LumenTale: Memories of Trey

Review by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34633003-Gaming-Masterpieces/lists/] [u] Gaming Masterpieces [/u] [/url] - The greatest games of all time on Steam. Is this game a masterpiece? No. But since I don't like Pokémon, you should probably ask someone else. I can describe how the game plays, though. The story follows Trey, a cyborg searching for his lost memories. He awakens with amnesia and has no idea who he is. In the world of Talea—divided between the traditional southern region of Mythos and the technologically advanced northern region of Logos—Pokémon-like creatures are called Animon. You capture them, tame them, evolve them, and let them fight on your behalf. And, of course, you collect them—the more, the better. Visually, the Animon are just as unusual as classic Pokémon, though with less of a distinctly Japanese aesthetic. You control the pixelated Trey (along with a cast of equally pixelated characters) through a much higher-resolution world. Talea is populated by both humans and the mysterious Animon. No one truly knows where the Animon originated, but they are creatures capable of forming powerful emotional bonds with humans. Once tamed, they are essentially pets. In the wild, however, they are considerably less friendly and may attack people on sight. Only certain individuals can tame and train Animon. These people are known as Lumen. Trey possesses a Holoken, a device used to tame Animon. Unfortunately, he still has no memory of who he is or where he came from, so he now lives with the friendly inventor Kapan and his niece Ales, who have taken him in. Before long, you'll also gain access to the Anispace, a strange realm where captured Animon are stored—a place that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time. Normally, nobody can enter it, but Kapan's latest invention changes that. Within the Anispace, you can create a home for your Animon and strengthen your bond with them. Back in the real world, Trey explores Talea from an isometric perspective, talks to townsfolk, gathers resources, smashes crates in search of materials, and rests at fountains. The resources you collect can be used to prepare meals. Following recipes makes cooking easier, but Trey is also free to experiment. The meals you create can then be fed to your Animon to improve their stats. Talea is a rather strange place. Players willing to embrace the quirky setting will discover that the game is, at its heart, a traditional Japanese role-playing game. Guide Trey and his companions through the world, hunt down Animon, and engage in turn-based battles against wild and enemy creatures. Select from various attacks and abilities to defeat your opponents, exactly as you would in a classic JRPG. The game features more than 140 different Animon, encouraging players to catch them all. Before long, Trey and Ales embark on a journey across the country with the goal of winning the prestigious Animon tournament held in the capital city. Online features allow players to challenge opponents and their Animon teams over the internet. Both 1v1 and 4v4 battles are supported. It is also possible to trade both monsters and collectible cards with other players online. The game does not include voice acting, but it fully supports gamepad controls. [u][b] Conclusion:[/b][/u] LumenTale: Memories of Trey is primarily designed to appeal to fans of creature collectors. Catch and tame every Animon, gather every available card, and build the ultimate collection. Alongside the collecting gameplay, players will find a charming yet surprisingly deep JRPG filled with quests, conversations, character development, and the gradual uncovering of Trey's mysterious past. Fans of games such as Pokémon, Coromon, or Cassette Beasts will likely feel right at home with it.

I tried really really hard to love this game, and its an okay game, I don't hate it, but I absolutely do NOT love it. Lumentale has been on my radar for years now as I was a big fan of the game Xenoverse: Per Aspera Ad Astra produced by the same developers, and the demo for the game that released approximately ~3 years ago now made this game one of my most anticipated Monster Catching RPGs ever. Overall, I liked the dev's previous work, I really liked the demo, so where do my issues with Lumentale's full release come from? Unlike most reviews, it is not the bugs, though they're definitely abundant. My main issue with the game is that it does not feel like it cares about the player's time or delivering a fulfilling experience. Many times throughout the game did it feel like the game was shafting me, basically telling me "You already paid full price, you're past the 2 hour refund period, you're gonna play through this long, miserable section, you're gonna like it, then, instead of rewarding you at the end, we're just gonna spit on your face and tell you to go onto the next quest." That, combined with the quality of writing in certain areas of the game, really make the game dissatisfying to play, and that's not even getting started with the gameplay issues. The actual combat gameplay of this game is fine, and even offers some interesting differences from most typical monster catchers to keep things interesting, though, every squadron match in the game is dreadfully boring. Each squadron features usually around 3-4 filler battles you must fight back to back before the Squadron captain. These fights end up taking way longer than they can keep me engaged, and the squadron captain restores your party to full health before their fight anyway so it never feels like the grunts wear you down. For the overworld gameplay, movement is fine, though I have a lot of issues with the Holoken and how annoying the wild animon can end up being. For the holoken, imagine if Pokemon had 16 HMs for each type, with those HMs ONLY being learnable by a Pokemon with that primary type. Want to use your Water/Ground type Quagsire to use the ground HM? ♥♥♥♥ you, it's a WATER/ground type, so it only gets the water HM. Have fun swapping around your team every 20 seconds because we place these obstacles EVERYWHEREEE, and don't even think about having fun on a higher difficulty because the game's hard mode restricts swapping animon to designated safe locations like towns. The holoken also cannot be used while riding the hoverboard (despite Trey's arms being free) which makes the already annoying animon even worse. Speaking of, the wild animon in the game end up being more frustrating then systems like random grass encounters. My biggest issue is trying to fight weaker animon in the game, hitting an animon with a holoken before the battle can KO the animon and give you the items/exp very easily, except usually unless you greatly outlevel the animon, attacking the animon will not fully knock it out but instead start a battle where the enemy animon are all on about 10% hp or less. Which, if you couldn't guess, makes a 3 second interaction into about a 30 second interaction with no substance behind it aside from wasting my time. Pairing this with animon that charge or attack you outside of battle make traversing areas extremely annoying, no, I should not be able to avoid every encounter ever, but I shouldn't be annoyed by encounters for the sake of encounters. I mentioned the quality of writing before, and just to touch on that again, there is one section of the game that really REALLY lost me. Each town in the game has a cast of important characters who you'll interact with through the story missions in each town. In one town, the main characters you'll interact with are a pair of siblings, which you meet by being pickpocketed from by the older brother. After an extremely obnoxious back and forth section where you run from point A to B chasing the pickpocket, you corner him by running him into his sister who he is trying to not appear like a lowlife in front of. He pretends to be some sort of touring guide, makes the party play along with his act, and then hands the items he stole back without an apology, but an excuse, claiming that his low quality of life and his responsibilities as an older brother give him an "Okay" to be a thief. And then this guy is just treated like our best friend for the rest of the time we're in the town. Ironically, he gets arrested after picking a fight with a city official who stole and patented one of his sisters designs and the game then expects us to want to do a MASSIVE SCALE PRISON BREAK TO SAVE THIS GUY. We don't just let him out, we let out ACTIVELY DANGEROUS CRIMINALS to free a thief from prison. The context of his arrest is corrupt, sure, but given that we can literally kill the corrupt officials who arrested him if we want to do the "heckin evil" route, I think the game maybe should've considered that hey, I maybe do kinda want to let that guy suffer the consequences of his actions. His questline contains multiple of those "♥♥♥♥ you I hate you" type quests I mentioned before (usually back and forth/fetch quests) which just makes it even more infuriating. To mention something I do like, the card packs are an awesome addition to this game. Each animon has an equivalent TCG card that can be obtained through purchasing and opening cards packs. The art on each card is extremely high quality and beautiful (much like the whole game I might add, visually this game nails the artstyle and aesthetic it is going for). This is also a great in-game way to find new and interesting animon during your playthrough you want to add to your team or to see if an animon evolves into a design you find appealing, which, is sadly rarer than I wish it was. Many of the animon designs in the game feel really mediocre to me. Many animon feel like they REALLY needed a third stage of evolution they did not get, while others have issues with design readability or color palettes. The worst offender of a bad color palette is the animon Fulgaze, which with its shiny/lost palette is easily my favorite design in the game, while the default palette looks kinda gross to me. As well, a lot of the final stage animon end up becoming very big and the game does not take this into account in battle, causing your team to become very visually crowded when you have 4 fully evolved animon out at once. Overall, I think I accounted for everything I wanted to say at the moment. I have more minor complaints like side quest locations being tucked away and not revealed on your map until you find them, but mainly I said everything I wanted to about this game. I still have not fully finished the story, though I do plan to, and while I can't see myself going for 100% achievements given how grindy some of them are looking, I may do my best to fill out the aniwiki atleast. If my experience going forward with this game changes my thoughts (which it probably will, but not for the best since I think multiple endings in a monster catching game is generally a flawed idea) I will come back and edit this review. Though, as sad as I am to say, I don't think I can recommend LumenTale unless you are a massive fan of creature collector rpgs, my final verdict is just go and play Cassette Beasts instead, that game ♥♥♥♥♥♥ rules.

Finally finished the game and caught all creatures. They took the worst features of both Pokemon and Digimon and added them all together.

Let's start with a premise: all things considered, I liked the game just enough (helped by its reasonable price) to be able to recommend it. However, I've decided not to. I've decided not to recommend it (and to advise against it) because I consider Lumentale a tremendously and inexcusably PRESUMPTUOUS and CLUELESS game. First, a small digression on the positives — the game does have some, not many, but some: Trey is not an exceptional protagonist, but he's definitely "alive" enough to stand out among the typical MCs of these games, who are usually lobotomized, chaste, squeaky-clean drones. The Animon (aka this game's Pokémon) are genuinely gorgeous. And this is something that truly infuriates me, because creating a pool of beautiful monsters (and here we're well beyond "beautiful") is, in my opinion, the hardest part. Seeing that they succeeded at the hardest part but failed spectacularly at the "easier" one was truly demoralizing. I don't want to dwell on the bug situation, though. Let's be clear: the issue itself is absolutely unacceptable, but in my playthrough I didn't encounter enough of them to cry scandal. Besides, I believe the truly interesting questions about Lumentale's failure — in my very humble opinion — run deeper; they're questions of identity. Lumentale's art direction is undoubtedly exceptional and undoubtedly its greatest strength. However, it's also its worst weakness. The impression that lingers from beginning to end is that Lumentale is a game made by artists, for artists. To be clear, that sentence is not meant as a criticism of the category. However, it's obvious that extreme importance was given to the artistic side, while programming and game design were left to fend for themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially for a small studio that has to ration its resources and therefore has to make choices. However, allow me to say that having more people dedicated to music composition than to programming (this information is easily found on the studio's website) is a suicidal choice. More broadly, the industry is no stranger to products with a strong identity component that subvert the classic conventions of their genre (the Souls games or the Death Stranding saga are examples, although in those cases the identity component has a strong grip on the game design, not just the art). This stance toward the industry — which, to be clear, I've never fully appreciated, whether the product comes from a small Italian studio or from the brilliant mind of Hideo Kojima — comes with both honors and burdens. And on this point, the game fails miserably. The implicit premise of every "Pokémon-like" is always the same: to deliver a Pokémon-style experience (without, obviously, the extremely heavy Pokémon brand on the little monsters) but without its downsides — which, given the sales volumes Pokémon keeps posting, show no sign of ever being fixed. Lumentale objectively tries to offer some QoL elements, but ultimately it trips over its own feet: The game maps are deliberately chaotic and tedious, and more than once, in favor of some insane game design choice, the confusion and frustration reach mind-boggling peaks. Some dungeons, deliberately labyrinthine, lack a local map. You're often forced to traverse the same map multiple times to access a previously blocked area. On top of this, Animon have a sort of PP system determined by type rather than by specific move. Utterly useless and unbelievably annoying. The result is that exploration, which in theory should be free and rewarding, is often pointless and demotivating. This brings me to another important point: Whoever handled the game's design wanted to make a Pokémon-like with RPG elements. But this suggests, in my very humble opinion, that the design team may not have fully grasped that Pokémon is, in its purest essence, already an RPG — nor what makes a well-crafted RPG work. The consequence is that, in addition to the absolutely terrible world-exploration experience, the combat system is also riddled with flaws that undermine the game. Pokémon has a combat system that looks trivial on the surface but which, as its long-lived competitive scene demonstrates, actually has non-trivial complexity and balance. In Lumentale, instead, the combat system tries to keep the typical Pokémon formula while saturating it with 4 controllable Animon, and despite some more or less valid ideas and various patches, it collapses ruinously under its own weight. Initially, I had high expectations for the combat system. And I admit without shame that, together with the incredible charm of the Animon, it was one of the things that pulled me through to finishing the game. However, the combat system never fully develops, and once the power level rises, it ends up caving in on itself. I'd also like to digress on two things that left me particularly dumbfounded: Dialogues cannot be skipped: this is a choice I find truly incomprehensible, and one that reveals a great deal of presumption and cluelessness on the part of whoever handled the game design. It's presumptuous because whoever decided to make dialogues unskippable evidently believes their story is too good to be skipped (spoiler: it's a very mid story, verging on banal), and it's clueless — or willfully so — because it negatively affects the game design. What if I didn't care about the story at all and just wanted my Animon to fight? What if I'd loved the game so much I wanted to replay it, but was forced to sit through every dialogue all over again? The UI is confusing and unhelpful: here too, nothing scandalous (I've read some truly exaggerated reviews on this front), but it would have taken very little to make something more functional. In conclusion, the game has (or perhaps it's better to say had) great potential, but due to more or less debatable choices, it can't bear the weight of its expectations and comes crashing down — loudly.

As a fellow Italian, I cannot recommend this game. I have several nitpicks with it and one big turn-off. Let's start with the big one: this game feels culturally offensive. Having grown up in southern Italy I have seen with my own two eyes the disdain of the North towards the South. My mother, who moved to the North in her formative years, was denied work, sometimes even a roof, because of her being southern. And let me be EXTREMELY clear, this was (and still somewhat is) a SYSTEMIC issue that lasted decades upon decades. Why am I bringing this up? Because the game slapped me in the face with a distinction between North and South, describing the North as a technological rich marvel and the South as a tribal, technologically set-back steppa. SInce the developers are Italian, I find it hard to believe that this wasn't intentional and there wasn't some malice behind it. Even if not done on purpose, it shows just how deep this **** runs. I do not recommend the game based solely on this fact. Now, for the nitpicks, I'm sure you've heard most of them already - buggy and slow at launch, obscure mechanics and evolution trees, and (this is my opinion) terribly designed human characters. The music isn't very engaging either, I found myself muting the game and listening to my own playlist instead. Overall, the game got stale quickly and I frankly did not find any compelling reason to come back to it. These are all my opinions, but I suppose that's the point of the review.

It is a decent monster collector game. I do not recommend it for casuals such as me, but only for big monster collecting fans and on a deep sale. Going to the animons, there was no reason to have different types of animon in my party; such as fire, grass, electric, demon, and water, in my opinion, ancient, aura, or digital would always have an attack that is super effective, and to be honest, those animons are the only ones that I really liked the designs and ideas for. Most of the evolutions mainly dealt with some special need or having an item, I did not like that, it was done so many times that it got annoying, I would like to scan the animon, see its evolution chart on the animon encyclopedia, then be disappointed with no evolution or see something like Special or Level + (?), to me, doing that too many times took away any willingness I had to find the way to evolve. I think many others feel that way too, I would update the game to have the special requirements in the encyclopedia instead of having to google it, if anything, have another research level so people can see the extra requirement to evolve. Another thing that would make the game better is to not force the player to have certain type animon in your party for the traversal of the world, once you get the power to do it, let it automatically apply, I get it, the gimmick of the specific animon empowering your Holoken sounds cool, yes, but it got very tedious at the end when you had a lot of puzzles that required different types, so I found myself constantly pausing, opening menus, switching animon, traverse the obstacle, pause again, open menus, switch the animon back out, repeat. Cherry on top, I was very disappointed in the ending. No epilogue is a buzzkill too.

⚠️ Essa e minha analise pessoal sobre esse jogo ⚠️ LumenTale: Memories of Trey, gente que jogo lindo eu conheci ele por causa de um vídeo do tiktok e coloque na minha lista de desejos e cara que boa supressa, mas nem tudo são flores infelizmente esse game me decepcionou em vários aspectos como a quantidades de bugs que me deram a sensação de um game incompleto sem contar que o online dele já nasceu praticamente morto. Esse game tinha tudo para ser um ótimo pokelike mas na minha opinião ele é muito fraco, gente esse game vai ser o primeiro game que acho que não vale o preço (mais de 60 reais por um jogo que esta claramente incompleto é foda), gente ate que eu recomendo mas espere uma promoção melhor já que na minha visão não vale o preço. Bem gente vamos pra analise 💕 Pontos Positivos: ✅- O Gráficos desse game são muito lindos ✅- Soundtrack desse game é incrível ✅- Animons são muitos lindos ✅- Ótimo sistema de missões ✅- Personagens muitos marcantes (menos o trey) ✅- Captura dinâmica em tempo real ✅- Variedade rica de atributos ✅- Barra de SP Compartilhada ✅- Foi adicionados um sistema de conquistas ✅- pode colecionar um TCG próprio ✅- O Mapa desse jogo é imenso 💢 Pontos Negativos: ❎- Jogo parece incompleto ❎- Achei a historia desse game muito fraca e o plot muito previsível ❎- Telas de carregamento excessivas (gente imagina você explorando uma cidade e a cada casa ter uma tela de carregamento, pra min isso é ridículo) ❎- Quatidade de bugs tanto visuais como de performance é incrível ❎- Gente vocês acreditam que esse game não esta 100% legendado kkkkkkkk, meu encontrei algumas seções que o jogo está em inglês kkkkkkkk ❎- O Online desse game já nasceu morto ❎- Não tem pós-game nesse jogo (sim um pokelike sem pós-game kkkkkkk) ❎- Ser você fazer grid nesse game o jogo acaba ficando muito fácil ❎- Na moral os caras colocaram o pior sistema de pokemon pra esse game, o sistema de HM ❎- Combate nesse jogo é extremamente lento ❎- Os Animon selvagens são burros ❎- O Sistema de evolução desse game e bem ruim (é igual ao legends arceus) ❎- Muitas evoluções são especificas demais ❎- Modo Anespace é bem entediante ❎- Ausência de variantes "Shiny" para todos ❎- Puzzle irritantes ❎- Falta de balanceamento em certas senões nesse jogo (estou lá upando de repente aparece um animon lv 60 e meu bicho lv 35 kkkkkkkkk) ❎- Cara não consegui gosta do trey achei ele muito chato ❎- Aniwiki (tipo uma pokedex) muito bugada ❎- Sistema de Crafting desinteressante 😆 É Divertido?: ✅- Sim! 💸 Vale a compra?: ✅- Espere uma promoção 🤔 Você recomenda?: ✅- Sim, ele tem um bom futuro (ser não for abandonado) A minha nota pra esse jogo e 7,5/10 ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡ ⠄⠄⠄⠄⣠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣷⣦⡠⣴⣶⣶⣶⣦⡀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⠄⠄⣴⣿⣿⣫⣭⣭⣭⣭⣥⢹⣟⣛⣛⣛⣃⣀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⠄⣠⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⢯⡓⢻⠿⠿⠷⡜⣯⠭⢽⠿⠯⠽⣀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⣼⣿⣾⣿⣿⣿⣥⣝⠂⠐⠈⢸⠿⢆⠱⠯⠄⠈⠸⣛⡒⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣶⣭⡭⢟⣲⣶⡿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠋⠄⠄⣴⠶⠶⠶⠶⠶⢶⡀ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢟⣛⠿⢿⣷⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡄⠄⢰⠇⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠈⣧ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡹⣭⣛⠳⠶⠬⠭⢭⣝⣛⣛⣛⣫⣭⡥⠄⠸⡄⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⢇⡟ ⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⣭⣛⣛⡛⠳⠶⠶⠶⣶⣶⣶⠶⠄⠄⠄⠙⠮⣽⣛⣫⡵⠊⠁ ⣍⡲⠮⣍⣙⣛⣛⡻⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠖⠂⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⣸⠄⠄⠄⠄ ⣿⣿⣿⣶⣦⣬⣭⣭⣭⣝⣭⣭⣭⣴⣷⣦⡀⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄⠠⠤⠿⠦⠤⠄⠄

Editing my review to say that what I encountered was not in fact a bug and was in fact me being incredibly silly. With that out of the way, enjoying everything about the game and would recommend to a creature-catching enjoyer!

The game still hasn't addressed being able to properly name your Mons and claimed it was being worked on all the way back in May, nothing has changed. So many other bugs and issues are also just unfixed and untouched. I sadly think the game just isn't worth it if it feels like nothing will get fixed.

several points in the game where you can softlock yourself and have to either find a way to ♥♥♥ or go back to a previous save. also buggy asf.