enemy positioning, timings, and targeting. The game pauses when opening the menu to cast abilities, which is great considering how frantic many of the battles can get, and the combat shines during the mid-game, striking the perfect balance between freedom to play how you want and challenging battles. Every area introduces new enemies with different abilities, often preventing you from just whaling on them with basic attacks to succeed, preventing me from getting tired of battling while never being required to grind.
For the most part the "Recommended" difficulty did not give me too many issues. There are a couple challenge dungeons I chose not to complete. There's a point in the late-late where fights become less about attacking enemies and more about defensively managing your party, and your options for viable strategies start to dry up; needing to heal all the time locks up a party member, enemies attacking quicker and quicker, and fights with 3 or more powerful enemies can make single-target spells feel ineffective. That being said, I only found a few difficulty spikes through the main and non-end-game side stories, and I liked how - similar to the developers’ previous game “The Adventures of Chris” - failure is inconsequential and you're free to experiment without losing progress. Some individual hard fights take on a sort of puzzle quality of how to kill all the enemies before they kill you. But I just felt like the challenge dungeons limited options too much to hold my interest for entire dungeons. You can lower the difficulty if you want to do everything, but I chose not to.
As for the story, I liked how most story arcs/quests were less than an hour long, so every play session felt like I’d accomplished something. Moment-to-moment writing is great, doesn't rely on reference humour and I laughed at quite a few of the jokes. In general, I found that the story was at its best when it wasn’t trying to take itself too seriously, and it was always a joyful surprise to see the realistic world combined with more wacky locales, not quite surreal but more low-fantasy. There’s a diverse range of real-world locations that have clearly been depicted with care, and while the graphics stay true to looking like an NES game, there’s enough visual flair in each location to be distinct from each other.
It’s a shame that you can’t banter with party members outside of scripted story events, because when the game did get more serious, I felt that I had missed out on conversations that resulted in the characters' change of heart. The game is full of complex characters, and I guess I just wanted to hear more from them.
The music is also really nice. There’s a great range of retro-inspired high and low energy tracks that I never got tired of.
Overall I had a very enjoyable time with Geo Mythica, and I would recommend it to any fan of action-RPGs even if they’re not familiar with classic JRPGs like me. I had a bug-free and stable experience that took me 17~ hours to complete the main story and all non-post-game side quests.
8/10
