slanderoid.com

I liked “I Am Setsuna” – but I came nowhere near loving it. It has some decently strong points: the characters are varied and interesting party combinations can be formed for battle; the equipment system is very compelling; the flux system is intriguing despite its random nature making it too frustrating to deal with outside of a 100% run. The battle system itself was a lot of fun, as well! (…Until I discovered a combo/spritnite setup that broke the game and I abused the living crap out of it because of course I was going to.)

There are just so many design decisions holding it back that it’s hard to even give it a pass as a decent game. The entire aesthetic made me want to take a nap – and that was before the most interesting environmental theme was recycled multiple times. The story and dialog had me rolling my eyes so hard it hurt by the time the game was drawing to a close. Speaking of dialog, the main character’s dialog options only affect the game in one scenario. Why even have them at all?

tl;dr – It’s not necessarily a bad game but it’s as far from being great as a game can get before it becomes bad. I’d only recommend this if you loved Chrono Trigger solely for its battle system and you have a self-destructive propensity to give Square Enix money every time they come knocking (like me).