A solid RPG that's free and fun, can't really beat that deal. The story & characters aren't meant to be deep but the game does have its humorous moments. The combat and item systems are well done. Music is pretty good as well. The game is fairly simple in design. You start in the only town with 3 characters to use. You'll venture through 7 different environments battling enemies, leveling up, killing bosses, opening chests, & getting quests. Each environment has a quick travel point right before the boss that allows you to instantly teleport back to the town. The town has a couple shops where you can buy wearable equipment, forgeable items, and health/mp/status related items. Each of your three characters has their own unique set of skills (fairly sizable) that you can upgrade as you choose throughout the game. You'll have limited points to upgrade your skills at the start/mid points, so your choices will matter, but you will be able to unlock everything before you reach the end. You'll also find a plethora of permanent stat upgrade items throughout the game that allow you to customize your characters further, you could keep your characters well balanced or buff certain characters to excel in certain stats. Each character can equip a weapon, armor, and a hat. The game has an autosave feature, but you can manually save the game at any time outside of battle. Combat is the game's main focus point and is where it really shines. All enemies & bosses are viewable as you walk around, so you choose who you would like to fight. Each environment has enemies on its “main path” that you will have to fight in order to reach the boss; once you kill them they will never respawn. Enemies off the “main path” will respawn if you go back to town or to a different environment, so you can grind for extra XP or skill points should you need to (I played on the hard difficulty and never had to grind at all). Enemies off the main path are often guarding chests or paths that lead to chests, so you're given incentive to fight them but don't have to if you don't want to. Combat is usually quick and simple. Battle animations only last around 2 seconds or less for all attacks/spells (the exception being characters' limit breaks), so no sitting around for 10 seconds watching a character cast a damn spell. Enemies start off simple but get stronger later on. Enemies can be permanently scanned to see what elements and status effects they are weak/strong against. Unlike a lot of RPGs, status effect spells and buff/debuff spells can be very useful in combat and are often essential against advanced enemies and bosses. The mid and late game bosses are both difficult and rewarding to defeat. The game has a unique equipment system that I don't recall seeing before. All equipment starts off at level 1 and can be forged up to level 5. All of a character's base stats are multiplied by 1.00 (So 30 base attack X 1.00 = 30 attack power). When a character puts on a piece of equipment, instead of giving an increase to a stat (such as +30 attack), equipment gives an increase to a character's multiplier in various stats (such as + .15% to attack and + .10 to magic defense, so that 30 base attack is now multiplied by 1.15 = 35 attack power). Instead of getting better and better equipment, you'll receive equipment that buffs/debuffs the multiplier for different stats, give different elemental/status resistances, and occasionally have a unique bonus that will unlock upon being upgraded to level 4 or 5 (such as automatically casting regen on your party or having a mammoth attack your enemies). Even your starting equipment is viable at the end of the game, as no equipment is necessarily better or worse than any other equipment. What equipment you want to equip will usually be based on what element enemies are currently weak to, what elements you should increase your resistance against, what stats you want buffed, or simply because you like the special bonus it provides. Forging equipment is as simple as acquiring the necessary items, either by finding them in chests, receiving them from combat, or buying them at the shop. Some NPCs give quests, all of which are fetch quests. You'll eventually find the items in chests or through battle. The quest log lets you see what quests you have completed/outstanding and shows whether you have the necessary items to complete them. Some of the rewards are pieces of equipment or permanent stat boosts, so running through and completing side quests once you get to the end of a zone can be helpful. Completing quests are the only real backtracking you'll do in the game, but all NPCs are reachable once the main pathway is cleared, so you never have to fight enemies to get back to an NPC. Not much more to say. Combat is solid, skill/equipment systems are diverse and interesting, occasionally funny (especially a couple of the achievements). Would've enjoyed the game just as much if I'd paid a couple bucks for it. Looking forward to EBF4.
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