It’s not every day that you see an RPG that plays like a JRPG, let alone one from the latter day SNES era, and is also in a Wild West setting. Well the silence on this oversight has been broken and Experimental Gamers has answered the call. And the all prove their grit, rough as it may be.
The game’s setting takes places years later after a Showdown with the local sheriff of a town and the leader of the evil Saints-Little Gang. The sheriff dies but succeeds in putting the leader behind bars. You play as his son. And while it starts out with you trying to earn money to save your farm, the plot reveals that there is a plan to free Coyote Saint from prison. Of course you get caught up in it as the town is set to have a violent confrontation with a tribe, unless you can stop it that is.
Gameplay is setup with field exploration done very much in a style inspired from the Mother/Earthbound series, with simple but cute looking sprites and almost isometric looking buildings. Combat further shares inspiration with the Mother/Earthbound series in how the battles and enemies are presented. You have many enemies that are somewhat unusual looking, and do silly things either in or after battle. Although the actual gameplay borrows from Final Fantasy’s ATB system, actions called vantages use a certain amount of Power Points, which load up with the passage of time, and when you have enough, you can potentially perform several actions in a row. If the fast paced nature of combat proves too much, you can stop time and plan your actions more carefully.
If you have a local connection, you can play with up to three other people. It’s almost as if the game was intended to be played in this mode, as later boss fights are hard to manage without making use of the time stop feature. However, this setup does make for some very tense and interesting battles. Actions can be setup beforehand with the Vantage system. The Vantages you learn by equipping various hats. You can have up to four equipped at a time, and they will compromise your attack or defense options. Each vantage has a different rate of mastery before they can be used. Again this resembles the magicite system from Final Fantasy 6.
Other little combat options include having the ability to use materials you pick up to add passive abilities to your weapons. Want to add the ability to poison the enemy? Go right ahead. Otherwise you can sell them for money as that is somewhat hard to come by. Music also takes inspirational cues from latter day Squaresoft RPGs. Jake Kaufman provides the score, and it really captures both the feeling from that era of gaming, while also maintaining that Wild Western flair. The game also makes use of other RPG references and humor that a bunch of players will appreciate. If there are any real flaws with the game, it would have to be with the game’s somewhat unbalanced difficulty. All too often there is a situation where your party members can be one-shotted by an enemy’s attack, and then you find yourself in a pickle. It’s very hard to resurrect characters, waiting for them to recover naturally over time. There are some vantages will alleviate this a bit, but the lack of an item system, or having easy and readily available access to a clinic makes it harder than necessary. This is addition with making grinding a bit of a chore. Because of these things, it makes selection and proper timing and use of vantages all the more important. At least the game lets you regenerate your health over time while on the field. One more thing is the default walking speed being pretty slow. You can ride on horses to move faster, but it’s not the most suitable situation as you can’t ride the horses indoors. While it’s a bit rough, the game is still fun; and players can also look forward to the next two parts to the game, as it ends in a cliff hanger. There is some post-game content as well. The game is great despite this, and it is totally worth the 9 dollar price-tag. JRPG fans will be satisfied, despite the game being a little rough around the ages.
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