The Secret of Varonis

I cried at the ending.

Never played SaGa games, so I didn't have any previous experience with this style of JRPGs. Progression and balance are excellent, it was very interesting to juggle different characters and figuring out the whole team composition. I do generally enjoy grinding in JRPGs to be overprepared and it was a blast here. note: the games gets a little on the easier side towards the end. Story is pretty minimalistic, but writing is surprisingly entertaining. I liked the characters, some worlds had interesting gimmicks, the main plot is engaging. I mostly play JRPGs for the plot and I don't have anything bad to say in this case. Neat. The only frustrating part for me was that one overly complicated dungeon in the middle of the game, where I spent a little too much time flipping switches and going back and forth not knowing what to do. Not sure if it was me only problem, but it's the only annoying part I found. Very good game, highly recommend.

I never played the FF Legend games that this is based on, but I have a lot of nostalgia for Dragon Quest/Warrior 3 on the Game Boy and this game really evoked that feeling in terms of wandering the overworld, figuring out on your own where to go next, and exploring dungeons looking for hidden passages. There was a lot more content to explore here than I thought, but in a good way. This game likes to tack on zones on top of zones on top of zones. If you explore enough, by the end of the game you've amassed an inventory of badass weaponry and genuinely useful artifacts. And for an indie retro game the story actually holds its own. Lots of QoL features here as well like being able to choose wandering enemy sprites if you don't like random encounters. It would be cool to see more UI options like different color palettes. The side HUD can be buggy sometimes in not displaying the right health totals or party members, but it can be toggled off/on, and besides that I didn't encounter and gameplay related bugs.

Pretty cool and somewhat difficult Gameboy style game!

The choice was to play FFL2 for the 18th time, or buy this. If you have the same dilemma, pick it up.

Final Fantasy Legend 1-3, but especially 1&2 are some of my favorite games of all time. Also known as SaGa 1-3 in Japan, and the series that would come after these games, they absolutely captivated me in a way that helped me get into JRPG's overall. Secret of Varonis is made by people who love them just as much, if not more, than I do. They fundamentally understand what made these games special, and build upon them. There's numerous quality of life features, ranging from expanded clarity of mechanics, to controlling how espers/mutants level up, etc. Truly, this dev team gets it. I would recommend this game to anyone who wants to experience a very unique set of mechanics where your party gains 0 exp or levels, yet everyone experiences growth and powers up in their own way. Even now, I can imagine different party comps to take care of certain things I didn't get to tap into too much. Also shout out to this being run at RPG Limit Break 2025 for making me aware of this game. I had never heard of it until it was run there, and I loved my time with this game. I cannot recommend this enough.

a loving homage to the Final Fantasy Legend series and early works of Akitoshi Kawazu. Humans, espers, robots, and monsters are all fun to use, and the vignette settings are fun twists on familiar bits in FFL games. Recommended for fans of 8-bit RPGs and QOL improvements!