I Am Setsuna Review

Overview

I Am Setsuna is a JRPG that utilises an active time battle combat system. Developed by Tokyo RPG Factory and published by Square Enix. The game claims to be inspired by Chrono Trigger and some of the old JRPG's and it fulfils that promise for the dutifully. The story centres around a girl named Setsuna whose been chosen as a sacrifice to keep monsters at bay and has to go on a pilgrimage to get to the last lands where she is to sacrifice herself. But meets Endir when he shows up to assassinate her in her hometown. Eventually a merry band of cookie cutter characters appear and join you on your journey.

Characters

Being a JRPG the characters are somewhat meant to one of the main strong suits along with the story line, after all the, combat can only take the game so far.

*Scythe guy not included*

So how good are the characters?

You play Endir, a man from a tribe of mercenaries who wear masks for some inexplicable reason and is hired to assassinate Setsuna, when this fails Endir joins Setsuna in average JRPG fashion and is dragged along the pilgrimage across the lands. Endir displays a rather bland personality being the strong somewhat silent type.

The other characters for the most part just seem to fill the tropes that they could, quiet, lone wolf older man, short, loud, and spry child, a brooding female knight that sticks to her duty, an apologetic female mage who seemingly comes from nowhere to help the sacrifice. There is also this other guy with a scythe that appears from time to time to try and kill Setsuna.

Scythe guy apart its pretty easy to guess which characters which in the image.

Combat

This game heavily relies on its combat which takes part in small 3d battlefields and in all honesty the combat is pretty good and has Chrono Trigger to thank for that. 

There is a stupidly large amount of abilities and passive effects known as techs and spirnites, these spirnites can be augmented with talismans which give the abilities added effects like defence power and support bonuses.

The combat is known as an active time battle or ATB for short this leaves no time to sit and plan this should be kept in mind if you are looking to purchase this game. 

One of the awfully explained mechanics is momentum, this allows your abilities to have secondary effects, for example, blunt strike can paralyse an opponent and if used with momentum this also applies a team heal.

Momentum can be activated by waiting until a "SP" bar fills up which can be filled by doing damage getting hit or just waiting depending on what you have equipped, once the SP bar is filled press X on the controller whilst using an ability or just attacking to active momentum.

Here you can see "SP" indicated by the "pips" on the snowflake to the right of that character.

There is also a combo system where some characters can use an ability together for massive damage, this consumes both of their tuns which can be pretty big considering you only have 3 characters in a fight. The effects of these combo's are usually devastating and can leave a whole group of enemies obliterated before you.

Some negatives I noticed were things like the healer and mage becoming useless pretty much as soon as you get in your first city. Whats the point in using a healer or mage when you can have three tanky sword people who have full team heals whilst dealing both physical damage and magical damage which means even enemies that require a certain type of damage to be killed can be easily destroyed. This heavily removes from having a dynamic team as you can just focus on getting skills for the tanky people and running through the game with that.

Bosses are decently challenging and require a decent amount of preparation at times, there is almost always a save point before the boss which allows you to have multiple tries without having to clear the whole area again.

Here is a boss I encountered around 12 hours in, I ended up ditching Setsuna as this was where I found out that Endir can heal just as much. It took me a few tries from there but overall left me feeling satisfied once defeated, a good balance of actual difficulty and skill requirement is struck for most boss, this keeps them interesting and unique.

Story

The story is the games biggest letdown, all of the story arcs are predictable and I am positive you could just get a JRPG trope bingo board and you would have them all ticked off at the end.

The story takes place in some form of winter wonderland where monsters roam free and tradition runs deep.

I Am Setsuna moves you from location to location without letting any characters develop or even giving time for the plot to thicken.

Good question, I am not exactly sure.

Setsuna has to sacrifice herself to the fiend of the island who somehow controls whether monsters are everywhere or not, to keep this peace going every decade a sacrifice is chosen to go be given to the fiend, although for some reason hes rather grumpy this time around and for this reason Setsuna was chosen ahead of schedule.

There is not much else to say without spoiling the plot but I can say that everything is predictable if you have ever happened to play JRPG's before, no surprises are to be found in this story line and for this reason alone its debatable whether you should buy this game or not, if the combat seems to interest you a great deal then go ahead, just do not expect anything groundbreaking from the story. 

Aesthetics

I hope you like snow, because that is the only environment this game has to offer well, apart from icy caves 1 through 9.

In the games defence the snowy aesthetic is gorgeous and some of the icy caves look as if they are composed from crystals, the particle effects along with your footsteps deforming the snow as you walk really add to the experience.

Ice caves, get used to these.

The art in this game is truly amazing, when dialogue appears seeing the small portrait assigned to the character was always nice and ability effects were satisfying and made you feel as if the abilities were heavy hitting regardless of the damage dealt, weapon designs and models were unique and interesting.

Verdict

I Am Setsuna is in a strange place for me, I love the game but can easily see where the game lacks, stuff like no secondary objectives, side quests or contracts to perform all hammer down the fact that you are in a linear JRPG with no real choice.

The soundtrack is nothing short of a masterpiece in my eyes, composed of entirely piano it adds atmosphere and beauty to the world around you and truly fits the aesthetic and makes you feel somewhat lonely in a vast land of snow and ice. No extra orchestra is added, no artificial sounds, just a single piano.

The game suffers from a lack of risk taking, the game could've been so much more but they played it safe and reinvented the wheel for lack of better words.

I cannot recommend you to buy or not buy this game, if you enjoy games like Chrono Trigger then you will probably get along with this, also a controller is a must if you wish to play this game.

Also on a completely unrelated note, how does a civilisation end up with airships but not guns or other heavier forms of weaponry, just seems odd to me.

The game is currently priced at £29.99 or your regional equivalent and is available on PC and PS4.

Steam store link   Playstation store link

This game was reviewed on pc.