Quartet

Very fun, classic SNES-style RPG. Doesn't waste any time, feeling very similar in pace to Chrono Trigger in that way. Editing simply to double-down on my recommendation for this game. Super fun, done in about 20 hours, really nails all the stuff about story-focused RPGs that makes them tick. Absolutely, highly recommend.

Great game. Great developers. One of the few retro RPGs That allow you to control Your character with a mouse. Also Ben is probably one of my favorite characters of all time in an RPG.

Hate to leave a negative review because I adore pixel graphics, SNES-era JRPGs and indie devs. If it had come out in 1995, Quartet would be a game that would still get an honorable mention today as being from the golden era. In 2026, it simply does not do anything from a gameplay perspective to make it worth your time. The first ~15 hours or so of gameplay is entirely on rails with almost every encounter being placed in your path so that you can be prepared for the boss fight at the end of 17 cutscenes all linked together by hallways. The worldbuilding is good and the cast of characters is mostly enjoyable, but everything else is so "safe." Combat is cookie cutter Rock Paper Scissor and shuffling through 8 characters to find the combination of damage types to move forward. Even writing this review about Quartet is boring me.

This game has the strongest, the best, the juiciest storytelling ever. And I "saw it all" since CGA graphics. Indeed. No other game competes. Not AAA, not visual novels, not other rpg-s. You just have to see it. It uses magic to touch very deeply very non magical aspects of our own world today. With that, it never resorts to cheap emotional manipulations, forced angst, or artificial misery, and stays a genuinely fun, super intriguing GAME. All characters feel real. No spoilers, but they can run, they can break. And you believe them. Did I mention the storytelling is fantastic? And through it all, it never forgets that it's actually a game. Talking about the game. It feels VERY classic. Like no map. No countless information panels. Not even one, while you so much need it, please!!! lol. It still very playable and keeps balance between modern/stone-age. I can't say that the fight system is the best I've seen in RPGs, but with what the game throws at you, it keeps you busy. Definitely recommend. Moreover, I believe you just must see it!

I purchased this game while it was on sale, and I'm very happy I did. This is one of my surprise games of 2026 so far, as I had no idea how much I would love it before I purchased it. I completed 100% of it within 23 hours. The writing is charming (Ben in particular is hilarious), the music is fantastic, and the story ended up going places that I didn't expect at the beginning of the game. Thanks to the development team for this gem of a game. You're now on my radar for whatever you decide to make in the future!

I played Mystic Quest on the SNES when I was little, (I think the devs did, too...) and although that game was very barebones and lacking, I especially loved the spritework of the enemies during the fights and the general vibe of the game... Quartet is like a perfected version of what Mystic Quest tried to be. The perspective during fights is the same like in MQ, so that instantly got me interested, but the fighting system is of course way deeper. The whole presentation is just like what our nostalgic brains tend to make us think those old games like MQ or Final Fantasy 5 and 6 actually looked like... The story is good! The ending especially suprised with a way of thinking that is a little more complex than what we are used to from games like this or games in general. I'm usually not interested in the story of games like this, I'm here for the fighting tactics and pretty pixel art but Quartet made me actually care! This game is almost flawless. The only thing I found a little annoying, was that you cannot skip cutscenes. You can just fastclick through the text. But that might actually be better this way, because you will miss crucial info regarding locations and sidequests during those conversations if you don't follow them, and since this game has no multiple endings, the urge to instantly replay it and then wanting to skip the cutscenes isn't really there. Look, if you like games like the old Final Fantasies or new ones like the Octopath games BUY THIS GAME! Because in the end only two things are certain: Quartet will have you entertained for 25-30 hours at a more than fair price and there never really was a GOAT debate in the NBA after all...

I'm going to give this a tentative recommend. I enjoyed the game, but it was a slow start and then started wear thin a little towards the end. I particularly disliked the structuring of the side quests in the game (something you'll see mentioned in other reviews), as at the end of the game doing your side quests feels less like wrapping up some loose ends and feels more like a narrative sprint before you give yourself permission to see the next story beat. Still, overall, decent experience. I played the whole thing on hard difficulty, and it was still pretty easy. Only had to retry a couple of non-endgame fights, but felt reasonably challenged for some of the bosses. I do think that the combat system felt....a bit underexplored in some respects. And I take issues with how some of the characters and skill effects are balanced/surfaced to the player. From a narrative perspective, I do think that the grim-er aspects of war were handled relatively well. And I'm relatively happy having done the first four chapters in the order of alex > niko > cordelia > ben. Because ben is the best chapter and alex is a good intro. Flipping them would also be a good alternate order but imo ben's chapter was a really nice reprieve after the gravity of the other chapters. If you like classic jrpgs, definitely give it a go, it's not super long. If that's not your wheelhouse though, I wouldn't necessarily call it a must play.

Quartet is one of the best old-school JRPGs I've played in a long time. It's one of the few games that I feel fills out its scope. It has some ideas, some characters, some systems, etc., like most games, but never bites off more than it can chew. What you end up with is the rare project that is self-assured. There are no perfect games, but there are games that are essentially functioning as their best incarnation, and that's Quartet. The writing stands out. I'm of the age where I grew up on SNES JRPGs, and I've seen every shade of narrative, ranging from the secretly deep to the shallow, nostalgia-fueled imitations. I've seen the narratives that go full throttle into messy lore and I've seen the ones that are nothing more than dollhouses for character archetypes. Quartet is a structured, thoughtful story that uses nearly every part of the buffalo. Characters work within their own mentalities, abilities, and dynamics, to play off of the story and create satisfying beats. It's among the more rare of the genre, invested in themes and plot and lore in equal measure to characters, whereas most indie productions seem to go too easy on one of those points in favor of another. It's so interesting I wrote a [url=https://www.twelvetiles.com/post/quartet-the-four-philosophies]whole article about how its philosophies intermingle[/url]! Even among my favorite recent indie JRPGs, none of them intrigued me enough to replay and reexamine their cores. Highly recommended, go buy it. Don't read any further. Go on. What are you waiting for? Buy it! Oh, you're still reading this? Okay. Well, it's my duty as a gamer to add a little unnecessary stank to my review. Inconsequential stank. A little whining. Here are my miniscule gripes with this otherwise brilliant game. On the macro scale—the plot beats and overaching narrative—the writing is excellent. In the moment-to-moment, like the dialogues and interactions, the writing is also great. In the micro, from word to word, I have two minor issues. For one, I have no idea what the writers are doing with their commas half the time. It seems that every dependent clause or prepositional phrase is preceded by a comma. The game has an Oxford Comma toggle (I never tried it), but this comma I'm talking about is [i]not[/i] an Oxford Comma. Here’s an example from the game: “Do you know who visited Evelyn’s room, last night?” In over ten years of teaching English privately and at university, I’ve never seen this style of consistent comma placement. Maybe there is some East Coast style guide that supports this (let me know if you have the answer!), but, generally speaking, you only need to separate a subordinate clause with a comma if it is placed before the independent clause. Ugh, annoying English talk! Well, here’s an example just to get it off my chest. [b]Normal:[/b] [i]On my own[/i][b],[/b] I won’t be able to defeat it. [b]Normal:[/b] I won’t be able to defeat it[i] on my own[/i]. [b]Quartet:[/b] I won’t be able to defeat it[b],[/b][i] on my own[/i]. The consequence of this writing style is so negligible you can just go ahead and call me a pedant while rolling your eyes. But for me, it makes most sentences sound like they have the quirky pauses of a Christopher Walken monologue. And since I’m here, point numero dos: “never mind,” with a space in between, is the imperative command that tells people “do not think about it anymore.” It’s similar to “never eat soggy wheat” or “don’t look” in its construction. “Nevermind,” with no space, is a Nirvana album. Whew! I feel better. And you all feel worse. Last comment is about the lack of SFX in most of the normal gameplay. Again, it’s really no big deal; don’t think that my bringing it up is a sledgehammer to all of the praise I have for the game. But it’s still worth mentioning for my own peace of mind. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ves7h2Tp15w]Which is why I made a short video about it![/url] TL;DR: Mostly I just think it could benefit from a little more sound design in the non-battle segments. And that’s that. Brilliant game, full of good stuff, most of which I didn’t even touch on (like how precise movements of sprites before dialogue bubbles is a lost art that helps players know who is speaking, which Quartet does so well you would think they all majored in Final Fantasy 4 at university). To reiterate, the game is very fun, it’s worth full price, and you wouldn’t go wrong checking out the soundtrack on Bandcamp while you’re at it! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm shifting to the back row to recover my AP.

Awesome Game. Quite heavy themes (with very obvious real world influences) so that may be a bit much for some people but overall a really good rpg

Feel pretty good about recommending this game if you like classic turn-based jrpgs like Lufia, FF6, and so on. The music is awesome, the gameplay loop is focused, and the characters are all unique enough in their backstories to keep it interesting. Game good, you try