The story is simple. An evil jester, Dhoulmagus, steals a magical staff from a kingdom and places a curse on everyone in the castle. The King becomes a toad-looking creature while his daughter becomes a horse. The rest of the castle residents become frozen in time. The only person to survive unscathed is the main character who sets out on a quest with the King and his daughter to find Dhoulmagus and undo the curse.

The first most noticeable thing about this game is the music. From the opening introductory screen and throughout the game, the orchestral music is performed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. I really love the music and I think it is one of the outstanding features of this game. A couple of times I felt the music was a little misplaced for the particular moment but aside from those few moments it was perfect. The orchestral music really adds to the mood of the gameplay.

The second most noticeable feature is the cell-shaded graphics. The cell-shading gives the game an anime look and feel. In fact, the characters and monsters were designed by Akira Toriyama of Dragonball Z fame and the creatures are unique and interestingly creative. One thing I appreciated is that I did not see an excessive reuse of monster models. Almost all of the creatures I encountered were different from the previous ones. Of course, there were a few that were recycled but many monsters were very unique from the others. The cell-shading of the creatures gives the creatures an almost playful look. In fact, the look of the game disarmed me as I didn’t think some creatures looked very dangerous. However, this game actually has lots of challenge to it.

My first wakeup call to the challenge of the game came when I took on the first quest. In many RPGs, the first quest often exists to help familiarize the player with the environment and is usually quite simple. In those RPGs, the player will start off with basic equipment that is satisfactory for the first few quests. I thought the same would be true in this game. However, my party wiped out two times while trying to complete the first quest. Luckily, the penalty for death does not require the player to start the game over and only takes half of the gold you have in inventory, which in the beginning does no hurt much at all. After taking time to review a little strategy and properly equip my characters, I successfully completed the first quest.

This brings up a point about the battle system in this game. Each character has certain strengths that go beyond just being good at magic or melee. For example, the main character can use boomerangs which will cause damage to all foes while another character, Jessica, can use whips that hit only a group of similar foes. Additionally, each character can boost their attack by raising their tension. Raising a character’s tension will sacrifice their turn but each successive tension increase raises attack power on an exponential curve. Careful use of these abilities can make your battles easy while sloppy use can make them difficult.

The game world is vast and thankfully the game provides spells and items to travel to previously visited locations instantly. Although the world is vast, it does not seem to offer much reason to travel off the road to explore. There are some chests located off the main roads you travel and there are special monsters to fight but whenever I did explore I did not seem to get much reward out of it. The game itself has a pretty linear scope and I found very little else besides the main storyline to follow.

The game does have some experimentation for the player to explore in the form of the King’s alchemy pot. This special pot takes two ingredients which may turn into a new and more powerful item. Some alchemy recipes can be found in books throughout the world but the player is also encouraged to experiment with different combinations to discover new items. Besides discovering better healing items, the alchemy pot can generate new weapons and armor that can offer a real benefit to the player.

Overall, I did enjoy this game. If you love RPGs, this is definitely one to look into. It doesn’t seem to break out with any new amazing ideas for this genre but it is a worthwhile and enjoyable experience.