Luminous Plume Reviews

It's hard to add to what other reviewers have written, but it's simply a great game. With deep, engaging gameplay, outstanding music, lovely art, a unique world and a really interesting story, it has pretty much everything you'd want from a game. The pacing is tight too, with no filler whatsoever. Though slightly (and understandably) rough around the edges, this game was obviously a labour of love and certainly gets things right where it counts. I eagerly await future titles from XenoHorizon, and encourage anyone who is interested in fun action RPGs to give this a shot.

[h1]Smug Aura Mocks Me[/h1] [h2]Story[/h2] The plot is more about the main character's personal growth than any grand adventure about saving the world. In fact, the protagonist already technically got involved in saving the country, but couldn't handle the mistakes he made in the process and basically stagnated. The concept is nice, but I feel like there's not enough closure for the main antagonist or late game interactions with the only village. Instead, the postgame is mainly closure for the secondary antagonist, who turns out to be similar to Raven in many ways. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game tries to combine elements of the Ys and Tales series while making the experience harder in some ways, at least in the beginning. Defending is more akin to Ys, due to the Flash Guard mechanic, but it can't be abused as much because you can't cancel attack animations into guarding. To make up for this, the player gets Shield, which gives Raven an aura that weakens his attack, but negates damage in exchange for massive chunks of his AP. It can save the player's current attempt of a round, but using it too much will result in the player having no AP to use techs or defend another attack. The skill activation system is more akin to Tales, but I feel that it's unwieldy in some ways. Simultaneous button and direction inputs feel like they have different or tighter timing compared to Tales of Vesperia (PC), making it easy to activate the wrong tech. For some reason, I felt like it was easier to activate up and down techs than side direction techs. Additionally, a lot of enemies and bosses don't stagger well and the player doesn't start with a lot of AP, so it can be hard to actually pull off a proper combo until Raven gets higher stats and learns techs that have higher chances of hitstun. As for the difficulty curve, the player has no real healing options at the start of the game other than getting enemies to drop HP orbs, standing still for long enough to regen, or leveling up. Of all the dungeon, the Arctic Lake is probably the hardest due to the abundance of spellcasting enemies that are hard to stagger without the Field technique. However, once the player gets regen equipment and a passive skill that causes Auradrive to regen, they have more room for error for taking damage. Combined with the powerful lategame crowd control skills, the standard mobs eventually cease to be a challenge. I read on discord that there was a patch to strengthen lategame enemies, but even a stat boost won't make much of a difference if the player has access to mechanically powerful techs and passives. This may explain why the optional volcano boss drops a piece of gear that makes Raven take more damage, as a sort of unofficial difficulty setting that goes beyond Nightmare mode. All stages except for the postgame stage are one-time only and lock the player in. This is normally fine on its own, but some rounds of a stage also have bonus objectives that hide treasure chests, some of which contain permanent upgrades to Shield, Wield, and Field. IMO, it's kind of harsh to make such upgrades missable forever if the player fails an bonus condition. Since the player will likely receive more MP than they know what to do with, it would have been nice to be able to spend high amounts of MP to buy the contents of missed chests. Though to be fair, it's probably possible to beat the game even without all the permanent upgrades, especially with all the OP techs and passive skills Raven can learn. The game has many events that cannot be revisited, but I feel that the save/load system isn't adequate for handling that. There aren't that many slots and as of writing this, there is no save/load cursor memory. For the most part, I sucked at playing the game and made it through with inefficient hit-and-run tactics for the early stages before spamming OP techs in the later stages. My two main artifacts were Coward's Belt because I don't have the motor skills to use diverse techs and Farulian Cloak because I needed extra regen. [h2]Verdict[/h2] 7/10 The worldbuilding is a bit vague and the game follows the trend of many other games in having a reverse difficulty slope. I think the game still makes a decent attempt at combining the mechanics of Ys and Tales while adding its own risk-reward mechanics.

A very enjoyable game with engaging combat, fans of Tales of series can feel right at home. Love the chest messages as well, i feel like it's a nod to Trails series.

Better combat than Tales of Arise.

Interesting RPG that has a battle style similar to 2D "tales of" games. A little lacking in stuff to do, and there's not alot of open worldness to it either, but the battle system and RPG mechanics are fun and worth giving a try. The story ain't half bad either.

Absolutely an easy recommendation, though its not perfect. Ultimately the price tag is low enough, and the core fun is high enough that the flaws didn't bother me in the least. While Luminous Plume makes reference to Ys and Tales and the inspiration is there... I also found it to build the wrong expectations for the game. This game strips out all of the epic scale of a JRPG and tightens it to a few hour experience. You still get the story, the skills, the combat, and the customization... but it happens alot faster with little filler. This is done by making it purely combat against waves of enemies. Between waves treasures are rewarded and stories are told. Branches in the maps allow you to face the stronger and more rewarding waves, or the easier ones. There's no grinding, no exploring, limited sidequests (AKA one wave fights)... just combat. When combat is the sole focus on a game, its a question of whether it's good enough to carry the experience. In this case, absolutely yes. It takes the basic formula of Tales combat, but adds in timed guards and "Auras" that let you go extremely offensive or defensive. There's a good variety of enemies and mostly well-crafted boss fights that keep things fresh. Fight a few waves, gain a treasure or new technique to swap in... and loop. It's smooth and it generally feels really good to play. Really, the biggest complaint I have is the pacing. You gain so many levels, so many skills, techniques and items at such a rate that you don't really get a chance to enjoy it. It's overwhelming enough that I found myself using the same handful of skills and items instead of the other 30 had access to. I almost wish there was more grinding and the ability to replay levels... and I never say that. Its also worth mentioning that this is a fairly launch and there are bugs, including game-breaking ones. - Buttons and directions seem to get "stuck" resulting in you using the wrong move - I had about 5 random game freezes in my time here, 2 from cutscenes and 3 from activating my aura drive ability. - I had a few side-quests get confused and running simultaneously making them both unwinnable and ultimately freezing the game. (It worked after a restart) They happen often enough that I absolutely noticed them, but ultimately the game functioned well enough that I got over it quickly. The good outweighed the bad and I assume the devs will fix up the issues over time. Luminous Plume was a surprise success for me, because I don't really enjoy Tales games. But the combat system, the writing, and the overall style worked for me. I don't regret the time or money spent on this game.

Pretty good! As a Tales fan, I appreciate the combat system; it's criminally underused, and I'd love to see more of this in a sequel or other followup. I'd particularly like permanent party members or playable characters, though Raven's one-man show is a lot of fun. For any fellow Tales fans concerned about being overrun, don't worry; the main character can shield during attacks, so you won't be stunlocked to death because you're outnumbered. The story is a bit short, but pretty decent! I had my doubts because the characters looked generic at first, but they really grew on me. The soundtrack is also solid; there's something nostalgic about it even though I just played it in the last week.

Notice: Luminous Plume requires a controller in order to play. Playing with a keyboard and mouse isn't supported. I play with keyboard anyway I get hand cramps It's on nightmare mode

Luminous Plume is quite possibly one of my favourite action games to date. Mixing the classic art based combat of Tales with something faster and more fluid in the vein of Ys, the game delivers fast, satisfying, responsive combat which makes it an absolute joy to hack and slash through. With challenging boss fights and a fairly brutal difficulty, which may start to relent near the end, the game offers players a chance to test their skills, especially on the nightmare mode. It also features beautiful art and environments that make the game just as good to watch as play, and an electrifying and unforgettable soundtrack by Aoki Katsumata, Luminous Plume delivers an outstanding experience, and is well worth it's price. I'd put it at an 8.75/10, but considering my scale is considered a bit harsh, that may be closer to a 9.5/10 for most people.

Luminous Plume is the healthy lovechild of the Ys and Tales of combat formulae, with good doses of world building and likeable characters sprinkled in. It is undeniably a product made with, and by love and I'll attempt to explain point by point just why. Gameplay: As mentionned previously LP features a hybrid of sorts between the fluid and high paced action gameplay of a modern Ys game, and the 2-dimensional, ability-based combat of a Tales of. The result is an incredibly intense and fun ARPG where you hack and slash your way through waves of enemies arena-style, and eventually fight a challenging Boss at the end of the stage. Writing: While it's nothing outstandingly unique or revolutionnary, the world building is really well done, without any jarring info dumps that halt the narrative progression, but through the characters' dialogues. The more they talk, the more you paint yourself a picture of how this world operates, what are its rules and what happened to make it the way it is. The caracterization of the cast is just as well done, and they neither feel 2 dimensional nor unlikeable. Soundtrack: Oh god, can I even talk about this without gushing my soul out? The entire soundtrack comes to us from freelance composer Aoki Katsumata and it's simply amazing. The boss themes are hype as shit, while the more emotional pieces really go well with the context of the scenes they play in. If you play the game and enjoy what you hear, be sure to also get the soundtrack, it's fricking great! Misc. pros: Other good things include the sprite work and character art, which are both really well made and pretty to look at, the environments, which are varied enough that you never get really bored to look at them (shout out to the last are which is simply SUBLIME), and Nightmare mode, which I've yet to try, but since Normal already felt challenging, it feels very much like a hardcore gamer thing some people would DIG. Cons: No product is perfect after all, as close as they can be to that, so here's a few small gripes i've had. I said Normal was challenging, but that was only really the case until a certain point halfway through the game, after which I basically slashed and thundered my way through the rest of the game (bar the bosses, which were still really hard). Some of the mechanics, most notably shifting your accessories to other items, never gets explained to you in-game. You can still find the tutorial in the menu, but it just seems weird that they never mention it outright. OVERALL/TL;DR: Luminous Plume offers a fast-paced and incredibly fun experience that is sure to appeal to action game as well as ARPG fans. Honestly I couldn't recommend it more, it's not even that expensive, go for it!