Earthlock: Festival of Magic review

Reviewed on: PS4

Earthlock: Festival of Magic, released on 01/09/2016 (tested on PS4, but also available on Xbox One, Wii U and PC), is a reinterpretation of the classic JRPGs of the 90s and 2000s developed by the Norwegian studio Snowcastle Games. Being produced from 2014 to 2016 by a Western studio, there are many modern elements outside the traditional JRPG, but the game still establishes traditional elements such as turn-based combat and an epic, convoluted story (you can read more about that below).

Story: 6 (but it could have been a 9)

Earthlock: Festival of Magic presents a vast, rich world with a lot of history and interesting details. Millennia ago the planet stopped spinning, dividing it into a hot hemisphere (permanently exposed to the Sun) and a frozen hemisphere (in perpetual night). Unfortunately the load of information is very large, making it easy for the player to miss important details (and lose attention).

The game tells the story of Amon, a young scavenger who sets out to rescue his kidnapped uncle and ends up being drawn into a large scheme that could create a catastrophe as big as the planet’s stop millennia ago.
The premise is extremely exciting, but the pace of the game and of the plot’s presentation is quite slow. The amount of information and invented terms can scare off the curious, and the characters fail to show emotion or depth. Only those willing to dive headfirst into the culture and history of Umbra will resist that familiar temptation to mash a button to skip the dialogue.

Mechanics: 9

Festival of Magic is a turn-based battle RPG, so those who enjoy the genre will feel at home. Still, there are countless details that give the game a unique identity:

• The options are divided into 4 sets (controlled by the D-pad and/or analog stick), each set presenting up to 4 commands (controlled by the controller’s face buttons).
• Each character has 2 fighting modes, usually one more focused on combat and one more focused on support, with entirely different command options.
• The team is set up in pairs of characters, who develop friendships and joint special actions.
• Each action costs a number of Amri to perform, and a character recovers only 1 Amri per turn (there is a Rest option, skipping the turn to recover more Amri)
• There are no random encounters: all opponents are individually visible on the map, and you can face them one by one to lower the difficulty or group them into a single bigger and harder confrontation (but with several rewards, such as additional Experience)
• Besides increasing basic attributes by leveling up, there is an elaborate flexible progression system where pieces are placed on a board. Each piece enables a bonus or ability, and can be swapped with others already collected. You can change a character’s profile just by swapping defensive and offensive pieces, for example.
• Each defeated monster can give some material, and there is also an island where the player can grow a huge variety of plants to acquire other materials… The game features an elaborate system for crafting abilities, items and ammunition.

As you must have noticed, Earthlock brings countless systems and mechanics, some borrowed from other genres and some completely new. There is a lot to do, try and develop.

The greater the player’s dedication, the greater the rewards.

Audiovisual: 8

The indie studio spared no effort on the game’s art direction. The visuals are always clean and simple at first sight, but the more you look, the more details you see: every scene in the game looks like one of those screenshots prepared especially for promotion. The camera is programmed to adjust so as to guide the eyes to points of interest, and that works very well. The models are quite beautiful, the settings are rich in detail and everything runs at a stable frame rate.

Unfortunately none of the praise for the visuals can be applied to the soundtrack. When you stop to listen, the songs are pretty and manage to convey some feelings… But there is no standout track, and nothing that reinforces the setting or tone the story tries to convey. In Earthlock, the music is only there to fill the silence.

My score for Audiovisual is 8, but if I could give separate scores I would give a 10 for Visuals and 6 for Audio.

Final Thoughts

Earthlock: Festival of Magic’s success on Kickstarter shows there is still public interest in traditional RPGs, but the final product wasn’t able to be the game everyone expected. Still, amid pacing problems and a shallow soundtrack, there is the glow of an ambitious fans-for-fans project: a game of unique beauty and solid, deep mechanics.
Certainly a rough gem, recommended for all lovers of the JRPG genre.

SCORE

Mechanics = 9
Audiovisual = 8
Story = 6

OVERALL: 7.7

PlayStation 4 version