Path of the Midnight Sun

Included in this awesome dating sim is a pretty good JRPG

The beginning is very bland – the starting character is the worst and blandest combat unit – and the game itself is very rough around the edges; the combat animations are often ridiculous (many of the character’s splash screens make they look like they’re about to fall asleep) and the levelling system is incredibly weird. But, despite all that, Path of the Midnight Suns is actually a good game. The characters are very interesting, voice acting (as intermittent as it is) is great, and the narrative is worth following through. Maybe this wasn’t the best medium in which to tell this story, but it’s engrossing enough for me be left wanting more content in this universe.

Very polished and beautifully done. Gameplay has four primary mechanics: 1) Combat, 2) Visual novel storytelling, 3) Strategy map, and 4) Exploration. The combat is turn-based and familiar, yet punctuated with unique touches. You can attack, defend, use items and special techniques, etc. Each party member has a particular role to play and feels distinct from the rest. Each also gets two skill trees to choose from, so you can customize their growth and freely respec at any time. Fights are generally tough but fair. The storytelling is the biggest selling point. Voice acting is there often enough and its quality is very good. The plot itself is focused on a demon king causing trouble, which isn't the most unique thing in the world, but the characters really sell it. Character interactions are the best part of this game, and you do get plenty of dialogue options, which subtly affect things throughout. There are romance options if you want, and one of these in particular had the most satisfying ending I've seen (i.e., Suzaku/Shiori). The strategy map is a bit like Fire Emblem maps, in the sense that you choose when and where to engage targets, which can bring advantages or disadvantages, and you can look for treasure. Its most unique feature is the use of time. Both in and out of the strategy map, time passes, and you're expected to get things done by particular deadlines. If that sounds stressful, it's not. I personally don't like time pressures, but this game uses the clock in a way that just keeps you moving along without pushing you too much. Exploration is like an adventure game, where you point and click to find treasure or interesting things for your party to comment on. This mode is also how you engage with NPCs for quests and shopping. It's simple, but it works well. It's worth noting that there are pleasant sound effects for every little thing you do; it's a nice touch. Overall, this game was a pleasure from start to finish. It was a passion project, and it shows. I loved my time with it and look forward to more from this developer.

A nice game with an interesting history with some nice turning points. The characters are well voiced and have some really nice personalities. The battles are balanced, but you need to kill every enemy in every chapter to lvl up since there is no way to "farm" XP like in many RPG's. The animations become a little repetitive after many times, you can disable them in the options, the battles become much more smooth/faster after that. Some 20~ hours of gameplay. Worth the price tag and the time spent.

Path of Midnight Suns is, unfortunately, the kind of Visual Novel that starts off boring, picks up, keeps up momentum, and then just fails at the end. Moreover, the combat system even on the lowest settings tends to be a chore with certain elements, notably: Moths/Knights who will always act first and make killing the row they protect an absolute pain. This isn't helped by the fact said enemies also benefit from damage reduction that they give their allies until they die. Said Guardians can also protect healers, who proceed to heal said damage sponges... and potentially themselves. Status Effects are just... incredibly frustrating. Poison in particular chunks 1/3rd of your health every turn and it feels like at least one in four enemies has it. Panic Status (No Skills or Mana Regen) is absolutely disgusting, but it was also often paired with Curse (you MUST use Skills or Attack) and to top it all off, Immunity does not cleanse debuffs, meaning you can have someone become Immune to status effects after the enemy has blinded, gagged, and enraged them and still get their turn skilled because OOPSIE, NO MAGIC! The game's systems encourage grinding for both long-term experience and materials, but put time limits on every mission that punish doing so. Additionally, certain characters have exponentially more value than others (namely Rya is effectively dead weight compared to anyone else, and long-term progression will punish you for not specializing nearly all of your resources into Suzaku early) Forge and Food Crafting are both extremely limited and change every chapter. Trying to get missing resources for one item might be pointless as next chapter rotates them out. This is fine for weapons, but one very notable time I had wanted to make a full set of Poison-Resistance (not immunity, resistance) earrings for my team, but lacked the copper. They were rotated out before I could do so, and had to deal with Poison the rest of the run. I never saw the impact of this supposed 'Secret Personality System' as my Suzaku was a joker despite choosing the polite/knightly choices consistently, which lead to some annoyance with the character (particularly in one of the endings) as I was told my dialogue would affect their personality but did not. Regarding Story, it starts with an Amnesiac [b](Cringe)[/b] but does pick up fairly quickly. However, some story beats are... too predictable. Sometimes they take several chapters to announce a conclusion I'd already pieced together hours ago and was just waiting for them to figure out on their own, and arguably the largest twist in the entire story occurs because of pure negligence of all involved parties. Frankly, it'd be hilarious if it didn't have nearly half the story behind an incredibly obvious oversight. I also admittedly didn't like the ending: [spoiler]The story set up a Love Hourglass and then it expects you to sort out who gets left out in the cold. I chose specifically to watch all of the scenes and then I left Suzaku out in the cold, only for him to be totally fine. I admit, I was hoping he'd crash out and give me a Bad Ending of some kind, but no, somehow the actual ending was more disappointing.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Turns out the Church was behind everything, big ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shocker, and the Pope wants to become a God. She's directly responsible for everything that happened too, and then successfully ascends into Godhood despite the fact I made sure to spend pretty much all of the mana in the plot device so I handed her essentially the equivalent of a half-charged AA battery. We also never get an explanation for how the ♥♥♥♥ she's been alive for so long, or any indication that Cloning is a thing in this world but that was a part of it apparently.[/spoiler] I [b]paid[/b] for this. I spent almost a day playing it on the lowest difficulty. It was absolutely not worth it.

Good game. I wonder if the top reviewer and his 8 supporters (as of right now) playing the same game as mine. For me, the game never crash even once. (Game installed on SSD, Core I5, RTX3060TI, RAM 32 GB, window 11) Gameplay just read and click, really, even monkey can do it (but I'm not sure about monkey reading part though) I play on normal difficulty and clear it without even retry because I "read" what each characters can do that others can't. There is a dude who wield axe as main weapon and has many debuff attack skills but he also the only one in the party who can heal and revive. Of course you know what skill to prioritize your mana points for this guy right? Story is good (Better than Expedition 33) It is simple with some twist and turn. A little bit of cliche but that was made it fun. Characters. Of all the RPG games I've been played. I never experienced annoying or hate any characters here. I even got tricked by demon lord despite all the evidence of his plans I found throughout the game. Each characters backstory may not be that deep but you can clearly see they're all have a heart. I gave this game 9.5 out of 10. The missing point is what happens after I chose Suzaku to romance Faratras and then saw a sad Shiori. I request a harem ending, please. Edited: Thank you for the jester award. Now I got enough coin to buy Tlipoca avatar I been eyeing it for a while.

pretty good,I like it. The small animations of the characters are pretty cool.The gameplay is simple yet enjoyable and the story is pretty interesting. I recommend if you are looking for a visual novel with a bit of gameplay.

I don't remember where I heard about this game but I was told that it was a project that started as a Fire Emblem romhack turned into a fully fleshed out original game. As an avid Fire Emblem fan and one who wishes to support small devs, I thought I would check it out. Unforunately, for legal reasons, I can't typically finacially support romhack devs so I thought this would be a good opportunity to do so. I can definitely see the class resemblance to Fire Emblem (especially the wyvern knights) but this plays a lot more like a VN/point and click/RPG with a few tactical maps that have their unique little time management mechanic in which you get into a more traditional JRPG battle when you collide with enemies, kinda like a turned based version of YuGiOh! The Falsebound Kingdom or Unicorn Overlord. Overall I enjoyed this game as it is quite the unique experience but like anything else it did have its downsides. Pros; - Voice acting is better than some AAA games such as Squeenix's Triangle Strategy (no shade I love that game too but eh on the VA). - music is above average. - the story is actually very well-written, surpassing any Fire Emblem game imo. Except for the last chapter but I'll get to that. - 0 grinding. Not only is it not required but it isn't even an option as time move forward with or without you. - except for the cultists and enemies in the final chapter, the monsters/enemies look very unique with quite interesting designs. - made by one guy. I guess you could say the musicians and VAs mean that it wasn't but eh still pretty much one guy did 90% of the work. Neutral; - easy game despite me playing on the classic (2nd hardest difficulty of the four options). Kinda my fault for not picking hard though so goes into the neutral category. - since time moves forward with or without you I did miss a lot of content, such as adjutants, a couple bosses, a couple lore dumps on the eight heroes from the past, 2-3 side quests, et cetera. Putting this in neutral because I actively prefer games that encourage you to manage your time and keep moving forward, not stopping to grind or reset if someone dies. Nothing kills the mood like "oh the world is ending but let me just kill 100 bandits real quick to top off my levels". That being said, I feel like I was extremely thorough in my map searching and I talked with everyone yet I still missed a sizable amount of content. - I think I noticed two typos throughout the whole game (such as using 'and' instead of 'an') and one continuity error (the blind girl's bedroom is full of books despite it being established that she cannot read). Very minor but something I remembered so thought I'd throw it out there. Cons; - the plot twist in the final chapter is a combination of the two biggest cliches in the RPG genre and was a massive letdown compared to the rest of the game's writing and plot twists. - I am not convinced the sanity or hunger mechanics do anything. Maybe they are crucial in hard difficulty but I noticed 0 difference between my characters starving and being bloated nor did I notice any impact between having full or empty sanity gauge. - the romance option ended up being a one night stand then never brought up again. Would really liked to have read/seen what the main characters got up to after the story, even if it was a few sentences to a paragraph. - the epilogue lets you ask side characters what they are planning to do after the main story but the main characters you kinda have to inter. Maybe I am just used to FE which gives you a paragraph epilogue for what all the characters do with their lives now that the adventure is over but kinda felt weird that side characters got this but not main characters. I'd definitely say this game is worth the pricetag of $25 but if that's a bit much for you it goes on sale fairly often as much as 60% off. A strong recommendation for anyone looking for an indie RPG or just a fan of good stories.

Gosh, its hard to believe im going to finish one of the first games I downloaded off of Serenes. Given what i have experienced from the original idea. I can tell the story is great and will be better. Technically this might be the most successful hack originating from Serenes because its not a hack anymore.