Ready, Setsuna, Go

I Am Setsuna – As someone who grew up with Super Nintendo role-playing games, I appreciate that there’s some effort to consciously imitate them in recent years. This game was released by Square Enix in 2016, with the Switch version (the one I’m playing) coming out in 2017. It takes a lot from Chrono Trigger, like a choice of three characters to control from a larger roster, an active time battle system, battles being fought wherever the monsters happen to be rather than on a separate screen, those monsters always being in the same places on not on the world map, automatic resurrection after a victory, and each character using their own type of weapons. It also uses Techs as a catch-all term for special attacks and moves, some of which require more than one person. It seems like magic power tends to run out really quickly, so I mostly just use it for healing, except on bosses. There are occasional special changes in battle, but they seem to happen randomly.

I also understand there are several similarities to Final Fantasy X, although I haven’t played that one yet. Some oddities with the game compared to others of the sort are that there’s no armor, instead allowing characters to equip talismans that give stat bonuses and other effects, as well as having slots for spritnite, the game’s magic system. (Is that supposed to be like “spirit,” or possibly “sprite”?) You don’t get money from fighting monsters, instead gaining a bunch of items that can be sold to the Magic Consortium, and sometimes made into spritnite. While I understand that well enough, the talismans are a bit confusing for me.

There are no inns, and while you can use tents and cabins, that’s still an extra step. It’s a generally bleak game, with every place I’ve visited so far being covered in snow, and some of the towns practically deserted. The plot involves people having to periodically sacrifice someone in the Last Lands in order to stave off monsters. In this case, the sacrifice is Setsuna. Your main character, Endir, is a mercenary who is sent to kill her, but ends up accompanying her to the Last Lands instead. You have some control over Endir’s dialogue choices, which will affect how others respond, but won’t change the plot as far as I know. Other characters you recruit are Setsuna’s guardian Aeterna, the slow but strong Nidr who was part of the previous sacrificial journey, the short-lived but magically powerful Kir, and the knight and protector Julienne. I think there’s only one party member I haven’t encountered yet.

I’ve made it up to the Archimell Ruins and one of the many fights with the Reaper, who has a nasty habit of killing my characters as soon as I resurrect them.

Maybe I have to level up a bit more. I did recently learn an interesting bit of information about Nidr. And there’s a lot of talk about a lost civilization, a staple of this sort of game. I’m assuming that, at some point, I’ll get something to open all the locked treasure chests. The music is mostly melancholy piano tunes, and there’s a little bit of voice acting that’s in Japanese even in the English translation.

She said it! She said the thing!